Deleah Grows Up

It was Thursday afternoon: the day on which the shops of Brockenham closed at two. George Boult, who had taken to visiting Bridge Street on the Thursday half-holiday as well as the Sunday, must be expected this afternoon. One way or other Mrs. Day would have to answer that proposition of his which had filled her with such a misery of doubt.

Very little on his part had been said at the time of the offer. He would be the happier for a lady at the head of his table, he had said; she and her daughters wanted a home. Both were perhaps too old for sentiment, both were old enough to take what chance of happiness and comfort life still offered them. "Think it over, ma'am," he had said. "I'll look in on Thursday. I don't anticipate you'll have thought of a better plan."

She had not, unless to drown herself was a better plan.

She had no impulse to suicide, but was a woman of unlimited selflessness, who, believing that her death would make life easier to her children, would have gone to it without any fuss.

Sometimes, with little Franky, on a Sunday afternoon, she had walked by the side of the river where it ran away from the ugly black wharves upon its shores to the meadows where Franky loved to see the toads slip down through the weeds to the clear water, loved to get his boots wet in trying to catch the darting minnows in his hands, loved to gather the forget-me-nots, and river-mint, and ragged robin, to carry home to Deleah. She knew exactly the spot, where if she was only sure it would be best for Bessie, for Deleah, for poor, poor Bernard, she would slip down the shelving bank and go wading, wading in, till out of her depth and weighed down by her clothes she would sink out of sight, out of trouble, out of life. She had no illusions about the enfolding in the "cool and comforting arms of death." She knew quite well the horror of it, the choke, with the rank, foul-tasting river in her mouth, its weeds and offal winding her limbs. But that would pass, and she would be out of it. Far rather would she be dead at the bottom of the river than married to her benefactor, Mr. George Boult. If only she was sure it might be best for the children.

"I wonder what's to become of me while you're having your interesting interview with Scrooge?" Bessie said at dinner-time. "It's raining, so I can't go out for a walk."

"I am going for one," Mrs. Day said, having decided on that course at the instant of announcing the intention.

"But I thought Scrooge was coming?"

"I know. I can't see him. I really can't. You see him for me, Bessie."

"Really, mama, how absurd! Is the old man wanting to marry me? Are you to have the billing and cooing by proxy?"

There was no mistake about it, adversity had not improved Bessie; her mother had to admit to herself that she was even sometimes vulgar. "You might have spared me that, I think, Bessie," poor Mrs. Day said. She was deeply offended and hurt. She would not wait to finish her dinner, but went down into the shop and busied herself there till Mr. Pretty had put the shutters up. Then she dressed herself in the widow's bonnet she still wore, the shabby silk mantle with its deep border of crape, the black gloves so much the worse for wear, and saying no further word to Bessie went out.

"Of course I know where she's gone," said Bessie to Emily, her unfailing confidante. "To Franky's grave. It isn't the place to make her a lively companion when she comes back again; and it isn't very cheerful for me to have to sit at home and think of her there."

"'Tis mother-like, Miss Bessie." Franky's grave held attraction for Emily also, who visited it every Sunday of her life.

"Yes, but, Emily, oughtn't mama to think of me as well as of Franky? And I've no patience with her. I think she ought to make up her mind, and have done with it. Quite young girls, with all their lives before them, make marriages for money, why should she make such a fuss?"

"The young ones don't know what they're a-doing, perhaps; and your ma does," the sage Emily hazarded.

"And if the old man comes to-day what do you suppose I'm to say to him?"

"There never was a time yet when you didn't know what to say, Miss
Bessie."

"It's all very well. Why should I be mixed up in it? I shall just say nothing."

"Then he can sit and look at you, and that's what he likes."

Bessie's eyes glinted: "But if he likes it—and he has always acted as if he did—then why? why? why—?" She spread out the palms of her plump, white little hands, making the dramatic inquiry of Emily, who, with a black rag dipped in whitening, was polishing the "brights," as she called her tin and pewter ware.

