She remembered how bitterly Carne opposed the housing scheme. The complexity of life assailed her.
Without eagerness she began to open the envelopes. She was tired. The burden of life lay heavily on her shoulders. She looked across the room at Sybil, on her knees by the sofa wrapping a parcel. She thought: She should have married. How have I failed there? She was cut out to be a wife and mother. She sighed.
“Here’s a card from old Dr. Menzies. Have we sent anything?”
Below it was an envelope marked “Crown Hotel, Piccadilly,” and addressed to her in Carne’s stiff squarish writing.
She opened that, frowning a little because Carne was not a correspondent, and she was expecting to see him next day when Midge returned to spend Christmas with her father.
“DEAR MRS. BEDDOWS,” she read—” I am writing to ask another favour of you.” He was almost the only man who used the long old-fashioned “f ” for “s.” “I wonder if it would be very inconvenient to you to keep Midge on for Christmas? I know that she is very happy at Willow Lodge, and I fear that if she came to Maythorpe I could not give her the festive season which a child ought to have. Castle is very bad and things are not too good with me at present. I have been inquiring about accommodation here for my wife but have found nothing suitable.
“Your ever grateful friend,
“ROBT. CARNE”
It was the longest letter that he had ever written her.
“Things are not too good with me.” Ah, well she knew it. Maythorpe mortgaged and the bank impatient, Snaith eager to buy the farm—for a mental home; Castle dying, Muriel no better. Carne had said that he would stick at Maythorpe till he was forced off; he had said that he could last another year; but she knew that he had gone to Manchester to inquire about employment at a riding school there. He’s too old, her heart cried. He’s too old for that.
She remembered other Christmases at Maythorpe. Once in her childhood she had attended a dance there, when Robert’s grandfather was master. She remembered the great decorated kitchen, with holly hung from the rafters among the salt-rimed shrouded hams and puddings, a fiddler on the back stairs, and a feast of cake and fruit and pastries, wine and whisky. Always there had been carol-singing on the drive, the square hall blazing with lights and pennies for the children. Until this year Robert had kept up some pretension of festivity. Now no more. He had cut down the timber except round the house itself; the rooms were untenanted by guests; the glory had departed.
Her only comfort was that in his extremity he could turn to her. He trusted her.
She held his letter, her longing to help and comfort him surging over her. “Things are not too good with me.” It was the nearest approach to a complaint she had ever heard him make.
“Granny,” Peter broke into her reverie, “you’re wanted in the kitchen. The turkey’s too big for the tin.”
“Let me go,” Sybil began.
“No. I will.”
Rousing herself, glad of the need for action, she levered her weary body from the deep chair, and hurried off.
As usual, she found twenty details requiring her attention. Sybil might manage the housekeeping with competence and order, but the final word always was her mother’s. It was nearly half an hour before she returned. The afternoon was waning, and the hall was almost dark. From the dining-room came a burst of light and laughter. It seemed to her, as she opened the door, to be full of people. A clamour of voices greeted her. Midge’s shrill wild laugh, Peter’s cackling shout (his voice was breaking), Wendy’s glad guffaw, and another voice—deep and vibrating—Carne’s voice.
While her hands and tongue were busy in the kitchen, she had been thinking of him with such love and sorrow that this unexpected re-encounter shocked her almost as though she had met a ghost. She had been thinking of his lonely Christmas, picturing him in the empty dining-room, eating his dinner alone with Muriel’s portrait; she had been grieving over him, wondering what she could do to help him.
And now she saw him, seated by her fire, the centre of a delighted and boisterous uproar.
She could hardly believe her eyes.
He had brought his presents—a party dress of flowered silk for Midge, a hunting crop for Peter, a bracelet for Sybil, for Wendy a scarf of painted chiffon, for Jim, a tie-pin with a fox’s head, and for Willie a shagreen cigarette-box.
