A Tea-Party In Bridge Street

His time being so fully occupied in his own business during the week, and those hours he had been wont to pass with his friend William Day being still unfilled, Mr. George Boult had fallen into the evil habit of coming to hold a business consultation with the widow on the Sunday afternoons. The Day family complained bitterly of this custom. The poor grocer-woman's one blessed day was no longer hers, to be passed from morn to eve in the midst of her children, in rest and peace and forgetfulness of business worries.

She was too tired for church, she always pleaded; but it was not fatigue alone which kept her from public worship. She was accustomed to her place behind the counter now, and in the work-days of the week was too busy for regret, too anxious to sell her goods to feel any shame in the occupation. But on that day when the rest of the world of women went forth with husbands and children to take their places, dressed in their best, in family pews, she felt that she lacked the courage to show her face. She who had queened it with the best of them; she who was the widow of a man who had killed himself to escape from prison! She for whom "sympathisers" and "well-wishers" had collected their sixpenny-pieces that she and hers might be saved from starving.

So she sent the girls to church with Franky, on the Sunday morning, while she, prayer-book in hand, would sit in Deleah's favourite window-seat, beneath the canary's cage, to watch the smart and prosperous Sabbath people airing their newest clothes on the opposite pavement of the street.

Presently Emily, her preparations for dinner made, would come to stand beside her mistress's chair, to turn a critical eye upon the passers-by beneath. Emily knew the names of most of the people of any consideration who passed; knew, and could at length relate the history of themselves and their domestic economies.

"There's Mrs. Hamley, m'm. I haven't never seen her in that black lace shawl before."

"Perhaps she's laid it by from last summer," Mrs. Day would suggest.

"Not she!" Here Emily would lean over the back of her mistress's chair and crane her neck to get a better view of the raiment in question. "Bran' new, I'll lay a guinea! And her still fifteen pound in your debt!"

"Here come the Briggses! Look out, m'm!" presently she would cry. "Well, and ain't they figged out! The whole four of the girls—and every one of 'em in a new bonnet! And them buyin' a pound-and-a-half of butter a week for the whole fam'ly! Tha's what I always say, m'm; the Briggses is a fam'ly that save out of their insides to put it on their bids. Now, here come the best-lookin' young ladies and young gentleman we have set eyes on yet." And then Mrs. Day's own daughters, with Franky clinging to Deleah's arm, would be seen to approach.

"We think so, don't we, Emily? It's because they're our own, you know," the mistress would say, with her deprecating smile. "It's because they're ours, that they seem to look so nice."

But in her heart she heartily agreed with Emily that hers was indeed a charming family.

In the evening Bessie would go off to church again, escorted by Emily, but Deleah would stay with her mother. They would sit together in peaceful, delicious idleness over the winter fire, or, it being summer, they would go forth, escaping by backways and narrow lanes of the old town from the crowded pavements to the quiet roads with their formal rows of trees, their flower-packed gardens and trim hedges. Slowly they would pace along, enjoying the sweeter air of the suburbs, or, gardenless themselves, would stand to peep through garden-gates at the well-ordered array of geranium, calceolaria, verbena; sniffing the fragrance from the serried rows of stocks, the patches of mignonette, or the blossoming lime-trees overhead.

When on that scented Sabbath peacefulness the warm dark would begin to descend, it sometimes happened that the boarder, Charles Gibbon, who also loved the scent of flower and of shrub, and enjoyed the soft air of evening upon his cheek, would meet or overtake Mrs. Day and her daughter as they sauntered homewards; and in a very friendly and pleasant way the three would finish their walk together.

But about the Sunday afternoons there was a less agreeable tale to tell. The young ladies retired with their books to their bedrooms, on those occasions; Franky took refuge with Emily in the kitchen, a store of oranges and nuts having been laid in by that faithful retainer for his entertainment there. The Manchester man saw more than enough of his employer on week-days, and would have preferred to pass a Sabbath afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore to receive her taskmaster and benefactor alone.

Then had her books to be produced, her order-sheet criticised; then was comparison made between this week's takings and those of the corresponding week last year. If, as too often happened, alas! the sales had been less, the poor apologetic tradeswoman had to suffer for it.

"You are losing custom. You must not lose it," the tradesman would bluster. Or "Your expenses are too much. You are eaten up with expenses," he would insist. "You don't see how you can reduce them? Do with less help, my good lady. What do people do who can't afford help? Go without it, and do the work themselves. It's what you must do. It is indeed, I do assure you. Cut down your expenses. Cut them down! Cut them down!"

"It is easier to say that than to do it," poor Mrs. Day would demur. "We have nothing superfluous."