"Ah," Emily said; "he's one of your cautious ones, Boult is. Them that are young and fascinatin' aren't the best of housekeepers, per'aps."

Bessie stood silent for a minute, watching the vigorous rubbing of a dish-cover. "You go and change your frock," Emily said, glancing up at her. "Put on that black-and-white muslin you look your nicest in—"

"I ought to wear all black for a year, Emily."

"You put on your black and white," coaxed Emily.

Mrs. Day went to Franky's grave as had been foretold, but went a long way round to it, going first for that walk by the river, which the child and she had been wont to take together. Finding that particular spot on the riverbank which had been so much in her thoughts since Mr. Boult had made his offer, she sat down there with the deliberate intention of deciding which course to take, out of the three open to her. To be turned, with her children, homeless and penniless upon the world; to become Boult's wife; to drown in the river.

An effort she made to keep her mind on these issues, but could only think, instead, of Franky. Not of Franky as he had played by the river, happily painted his pictures, rushed off noisily with the cutler's son to school, but of Franky sitting to eat his bread-and-butter and radishes, one spring afternoon, his plate on his knees, removed to a distance from the tea-table, because Bessie had declared that he smelt of putty.

It was an absurd little incident, forgotten until now, when it awoke in her memory to wring the mother's heart without almost intolerable pain. Banished! Not good enough to sit at the table with Bessie—her Franky, her baby, her angel boy! In her heart she knew the boy had not cared, that, a few tears shed, his meal was as welcome to him in one part of the room as the other. Yet that picture of him, sitting lonely, munching in his corner, beset her with pain too deep for tears; the little uncomplaining figure bitterly accused her, she was reproached by the reproachless eyes.

So she sat by the river and cried there, unable to turn her mind to the living children; to Bessie, so hard at times, but only because she was unawakened, did not understand; to pretty, pretty Deleah with her innocent allurements, her winning ways; to Bernard, who had written in his last miserable letter from India that he loved her best in the world. Of these she thought not at all; but only of the child eating his radishes in the corner, looking solemnly at her out of his big dark eyes.

He called her from his grave, and presently she got up and went there.

Deleah, dropped by the Forcus carriage at the private door in Bridge
Street, went running up the stairs, and into the sitting-room. Bessie and
Mr. Boult, sitting side by side on the sofa in that apartment, flew rather
violently apart at the interruption of her entrance.

"Well, Deleah! What a way to dash into the room!" Bessie said; a flurried Bessie with red cheeks, bursting into a scolding tone, to cover evident embarrassment.

"Where is mama?" Deleah, gasping with astonishment, got out; and Bessie, in the flurry and perturbation of the moment, flung at her the sisterly advice to find out.

Deleah, pale of face, eyes staring, gazed speechless from Bessie on the sofa, in the black-and-white muslin recommended by Emily, to Mr. Boult, now engaged in peering with sudden interest into the street. Then, shutting the door hastily upon the pair, she went to Emily, in the kitchen.

"How long has Mr. Boult been here?"

Emily had not looked at the clock.

"Is he going to stay to tea?"

Emily would set an extra cup, on the chance of it. "You'd best go and find your ma, Miss Deleah; she's gone to the cemetery, and have no right to be there alone."

"I am going; and, Emily, I won't come into the house any more while that man is there; and mama shall not."

"Now you're going to make a heap of fuss!" the worried Emily said. "I never see sech goin's on as we get nowadays. No peace anywhere."

"I'm not making any fuss. Only, you must tell Bessie to get rid of Mr.
Boult before we come home."

He did not go till Bessie, plump and attractive, a pink rose in her bosom, had poured out tea for him, but he had been gone half an hour when the mother and daughter returned. Mrs. Day, fagged with her long walk, was comforted by the holding of Deleah's warm young arm, strengthened by Deleah's brave talk. There would be another hard fight, but Deleah would not go away any more, they would fight together.