Midge saw her. “Granny, come in. Come in! Look what Daddy’s brought me!” She danced up and down, the rosy silk fluttering like a banner. Carne turned slowly and rose to greet her. Seen between those flushed excited faces his big dark figure seemed of other, different substance. He looks ill, she thought; he looks old. She began to reckon his age and decided that he must be fifty-three. He looks sixty. Oh, my dear, my poor one, what have they done to you?
“You’ve not come to fetch Midge away after all?” she asked.
He shook his head. The child sprang up and down.
“Oh, Granny, do say it suits me? Does it fit? Peter, don’t crush it!”
“Look at my crop, Gran.”
“And look at this lovely thing.” Sybil held out a round, freckled arm with the gold bangle clasped on to it. Watching Carne’s grave appreciation as he looked down at her pleasure, Emma Beddows thought, not for the first time—Oh, if he were free and could have married Sybil.
She moved towards him and began to inspect the presents. At first she thought he had gone crazy with extravagance. Then she began to recognise one by one the bracelet, the scarf, the cigarette-box. These were his things and Muriel’s. The former make-believe that she would return to use them was at an end.
“You’ll stay for tea?”
“No. I’ve got to get back. Castle’s bad to-night. I’ve promised to go round there.”
“Then you’ll have a drink? Get him one, Sybil.”
“No, thank you very much.”
“Did you ride over?”
“No. I’ve got Hicks with the trap. I don’t want to keep the horse waiting too long.”
“Then I’ll come to the door with you.”
On her return from the kitchen, she had forgotten to remove her apron. Passing the mirror in the hall she saw reflected her plump, sturdy, plebeian figure beside his tall one, and sighed, desiring the impossible—that she could be young and lovely and desirable, that she could comfort him in his adversity.
He said, “Is it really all right about Midge?”
“Perfect for us, but you’ll miss her.”
“I shall be all right.”
“Look here, why don’t you come and eat your dinner with us?”
“I’ve promised to stand by Mrs. Castle—”
“But . . .” she saw his resolution and changed the subject “How d’you think Midge is looking?”
“Splendid. This is the place for her. I—well—I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
She had opened the door. Its oblong was filled with the pale star-flecked radiance of the green evening sky. Hicks was leading his trap up and down the road outside the gate, its yellow lights crossing and turning beyond the dark laurel hedge. Carne leaned against the door-post. She saw fatigue in all his slow calm gestures.
“I’ve been talking to my solicitors this morning,” he said, “and I want to ask you a tremendous favour. Don’t answer now. Think it over. If anything happened to me, would you be Midge’s guardian?”
“But my dear boy! I’m seventy-two—old enough to be your mother.”
“I dare say. But you’re young enough in some ways to be my daughter,” he said, and she could hear in his voice rather than read on his face his friendly grin. “And I was nearly knocked down by a taxi in Manchester. It made me think of my latter end. If anything happened to me—the child would be rather lost. By the way, I’ve written to Sedgmire about Muriel.”
“Oh!”
Mrs. Beddows realised what that implied.
“If I died, I expect they’d look after Muriel. They always would have done—if I’d leave her alon
e.” He tossed his cigarette on to the path. “But Midge is a different matter. I don’t want those Harrogate people to handle her.”
“Quite.”
“She wouldn’t be any financial burden. I’ve kept up my insurance. Five thousand when I’m sixty or if I die before that. It’s hers, of course. Only, I want to be sure I’m not putting too much on you.”
“No—no. I love the child. I’d do anything . . .”
“I know you would. That’s just it. I exploit your goodness. I always have done.”
She could hardly breathe. Joy, release, triumph enfolded her.
“I don’t think you know how fond I am of you,” she said.
“Perhaps I do.”
Hicks had turned the horse again; the dog cart was approaching them, its lamps faint and small beside the great lights of the passing motor-cars. In another moment this little interlude of tenderness would be over.
“By the way,” he added, “that reminds me.” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and brought out a little box wrapped in tissue paper. “I brought a little present for you too.”
“For me?”
“Yes. I want you to have it. You will know why. Goodbye. Merry Christmas to you.”