"You will be surprised how much you can do without if you really make the effort. Get rid of your assistant in the shop. Get rid of your servant. A servant is a very pleasant possession, but if we can't afford to keep one, we can't. What is Miss Bessie doing all day long?"

"Bessie is useful in the house. Bessie is not strong," Bessie's mother would plead; and George Boult would snort the suggestion to scorn.

"A little extra work would be the best physic for Miss Bessie." She had put on a good stone of flesh since he had seen her last, he would declare. Work never killed half the women that idleness killed.

On a Sunday afternoon soon after that concert to which the girls had been escorted by the lodger, George Boult, his business exhortation finished, sprang on the poor mother the news that her son at the branch shop at Ingleby was not giving satisfaction.

A complaint of incivility to a customer had come to the ear of the local manager, who had reported to the Head at Brockenham, delivering himself of the opinion at the same time that the young man played billiards at the Rose and Crown more than was consistent with his means, or the devotion he should have shown to his employer's interests.

Lydia Day listened, her dark, handsome face of a lead white, while the man seated at the table opposite to her condemned her son utterly as one who was flinging away a fine chance. He, George Boult, had been thrown, at Bernard's age, on his own resources. Never that he could recall had a helping hand been held to him. (Men of the stamp of George Boult never recognise the helping hand.) Work had been his pleasure. Had he played billiards? Had he shown temper before a customer? No! Or thought of his own pleasure before his employer's advantage? Never!

Very eloquent he was on the strenuous period of his own youth, recounting the virtues he had displayed and the vices he had shunned, holding up his shining example before the dimmed eyes of the poor mother, listening with sick politeness, her heart so heavy in her breast. The excuses she made for her Bernard to herself she dared not put forward. The fact that he was his father's son; the contrast between the life he had known and that he was called on to live; his youth; his exile from home and home influences; his empty pockets; his tastes which had been formed when money seemed plentiful.

"I implore you to be patient with the boy," was about all she thought it wise to say; that and the promise she made to write at once to Bernard to beg of him to consider his circumstances and Mr. Boult's goodness, and to change what was amiss.

Bernard, her darling, handsome son! While she said it she saw him in a thousand pictures stored in her mother's heart. All that was desirable he had seemed to her; she had never thought of wishing him to change!

"Let him know he is on his trial," George Boult said.

"He is being carefully watched and reported on. Do not tell him this, but tell him the impression he has made on Adams" (Adams was the manager at Ingleby) "is not a satisfactory one; and Adams is a man whose opinions I hold very high. Tell him he is having the chance of his life; warn him not to abuse it."

He was still trampling the poor woman's heart beneath the prancings of his own eloquence, when the ringing of the street-door bell created a diversion.

Downstairs went Miss Bessie, her fair hair ruffled, her cheek flushed from its pressure upon her pillow, to take in, as she imagined, in the absence of Emily, the afternoon's milk.

It was not the anticipated milk, however, that Bessie found upon the doorstep, but no less a delightful surprise than the exquisite person of Mr. Reginald Forcus.

"Ah, how do, Bessie? I thought I'd give you a look. I hope I am not de trop?" he asked. He pronounced the last words as they are spelt, not because he did not know better, but because he liked to be amusing, and the mispronunciation of words was the kind of fun he appreciated.

With effusion, Bessie bade him enter; but in her mind were distracting thoughts of the condition of her chignon, and the present occupancy of the only sitting-room.

"There's some one upstairs with mama," she told him, anxiously smiling upon him, her grey-green eyes glinting with pleasure. "The Mr. Boult, you know, who helps her with her books and things when she'll let him. You won't mind?"

"Happy, I'm sure. You're all alone, week-days," he said as he mounted the stairs behind her—stairs very dark and very steep, starting from the almost unmitigated blackness of the hall upon which the front door opened. "I thought if I looked in on the Sunday afternoons I should find the others as well, perhaps."

"You'll find mama," Bessie said, wondering a little at his concern for the proprieties. "Here is Reggie, mama," she said. And Mrs. Day, her heart full of her own unhappy boy, went forward with a weary step, and smilelessly held out a welcoming hand.

"You are very kind to come, Reggie," she said. "This is our good friend,
Mr. George Boult; Mr. Reginald Forcus."

"I take it young Mr. Forcus and I don't need any introduction," the draper said.

The Forcus family did not deal at his shop; the deference therefore which the draper never failed to pay his customers was not needed here. He shook poor Reggie's hand mercilessly, and inquired after Sir Francis. Mr. George Boult had recently been made a magistrate; Sir Francis and he sat on the same bench.