"We can live on almost nothing, mama—you and I."

There would be Bessie, her mother reminded her; but Deleah seemed indisposed to take Bessie into her calculations. She unfolded her scheme of the little house and the little school of quite little children such as she could teach.

"We shall be far happier than we have ever been in the shop. Some eggs and milk for you and me, and now and then a little butcher's meat for Emily. What will it cost! Surely we can manage that, mama."

"You are forgetting that there is Mr. Boult to settle with. That horrible proposition of his must be somehow answered, Deleah."

"We will answer it to-night. I will help you to write the letter," Deleah promised.

They wrote it between them, after Bessie had gone to bed, whither she quickly repaired upon their return. The composition was mostly Deleah's, and when finished it ran—

"I did not feel equal to an interview with you, and I am sure you will excuse my having failed to keep the appointment. On thinking the matter over I have decided that the arrangement you proposed to me the other day is a quite unsuitable one, and I therefore write to decline. Having had time for reflection, I have no doubt that you agree in the wisdom of this decision."

"That is all, mama."

"My dear, no! It is so very cold."

"Well, we feel cold—you and I."

"But we must not forget what he did for us. We must always be grateful."

"I know. Mama, I am so tired of being grateful." Mrs. Day sighed; she was tired of it too, truth to tell. "He is always throwing what he has done in our faces, rubbing it into our skins. It is our gratitude which has made him so detestable."

"It was kind of him to give that fifty pounds, and—"

"We will pay him back. We will pay him back to the last farthing, mama. Sir Francis Forcus is my friend; he said he would be; I will go to him, and ask his advice. Only I hate—I hate to bother him."

"Then, let us try to muddle on alone."

"No. I am sure he would wish me." She waited, head on hand as she sat at the table, looking down at, but not seeing the letter she had written for her mother to copy. "He is such a sad man, mama," she said presently. "He still grieves, and grieves, and grieves, for his wife."

"But he was kind to you, Deleah?"

"Yes. When he remembered. When he knew I was there. He loved her so much. Miss Forcus has been telling me how he loved her. She was so beautiful, so grand in manner and appearance, with such a fine character, so great and good. There is a lovely monument to her in Cashelthrope churchyard. I went to look at it this morning, after Miss Forcus had been speaking of her. A white marble angel with a heavenly face stands above the grave looking upwards, a lily in her hand. Do you know what I felt, mama. I felt I would die if I could give her back to him."

"Deleah!"

"I would," Deleah said, quite pale, and with a lip that trembled; "I would die gladly if that could bring her back to him, and make him happy again."

Mrs. Day looked at her daughter with a rather startled attention, and
Deleah, glancing up, and catching her mother's eye, smiled brightly.
"Come, now let us send off this letter," she said.

When it was ready she ran down with it, herself, to the red pillar-box, opposite the shop-door. "That matter is done with," she said as the letter disappeared within the box, and she turned to re-enter. The light from the street lamp fell on her mother's name, black letters on a white ground, above the shop door. "Lydia Day, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." "And all that is nearly done with," she added, "and whatever happens I am not sorry."

She felt curiously strong and capable; competent to work her way, afraid of no difficulties. "It is more than time I should grow up, and at last, I have done so," she said to herself. She went through the badly-lit little passage, and up the steep narrow stairs, with shoulders braced and head up. It was the having made, that day, a decision every worldly-wise person would have condemned, but that she felt in every fibre of her being to be a right one, which had given her that feeling of confidence in herself she had hitherto lacked. She had chosen between comfort, luxury, the approval and adulation of the world, with Reggie Forcus, and the hard up-hill fight for bare existence, with liberty and her own self-respect; and choosing, as she knew, well, she had felt herself to have grown in mental and spiritual stature.

"What has happened to me?" she asked of herself. "I feel like going out to fight battles, to-night."

"Mama," she said, going back into the sitting-room where her mother awaited her, "behold I am not a child any longer. I am grown up."