Читать книгу The Spectral Bride - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Cold blows the wind, sweetheart,

Cold are the drops of rain;

The first true love that ever I had

In the green grove she was slain.

'Twas down in the garden-green, sweetheart,

Where you and I did walk,

The fairest flower that in the garden grew

Is withered to a stalk.

The stalk shall bear no leaves, sweetheart,

The flowers will ne'er return,

And since my true love is dead and gone,

What can I do but mourn?

A twelvemonth and a day being gone

The spirit arose and spoke,

My body is cold cold, sweetheart,

My breath smells heavy and strong.

And if you kiss my lily white lips,

Your time will not be long.

—Old Ballad. Collected by Robert Hunt.

"A PINK bonnet," said Mrs. Fenton, "a pink bonnet with long satin strings."

She smiled foolishly and looked vaguely out of the window while Adelaide held before her the fashionable headgear that provoked this comment. It certainly was a charming creation—"What the French term a 'chiffon,'" simpered Adelaide. "You have seen the plates in the Fashion de Paris, have you not, Mamma?"

"I don't think you've showed me the last number," replied Mrs. Fenton, without any change in her dull blank glance, "but it's a very pretty bonnet, dear, and must have been expensive, too. Yes, long, pink, satin ribbons and two rosy-coloured ostrich feathers, and a little wreath of velvet flowers inside the brim—most becoming for one of your complexion, too, Adelaide, my love."

"Do you think, Mamma, it is really becoming?" asked the girl eagerly. "I haven't tried it on yet, you know. It only arrived from the mantua makers this morning. Expensive, do you think it would be expensive, Mamma?"

"Well, I don't suppose it would cost less than five or six guineas, do you, my love?" Mrs. Fenton withdrew into placid complacency, folding her large hands upon her thick waist and gazing into the clear bright flames behind the polished steel bars of the grate. The kettle was steaming, the drowsy tabby cat was purring, and the atmosphere was one of good will and content.

The little parlour was clean and burnished, the prints of imaginary palaces showed in insipid inoffensiveness behind well-polished glass, the Staffordshire ornaments, black and white grinning dogs, black and white grinning ecclesiastics, were washed and lustrous on the narrow mantelshelf. The round table was set with a substantial meal, blue plates, narrow silver knives and forks, dough cakes, a brown loaf, a pat of pale butter, a jug of cream, and primly folded napkins.

Mrs. Fenton glanced around with a sudden flash of animation that was caused by satisfaction at her surroundings; everything she could do she had done, and well. Her domain was small, but it was specially kept; within the range of her own limitations nothing was lacking. She peered at the polished iron kettle, now beginning to hum, a fine kettle with a large convenient handle and a shining base squarely set on the clear coals; she peered at the neat tea-table on which no detail of comfortable service was lacking, and then again at her daughter, who was standing in the window-place holding up the rose-coloured bonnet, so fashionable, so neat, with the long streaming ribbons of flesh-coloured satin, with the rosy-coloured ostrich tips, with the lining of fine French gauze.

Mrs. Fenton gave a faint sigh and her eyes, so stupid in expression that it seemed there must be some slyness behind them, hovered towards the cardboard box on which was written the name of Miss Herle, the most fashionable mantua maker in Mullenbridge, to the countenance of her daughter, who was turning the bonnet about with a satisfied air.

"Who sent it to you, Adelaide?" she asked, as if the question was not one of great import.

"No, Mamma, I mustn't tell you that, it would be giving away a secret."

"Perhaps, if you've got any secrets, Adelaide, you'd better tell them to me." Mrs. Fenton's voice had a touch of shrewdness; she turned away from her daughter as she spoke. "Or to your father," she added flatly.

The girl laughed, a laugh that sank into a giggle and a simper.

"Father! He's been dead this twenty years!" Her look of cunning was transferred like lightning to Mrs. Fenton. The women exchanged a half-glance, as if they understood and condoned one another.

The girl returned the bonnet to the box with the silver paper and tied the strings neatly.

"I need a pelisse," she remarked, "of white or rose-coloured cloth to wear with that, and sandals, too. Don't you think it would be very becoming for me, Mamma, to be in white and rose-colour throughout?"

"Very becoming, indeed," assented Mrs. Fenton, in a drowsy tone. "And now, dear, it's time that you set the tray and took your father up his tea."

"Oh, it's Caroline's turn to take Father up his tea," replied the girl with a pout.