"You are extremely well known to me by sight," he went on, still exercising the visitor's hand. "I should say there are few people in Brockenham better known to me by sight."

"I go past your place pretty often," Reggie admitted.

"You'd see me four or five times a day if you were looking out."

"Oh, I'm not always behind my own shop window," Mr. Boult said, not too well pleased. When he was not talking to a customer why should he be reminded of the shop? Since he had been able to write J.P. after his name, he had more than once been secretly desirous of temporarily forgetting the successful drapery establishment.

He was always disposed to lose himself in wonder at his own marvellous achievements. Time was when the members of the great brewery firm were as far above his head as the stars of heaven above the pebbles of the street. Yet here he was now, to all intents and purposes on a par with them. Where was the difference? A successful business man, he was—what more were they? Still, since Sir Francis had taken to addressing him as "Boult" without any prefix to the name, when they met in the magisterial room, the desire to ingratiate himself with any member of the Forcus family was very warm within him.

"Whenever I do see you, I am struck with the handsomeness of the animal you ride, Mr. Forcus," he was saying presently. "I think this young gentleman rides the handsomest animal in the town, Miss Bessie. I'm a great admirer of handsome animals, Mr. Forcus."

"Is that so? Really?" said Reggie, supremely indifferent. He had no objection whatever to make the acquaintance of old Boult, the linen-draper—although, of course, that difference between a successful draper and a successful brewer which Mr. Boult was incapable of discerning was quite clear to him—but he was not in the least interested in him; and what should the old fellow know about a horse?

"Isn't Deleah at home to-day? I thought I should have caught Deleah. That is why I dropped in on the Sunday."

Deleah was out walking with Franky, Mrs. Day told him, thankful that Bessie, who had slipped away with a view to the adjustment of the disarranged chignon, was not present to hear that explanation.

"I meet Deleah sometimes as she comes home from school," the young man artlessly continued. "I dare say she's told you I sometimes meet her?"

No, Mrs. Day did not remember hearing Deleah mention that interesting fact.

"No harm in that, I suppose, Mrs. Day? You don't object, if Deleah doesn't?"

"Harm?" repeated Mrs. Day, only half conscious of what was said, thinking of Bernard going wretchedly about his hated work with a "sharp watch" set on his doings.

"I mean I wouldn't do anything to annoy you or Deleah—"

It was a relief that at that moment Bessie descended, her hair in order, a look of pleasant excitement on her plump face. No one need half-heartedly try to carry on a conversation with Reggie when once Bessie was present to monopolise him.

And then Deleah and Franky, their cheeks rosy from exercise, appeared.
Franky went to his mother and climbed on her lap, and Deleah sat close to
her side, a little too apparently, perhaps, leaving the young man and
Bessie to carry on their sparkling conversation uninterrupted.

When Emily came in, to lay the tea-table, the two men got up to go. "Mama, Reggie will stay if you ask him," Bessie said. How triumphant she felt, how her eyes sparkled when Reggie said at once he should like to—rather!

"And Mr. Boult will stay to tea too, mama," Deleah said quickly. She did not need the heavy silence which fell to tell she had offended; not Bessie's warning scowl, nor her mother's piteous look of appeal. As no one seconded the invitation, "Do stay," Deleah said. And he gracefully yielded.

"Since you are so polite, I don't mind if I do," he said. He really felt honoured by the invitation, the first he had ever received in that house. The long low-ceilinged sitting-room above the grocer's shop was tenanted by ladies of whom in days gone by he had felt a certain awe. Down in the world as they were now, he never forgot that ancient attitude of theirs. Even when he bullied Mrs. Day, and advised her daughters to do the work of servants, he had not forgotten. Perhaps at such times he remembered it more than ever.

His wife, dead for the last seven years, had been of a different make from these women. Finding nothing in himself to debar him from being an ornament in any society, he saw very well that the late Mrs. George Boult had been, as he put it, "of another kidney." He had been fairly content with her while he had her; she had been a good housekeeper; and had not crossed him in his wish to save money; but looking back upon the poor woman, he saw plainly that she had not the appearance of these ladies, nor had she spoken like them, nor possessed the ways of them. She had been all very well for his then condition, but times had changed for him; and here he was, well pleased to be sitting at the board of people who would not at one time have received the late Mrs. Boult under their roof, on terms of equality with Sir Francis Forcus's brother!

He was a rich man himself, and going, he would see to it, to be richer, but the income of the Forcuses he knew was perhaps seven times as much as his own; and he was one of that large body of good sort of people who love to be in the society of men richer than themselves.