He took her hand, smiled, then very gravely stooped and kissed her soft wrinkled cheek and was off, out of the gate. She heard him call to Hicks; she saw the moving lights stop still; he climbed into the cart; he shook the reins, then the hoofs were off again, trot-trotting away from her into the starlight.
She put her hand to her face and touched it gently. He had never kissed her before. She had not dreamed of it. With trembling hands she began to undo her Christmas present. The paper contained a small brown case lined with white velvet, and on the velvet lay the brooch, a spray of emeralds, diamonds and rubies, which he had bought for Muriel when Midge was born. He had slipped into the lid a little card on which he had written, “For Midge’s Granny, in gratitude.”
“I want you to have it,” he had said. “You will know why.” She knew why.
She had tried to give to Midge the protective love which her mother could not give. He had recognised her endeavour and was grateful. He had given her the brooch he bought for Muriel, and he had kissed her.
She knew now where she stood with him, and she was happy. Her jealousy and pain were taken from her. Whatever problems and griefs still lay before her—and she had no doubt, that they would still be many—she realised that her long years of patient loyalty and service had at least brought this difficult and strange relationship through to triumphant confidence and love.
2
Mr. Holly Brings Home a Christmas Present
IT WAS Christmas Eve, and the children had been wild with excitement. No matter how much Lydia might protest that she had nothing for them, they still persisted in believing that Christmas must be Christmas. Certainly, earlier in the afternoon Miss Beddows had driven round with a piece of beef, some oranges and crackers. Lydia would prepare a dinner with these for them to-morrow. “If Daisy had only made her coconut ice now—” Bert had said.
But of what use was Christmas?
Lydia sat by the oil stove in the outer room, too tired to move. She was facing a bitterness of disappointment which destroyed her. She wanted to go to bed and to sleep and never wake again. There was no hope in life; promises were treacherous; pleasure poisoned.
In the next room lay her sisters, Daisy, Kitty and Alice with the baby. Beside her on the bunk Lennie slept. Sometimes he ground his teeth and tossed his arms about. He had never been really well since he had measles.
Bert was spending Christmas with the Alcocks. They had accepted him now as Vi’s young man. He had got free. He talked of going to lodge in Kiplington, protesting that really it would be better for his family, since Mr. Holly was now on transitional benefit, “and if old Tadman gives me a rise they’ll only dock it off Dad’s allowance.” It sounded logical enough.
In any case, why should Bert stay there—among the squalor, the discomfort, the wretchedness of the railway coach? Lydia, groping for grievances, found justice. She was fond of her brother and could not see why his life should be spoiled as well as hers. But because she was intelligent enough to learn generosity, this did not mean that she was without resentment.
Why had she been born? she wondered, or if born, then why gifted with desires and abilities? She let her mind wander backwards through her short life. It seemed now to her that while her mother lived, she had known a period of perfect happiness. That rough ungainly figure, that sharp tongue, that vigour and impatience all presented themselves now before her memory as symbols of sheltering love and understanding. She had lost them—and lost them in such a way that her mother’s death mocked devotion and outraged loyal service. Lydia had tried to be good and loving and unselfish. She remembered her mother lying on the bunk, haggard and weeping. This was what came of love.
And Gertie was dead and Lennie always ailing. The baby, dragged up anyhow, was a little rat. Lydia hated it, refusing to give tenderness to what had killed her mother. Often she hoped that it might die, and feared her hope.
Her father had moments of jollity but no sense. He exasperated her as he had exasperated her mother. He would be coming in soon, wanting some cocoa, talkative, volatile, soft.
And these would be her companions now, for ever, since the Mitchells had left the Shacks and gone away. She had not liked Nancy Mitchell. A cat, if ever there was one, shrewish, nagging; but she was company.
“Don’t worry,” Miss Burton had said. “It’s all right, Lydia. We’ll find a way. Even if you have to lose one term, I won’t see you defeated. You know Alderman Astell? Well, he and three other aldermen and councillors are trying to get a new garden village built somewhere between Kingsport and Kiplington. If that happens, there’ll be work for your father, and you’ll be able to move into one of the new houses, and then there’ll be neighbours to come in and do the cooking and look after the baby. Even before that, we may get a woman out from Maythorpe.”