"Is it? I'd forgotten." Mrs. Fenton had a lazy, slumbrous air. "Anyway, you might do it, out of good nature, might you not? I suppose," again the slyness flashed into her look and tone, "you've nothing else to do?"

"I might go for a walk," remarked Adelaide, "in the woods." She lifted her chin and smiled into the window-pane as if she looked into a mirror.

Her mother contemplated her, but made no comment and turned again to the fire where the kettle was now humming briskly and lifted it, using a patchwork holder, to the hob.

"Well, you could make the tea, dear, at least, and take the scones out of the oven. The buns are all spread with jam and cream. I'm sure Susan has put everything ready—it's her day off, you know," Mrs. Fenton continued in a slightly apologetic tone, "or I should not have had to trouble you at all. Yet," she added with a sudden briskness, "you're a lazy girl and why shouldn't you do something?"

"Oh, Mother, I do a great deal, indeed I do! I write poems and paint pictures and read and—"

"Oh, and! and!" parried the mother, lazily. "Well, never mind! You're no use about the house, but you're a well-set-up girl and I suppose you will find a husband in time and that's all that any mother can expect."

"Is it?" asked Adelaide. "That seems to me a question! Do you know, Mother," she came to the table and almost automatically set out the tray for her bedridden father—plates, knife and fork, jug of cream, pot of jam, napkin, "a great many questions have come into my mind lately. I've been thinking about a number of matters."

"That's a mistake," announced Mrs. Fenton. "I've got on very well, and I'm fifty-five in a week or two, without ever thinking of anything. Don't think, Adelaide, just take things as they come."

"That's so dull, Mother," muttered the girl in a slow protest. "Take things as they come! Why should I? Why shouldn't I make things come the way I want them to be?"

"Nobody ever did that I heard of," answered Mrs. Fenton flatly. She leaned forward and raised the kettle by the small brilliant patchwork holder. "At least," she amended, "not since the days of the witches, who used to make spells and incantations, and who knows if one can believe in them or not? No, it's no use, Adelaide, one can't make things come the way one wants—just by wishing."

"Can't one?" asked the girl, quietly. "I wondered."

"Well, you stop wondering about nonsense like that and tell me where you got that bonnet," declared Mrs. Fenton. She rose, suddenly formidable, for she was a tall, heavy woman, well-dressed in her afternoon gown of black corded silk, with her cameo-brooch and gold chain and her banded iron-grey hair. "You tell me where you got that, my girl. Your father will want to know."

"Oh, Father!" Adelaide tossed her head and then checked the gesture as if she realized it was not lady-like.

"Yes, you may mock like that, knowing that your father's been bedridden and no good to anyone for a long while. But he is your father and I can make him act like it if I choose."

The two women faced one another and Adelaide's strong hands tightened on the rim of the black tray with the painted bunch of flowers. The elder woman looked down at them as if she studied the well-formed white fingers, strong wrists, and firm knuckles.

"What are you trying to do, Adelaide?" she asked, in a lazy voice. "Get above your class, that's clear, but how?"

The girl hunched her plump shoulders.

"Oh, I don't know, Mother. It can be done, I suppose. I've got my methods."

"Have you?" the elder woman gave her a shrewd glance. "You read a lot of romances, don't you, some two or three at a time from the circulating library? I wonder sometimes if they don't—well, go to your head, like gin or spirits."

"I've never tasted gin or spirits," sneered Adelaide. "They ain't genteel."

"But those romances—it seems to me they are much the same. They give you dreams, I suppose, make you think things are like you want them to be, don't they?"

"Maybe they do and maybe they don't. But what's that matter, Mother? I'm a good girl, behaving myself, aren't I? Look—here's Father's tray all ready, and the kettle's boiling and you still waiting. Make the tea and I'll take it up to him."

"First you'll tell me where you got that pink bonnet," insisted Mrs. Fenton. "We've always been honest and respectable."

"And we're always going to be, I'm sure," simpered Adelaide: "Why shouldn't we be, indeed! Just because a gentleman chooses to make me a little present there's no reason why you should begin to talk like that. It shows ill-breeding, I declare it does, Mother."

Mrs. Fenton was baffled. She had touched on codes and standards that were unknown to her; she bit her lip, feeling her way. She was an ambitious woman who had always been sharp on her own advantage, but who had been early thwarted by a husband who had been always stupid, and finally a "hopeless," as she termed it, invalid. The small interest from Consols on which she lived had been no more than sufficient to keep the family of four people in that 'respectability' of which she had spoken; they were humble folk in a little way, who were able, in her own term, 'to hold their heads up among their neighbours,' but no more. She said they could claim, on her mother's side, some genteel descent, there was talk, if it was no more than talk, of 'coat armour gentry on the distaff side,' there were little affectations of gentility and the traditions that come from good descent.