"We so much enjoyed the concert, Mr. Boult," Deleah said to him.

"The concert?" Mr. Boult repeated. He wished to talk to Bessie, having it on his conscience to advise her to do without a servant, and he did not feel called upon to exert himself "to do the polite," as he phrased it, to the younger girl.

"Some kind friend sent us stalls for the concert," explained Deleah, flushing. "It was so kind of the unknown person, and such a delightful treat."

"Stalls? The half-guinea places, do you mean?" There was astonished disapproval in eyes and voice.

"Wasn't it sweet of Someone?" Deleah went on, bent on expressing her gratitude to the shy donor. "It was the same Someone, I suppose, who sent the lilies-of-the-valley, yesterday, and my darling canary; look! It is Someone to whom we can never be grateful enough!"

"Better keep your gratitude for the more substantial benefits you have all received." He was thinking, Mrs. Day knew, of the fifty pounds which had headed the subscription-list. "Lilies were sixpence the bunch in the market yesterday."

"But it isn't the cost," Deleah explained; her face was rose-red with her effort to say that which she had determined should be said to the man they all disliked, but who was showing himself by the thoughtful little attentions to which she alluded, in his true colours. "It isn't the cost alone, it is the kind thought for which we are so grateful."

"Oh, come, Deleah!" Reggie interrupted. "I offered you tickets, you remember, and you weren't a bit grateful for the kind thought. And as for the lilies, I dare say I could send you flowers every morning from the conservatories at home, if you'd care for them."

"I should not in the least care for them from your conservatories. Don't send them, Reggie, or we should have to send them back."

"Why, pray? Speak for yourself, please," Bessie cried. "If you've any flowers going begging I'm not above taking them, Reggie, remember."

"The flowers aren't mine," Reggie reminded her at once. "They grow there—tons of them—and no one to look at them now, but Francis and Ada. Yet, if I want to send a few to a girl there's questions asked, and a sickening fuss made. I order them from the nurseryman rather than have the fag of it."

"Well—?"

"Oh, all right. I'll order some for you, Bessie."

Then, when tea was all but finished, a step was heard upon the stairs, and presently Mr. Gibbon came in. At the sight of the other two men his face fell perceptibly. To him also the Sabbath was a precious time. The hour, especially, which brought the meal over which they need not hurry for any evening work; in the room made sweet with flowers; in the company of the three charming ladies; on the table the extra delicacies Emily always provided for the occasion.

Boult! Forcus! The two men whom, least on earth, he desired to see there.

"Hallo, Gibbon!" his chief said; and the man addressed felt in his bones that the tone was unmistakably that of the employer to the employed. "Been getting forward for to-morrow, I suppose?"

No, Gibbon said, he had not; and he spoke curtly, and kept his heavy head up, and drew his brows together, and was somewhat offensive in manner, in the effort to show he was not subservient. He bowed sulkily to Mr. Reginald Forcus, when Mrs. Day murmured that gentleman's name. The fact that the young man when he came of an age to take the third share which was to be his in the brewery would be rolling in money, was nothing to him, and he wished to show to all present it was not! At the concert he, who was ugly, and short, and poor, and of no account in the world, had had the best of the elegant young man with his fortune and the name which was one to conjure with in Brockenham. He had wrested Deleah from him, and pushed him on one side. He did not propose to smile amiably at him across the tea-table after that.

He was going to Lancashire to buy goods for his department to-morrow—he was absent there for four or five days every three weeks. This was his last evening of Paradise for a while; and the Serpent had entered there!

"You are late," Bessie rebuked him sweetly. "And you must wait for more tea to be made. Where have you been, pray? Give an account of yourself."

He had walked out five miles, he told her, to the garden of a friend who had a small conservatory. He had hoped to be rewarded with some flowers to return with, but had only been accorded the three roses he held in his hand.

"Very sweet of you to bring them for me, all the same," Bessie said, smiling graciously.

Gibbon was, however, shy or sullen this evening, for he seemed by no means anxious to relinquish the flowers; and when he did so he laid them between his plate and Deleah's, who promptly put them into Bessie's extended hand. When pinned in the bosom of her grey frock the flowers had a charming effect, to which she called the attention of all present.

"Aren't they sweet, mama! Mr. Boult, Reggie, aren't they simply sweet! And poor Mr. Gibbon to have walked so many miles for them!"

And so, at cross purposes, with heart-burnings and some bitterness of spirit, they got through their Sunday tea.

"It would have been delightful if you had not invited your old Scrooge," Bessie, who, at any rate, had thoroughly enjoyed herself, flung at her sister.