But there was no woman in Maythorpe willing to undertake the responsibility of the Shacks. Chrissie Beachall was more and more occupied at the Nag’s Head, where Lily Sawdon was now almost completely bedridden. Mothers of young girls ripe for service disliked the idea of their daughters having to cope with the turbulent Holly children. “They’re no better than gipsies. They live “like pigs,” said the respectable villagers.
So Lydia believed in promises no longer. She had seen too much of life, death, birth and poverty. At sixteen a forlorn cynicism quenched her once robust vitality. The charm of beauty no longer could seduce her; she had ceased to hope for any better future.
The wind whistled round the railway coach, rattling the ill-fitting tin chimney. The children had made some attempt at Christmas decorations; hedge clippings from the evergreens at Maythorpe had been stuck behind the picture of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee over the bunk. A string of coloured paper streamers, made at school, hung from one side of the carriage to the other. In the sugar box which was cupboard and pantry, lay the joint, the tea, the sugar; but Lydia had piled the oranges in an old pudding basin. They looked pretty. She could see them now, in the dim yellowish glow of the oil lamp.
Before he left Bella Vista, Mr. Mitchell had given her his copy of Shakespeare’s complete works. But Lydia no longer found in reading a solace for her spirit. She wanted to pass examinations; she wanted to take her matric. History, chemistry, algebra, maths and Latin. . . . She could do all these things and essays too. English was easy. She wanted problems, formulæ, long tables and categories to master. Her young mind was hungry for facts and propositions and solutions. She enjoyed its power. She knew that she was clever. But something had broken in her spirit; that resilient gaiety would elate her no longer. The Mitchells’ desertion had finally defeated her.
For she was not quite sure just what had happened. Fred Mitchell was drawing public assistance. That was all right. Any one did that if they could. And Peggy had not had meas
les. Then somehow Mrs. Whitfield, who was Nancy Mitchell’s mother, had come down one day and seen Nancy at her work, feeding her dusty chickens, the baby crying, Peggy and Lennie playing in the pen together, and Allie and Kittie and Daisy coming home for their meal. And that had done it.
There had been a row, a monstrous row, between Fred Mitchell and his mother-in-law. It brought to an end Nancy’s half-hearted labours. Mrs. Whitfield swept her and Peggy back to her home in Grimsby. Fred Mitchell was left to close the house at the Shacks, and sell the chickens; a van came for the furniture, and three days ago she had seen him off, pedalling away on his push-bike, into the unknown. She did not know whither he had gone. But during the tornado of departure Lydia had learned that her family lived like pigs, that Nancy had been disgracefully put upon, that gentle, nervous, kindly Fred was a wife-murderer worse than Crippen, because he did it slowly, and that the Shacks was a place of dirt, disease and misery. No wonder every one despised her; no wonder Sarah Burton let her down.
Miss Burton had gone, it seemed, to Manchester. From there she had sent to Lydia a lovely but maddening Christmas present—a school satchel filled with writing blocks, fountain pen, rulers, compasses, and all other equipment for her school work. It had arrived the day before Christmas Eve, and Lydia, in a burst of sullen rage, had given it to her father. “Go on. Take it. I shan’t want it. I never shall go to school again. See if you can get a couple of shillings for it. Kitty must have some new shoes, and Daisy needs hers soling.”
Not love, but hatred, underlay that gesture. Lydia did not sacrifice Sarah’s present to her sisters. She hated her sisters and her schoolmistress, and cursed the present from Sarah as a mockery.
So Mr. Holly had gone off that afternoon to Kiplington. “Let him sell it. Let him sell it,” the child swore, her head on her fists, her matted unkempt hair falling over her wrists, her elbows on the table. I hate him. I hate every one. Oh, Mother, Mother!
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