But Thomas Fenton—there was no means of glossing this plain man's antecedents. He was no more than the chief clerk in a tea-merchant's business in the City, who had been pensioned-off in his fortieth year, owing to failing health, by the generous firm who had employed him and who since that date had lain in an upper room in his bed, or in his chair; a 'drooling half-wit' was his wife's secret definition of his condition.

Mrs. Fenton's ambitions, always suppressed, had died, it seemed, for lack of nourishment. She had acquiesced in her dull destiny, she had kept her tiny domain beyond reproach, correctly, she had educated her daughters on orthodox lines. Adelaide and Caroline had been sent to a boarding-school for gentlewomen, an establishment that the younger girl, aged sixteen years, had only lately left.

Mrs. Fenton had vaguely considered a finishing-school for both of the girls in Brussels, or possibly Paris, but the fees were not only expensive, but the scheme beyond her scope; she could not face the difficulties attendant on such a course of action. There was the foreign language for one obstacle, the foreign travel for another, the question of a chaperon or a companion, what one did and how one did it, in fact. She was a woman who had never made many friends among her own class, who were slightly afraid of her and altogether hostile to her, and who had never been accepted by those above her. She remained in a prim, and even sinister isolation, for she had not discovered her mind to anyone. Well-behaved, neatly dressed, well-built, with a locked face and closed lips, she went her way in the small town of Mullenbridge, neither listening to nor offering gossip. A woman not respected, for she was supposed to be mean and proud; not liked, for she was supposed to be hard and dull. But feared a little, for she had a curious, indefinable quality considered by her neighbours formidable. There was something, they said, when the subject of Mrs. Fenton arose (which was not very often), about her look, the way she turned her head, about even her silence, that was not at all agreeable but had indeed a certain menace.

The girls, Adelaide and Caroline, were sometimes discussed among these same neighbours. What was the queer mother intending to do with them? Surely they should be maids to some fine lady, since it might be conceded they were above waiting in an inn, bringing the coals into the warming-pan and showing the guests up to their chambers; yes, nice, genteel maids, perhaps, in a great establishment.

But there was no indication that Mrs. Fenton wanted to find such desirable posts for her daughters; no, indeed, she seemed to be endeavouring to give them an education far above their station, sending them to a boarding-school for the daughters of gentlemen, indeed! How did she find the money? Then the rumour went round that the conceited girls were, silly as this seemed, to enter some finishing-school. But they did not go.

Now, Adelaide must be nineteen, and she was at home, doing, as it seemed, nothing, except what could be covered by the loose phrase, 'helping her mother to look after her father.' And there was Caroline. She had left her school, when three years younger than her sister, and she also was idle at home. Could Mrs. Fenton indeed afford to keep these healthy girls loitering in a parlour? Had Mr. Fenton so handsome a pension, had Mrs. Fenton so reliable an income from Consols or some form of gilt-edged securities that these two young women could live like their betters? This would have been the course of the neighbour's comment had they been able to put it in such a coherent form.

But the Fentons gave no cause for offence, therefore no cause for definite gossip. People watched and grumbled, and a little wondered. And the point of all this spying, tattling, and criticizing was that Adelaide was extremely pretty and therefore the suspicion grew, especially in female minds, that Mrs. Fenton intended, in some devious ways, to exploit this feminine charm.

But how? Those who most keenly entered into this local problem could not answer this question. How could Adelaide Fenton, daughter of a bed-ridden clerk of a large tea merchant, hope to make anything of her graces which, if she had been able to obtain entry to the balls in the Assembly Rooms, if she had been of a quality to be received in the parties and dances of the neighbouring gentry, might have brought her some substantial return in the form of a good offer? Not, of course, from a gentleman, but from a yeoman farmer or possibly some upper servant like the butler to Lord Seagrove, for the privileged were permitted to attend these Assembly dances and balls, although not allowed any contact with the upper classes. A rope of red silk marked off the upper part of the rooms, where the nobility and gentry of the county met, from the lower portion, where the well-supported, the well-accounted-for, were allowed to render decorous homage.

The privilege of attending, even beyond the scarlet silken rope, these gatherings was one keenly striven for and one to which Mrs. Fenton and her daughters had never attained. How, then, asked the gossips, could that woman, however cool and managing she might be in her own secretive and humble way, hope to secure for her girls any marriage beyond that of a tailor's assistant, a young man from behind a haberdasher's counter, or, at worst, a farm labourer who might in time, with thrift and diligence, save enough to obtain a cottage of his own?

Thus the cogitations of the neighbours. Mrs. Fenton never discussed these possible speculations with her daughters. What people thought of her or what she thought of them was never the subject of her slow conversation; she remained closed, even secretive, and so did the girls when in her presence.

Even now, with this considerable excitement of the pink bonnet, with the glossy box of shining white cardboard between them, no keen or lively comment was offered by either woman.

The tray was ready; Mrs. Fenton flicked a speck of dust from the prim bunch of scarlet and green roses painted in the centre of the black lacquer.

"I'll take it up, Mother," smiled Adelaide.

She picked up the load of food with an air of grace and left the room, holding it as if it were an oblation to the gods, high and gallantly, with swift movements of the hips that the mother noted with a stealthy and perhaps an approving eye.

As the elder girl left the parlour the younger entered it from an inner door. She smiled at her mother, seated herself at the table, and proceeded to eat steadily, collecting with cool precision, scones, jam, cakes, bread, butter, tea, and cream. She was so absorbed in her gluttony that she paid no attention to her mother's glance that was over her obliquely but keenly.

Caroline was a well-favoured girl, plump and blonde, with a pure complexion and close ringlets of a bright brown hair that those who admired her might have termed gold. Her features were good but too small for the contours of her face; her figure, for her age, was over-well-formed.

Her mother noted these advantages and defects with a cool and appraising eye, then returned again to her rocking-chair by the fireside and stared with a steadfast eye at the kettle and the flame. No word was spoken between the girl and her mother and no sound was heard save the gentle footfalls of Adelaide on the stairs as she approached to the upper room; there was silence until she returned.

"How did you find your father, dear?" asked Mrs. Fenton, using her conventional tone for the conventional phrase.

"Father was the same as usual," replied Adelaide. "He said he liked the tea, enjoyed the cake, and next time could he have some more sugar, please."

Caroline glanced up at her sister, smiling with firmly curved lips, and asked: "Where did you get the bonnet, Adelaide?"

This seemed to be the question that the elder girl was expecting, for she gave a little sigh that might have been of satisfaction, touched the cardboard box and replied: "Oh, I don't suppose I should tell you, Carrie, should I? I think it's a secret. It's from a gentleman, you see, from an admirer."

The last words were echoed by the mother and the younger daughter: "From a gentleman! From an admirer!" Adelaide having a present from a gentleman, from an admirer...

"Well, why not?" simpered Adelaide. She sat down at the table and selected, daintily, a cake. "He is going to marry me, of course, Mother. I'll tell you all about it some day, but now it is a secret."

"A secret!" said Mrs. Fenton.

Caroline laughed rudely.

"It's a pretty bonnet," she commented. "Who is the gentleman that is going to marry you, Adelaide?"

"I can't tell you, it's a secret," repeated the elder girl, with a touch of sullenness. "You trust me, don't you, Mother?"

"Trust you? I don't know what you're talking about! You'll have to take these matters to your father. You've met a gentleman who's going to marry you and he's given you the present of a pink bonnet, and I'm to trust you. Well, well!" Mrs. Fenton rocked herself to and fro in her worn easy-chair. "Of course, you're a good girl, well brought up, Adelaide, and of nice behaviour, and always at home early in the afternoon, and you say your prayers and go to church. Well, well, a gentleman, and he's given you a pink bonnet and you're going to marry him."

"Don't tease, Mother," pouted Adelaide. "What I say is quite true."

"Is he rich?" sneered Carrie, putting more heavy cake to her mouth. "Will he take you away, perhaps to London or to Paris? Will he buy you any amount of fine clothes?"

"Will he give you a chance to make as good a match as he is himself, you mean, Carrie?" retorted Adelaide sharply. "No, I'm not going to answer any of your questions. It's a secret, a mystery, I mustn't say anything. But you can see for yourself—here's the bonnet!" She took it out of the box as she spoke and placed it on her well-shaped head, drawing, with tight, crisp strokes, the wide strings under her rounded chin.

She stood for a while with an air of ease, enjoying the admiration of her mother and sister. She was charming, tall and graceful in her gown of white dimity with tiny sprigs of roses that was well made and freshly laundered, with her fichu of clear muslin folded over her rounded bosom, and the fashionable bonnet, incongruous because it was of satin and designed to be worn with an elaborate afternoon pelisse, but very pretty, set gallantly and daintily upon her well-set head.

Adelaide was, in the opinion of her neighbours, a handsome girl, a delightful girl, or a charming girl; the adjectives varied according to the speakers.

She was slightly above the common size and very finely curved in shoulders, neck, arms, and bosom, with that rippling line of flesh and muscle that conveys a lively voluptuousness. The contours of her face were, like those of her sister, firm and freshly coloured; her lips and nostrils were deeply cut, her eyes, slightly deep-set, slightly near together, but bright and sparkling with red-gold lashes. Her rather coarse brown hair was abundant and lustrous. Indeed, she appeared to lack none of those charms and graces enjoyed by the favourites of Venus.

And the costly bonnet became her very well, her mother's nod said as much, Caroline's cool stare admitted as much. The girl glanced at herself in the mirror in the imitation tortoiseshell border that hung between the Staffordshire dogs on the mantelshelf, and thought as much to herself, a bonnet of rose-coloured satin with the white lining, with plumes with flowers, the bows tied under the chin...

"Fit for a gentlewoman," commented Caroline, with a sneer too subtle for her age.

"When I wear it I shall be a gentlewoman," retorted Adelaide with a teasing indifference.

She daintily removed the headgear, as if she had practised the gesture, with no hurry, no embarrassment; it was an elegant action gracefully performed.

"I wish you'd say who is the gentleman." Mrs. Fenton spoke in an easy abstracted murmur as if she addressed the fire.

"He will come to see you soon, Mother." Adelaide smiled in a self-satisfied manner as she swung the bonnet on her hand.

Caroline, wiping her lips on a thick napkin, asked: "Was it he you was walking with in the Folly Woods yesterday?"

"Well, if you saw me walking with a gentleman in the Folly Woods it was he. But what were you doing there, Miss—spying?"

"Now, now! Come, come!" scolded Mrs. Fenton, lazily. "Carrie's as much right in the Folly Woods as you, Adelaide. And you shouldn't either of you have been there alone."

"I wasn't alone, I was with a gentleman, the gentleman I'm going to marry. Don't question me any more, Mother. It's a splendid match and you may spoil everything yet. Look at this present! You can see how genteel the bonnet is! And I can show you other gifts, too. And see what I'm making for him."

She drew from the reticule that hung at her waist some handkerchiefs in which were initials embroidered in her own hair.

"See, I've been working these for him, and I am going to send them with a letter. Now, you must not ask me anything else."

Her voice dropped. "You trust me, do you not, Mother? I am not a silly girl, I listen to your good advice. Carrie, go and sit with Father. It is time he had his reading."

"He does not care about the reading," remarked Caroline, rising slowly and brushing the sugar from her fingers.

"Well, then," put in Mrs. Fenton sharply, "if you do not want to read to your father, you can remove the tea service, miss."

"I would sooner go upstairs," replied Carrie, with a hunch of her plump shoulders.

She left the room, closing the door noisily.

"Lazy and greedy," grumbled Adelaide. "Why won't she clear the tea things? That means I've got to do it, I suppose."

"Susan has one half-day out a month only," remarked Mrs. Fenton smoothly. "One of you must make the parlour tidy; you do not do much work. Look at your hands, how white and smooth they are. You do not even sew much, or starch, or goffer, or iron, do you, Adelaide?"

"No, neither does Carrie. You have brought us up to be ladies, haven't you, Mother?"

"To be ladies," Mrs. Fenton repeated the words. "What does that mean?—sitting on the settee in the best parlour and reading novels from the circulating library and thinking up lies, Adelaide?"

The girl returned her mother's steely look with a glance equally hard.

"I've never told you any lies, Mother."

"The bonnet, Adelaide, and the gentleman in the wood! I suppose now Carrie's upstairs we can speak freely."

"Perhaps she's listening at the door," suggested Adelaide. "Oh, no, she won't be. She knows that I've got sharp ears and I've heard her going upstairs and her steps overhead. She'll be sitting by her father reading Pilgrim's Progress or the Bible, what does it matter?"

"What, indeed!" sneered Adelaide. "As long as she is out of the way."

"Now, then, my girl—these lies, or—well, whatever you like to call 'em. Walking out with gentlemen, taking presents—That bonnet cost five guineas if it cost a halfpenny. I'll go to Miss Herle to-morrow, to find out the truth."

"The truth!" repeated Adelaide. "All Miss Herle knows is that the bonnet was ordered, that she made it for me and delivered it to me. And do you think she'll tell you who was responsible for that?"

"We're old friends."

"That don't mean she'll tell you what's against her interests." Adelaide moved to the table and slowly and reluctantly put the soiled china on the tray. "Mother, can't you let me alone? I know what I'm about. I've had a good education, I learnt something of the world at school from the other girls and their parents."

"Did you?" asked Mrs. Fenton, with an intense interest, looking over her shoulder. "Did you?"

"Yes. More than you ever learned when you were young, Mother. You were a farmer's daughter, weren't you, brought up in the country?"

"Yes," agreed the elder woman, stolidly. "Brought up to tell the truth and to be respectable."

"Brought up to marry Father and nurse him for twenty years, paralysed."

"Not brought up to that, miss. That was my fate, it overtook me. Look out that yours don't overtake you."

"I suppose it will. They teach you that in church, don't they?" replied the girl, sulkily. "Or what do they teach you? I'm sure I never listen either to the sermons or the prayers. I've got my own thoughts all the time. Fate, that's a queer word! Providence! What's it mean, Mother?"

"Don't ask me, Adelaide. My puzzle is just this, I suppose—that we're not gentlefolk and not servants, not even little tradespeople. I had the money when Father died to give you and Carrie a genteel education, but haven't had enough education myself to know if it's done you any good."

"You've got some sense, Mother."

"Sense! I don't know if that's going to help. I know what people think—that you two ought to be chambermaids at the 'Seagrove Arms,' or serving behind the haberdasher's counter. And so you ought, I suppose, if you'd been brought up the same as I was."

"Yes, Mother," said Adelaide slowly. "It is true you've not been able to give me any good advice; I've had to look about me for myself. Why not?"

"Why not, indeed."

"I've got no relations," continued Adelaide. "There's Aunt Martha, but she's far away and hasn't been to see us for three years, has she?"

"No, she hasn't, Adelaide. But I write to her—and she to me."

"And I suppose I've some cousins—Jenny and Anne, aren't they Uncle Simon's daughters?"

"Yes, but never you mind about them." Mrs. Fenton's tone was masterful. "No, never mind about them. I suppose they'll be servant girls, chambermaids—well, let it go. Their parents are dead. Your aunt did what she could—she runs a little farm."

"Why did you give us such a good education, Mother? What do you think we could do?"

"I suppose I was ambitious. I saw you was going to be pretty, both of you. I've nothing else to think of but you two, your father being like he is. And there was just enough money, we living quietly—"

"But you didn't think beyond that, what would happen when we'd had the education, been taught how to behave ourselves and come back here and nobody know us—too good for the little people and not good enough even for the people who are just the hangers-on of the big people."

"Don't talk like that, Adelaide. A fine bouncing girl like you—well, you've got the looks and the education."

"Do you think that's enough, Mother? This education you keep talking of?" asked Adelaide, as she took the piled tray out of the room; she returned quickly and lightly.

"Well, it seems to me if you've found a gentleman to walk in the woods with you and talk of marriage and give you a pink bonnet—" continued Mrs. Fenton.

"And other gifts besides." Adelaide suddenly slid her plump hand into the bosom of her thick white frock and pulled out a string of glittering pink paste that she cast on the table. "It's pretty, isn't it? You wouldn't get it in Mullenbridge."

And the girl snatched it up greedily, eagerly, to display it, and Mrs. Fenton's eyes flashed grey fire. It was a long time since she had seen so delicate and charming an ornament. She had her own necklets of jet and pinchbeck, her lockets and cameo brooches, her thick silver bracelets engraved with swallows and ivy; but this trifle was different; it was like the bonnet, rose-coloured; it glittered and gleamed, drops of pink backed with silver—sparkling—"like diamonds," said Mrs. Fenton at last.

"But not diamonds," corrected Adelaide quickly. "Paste, French paste, made in Paris. It shows sweetly on my neck, doesn't it?" she added eagerly, as she clasped the necklet round her white throat and looked at herself in the dim glass.

"How much did it cost?" asked Mrs. Fenton heavily.

"Oh, I don't know." Adelaide seemed again both sly and stupid. "One doesn't ask gentlemen how much their presents cost!"

"If he wants to marry you," said Mrs. Fenton, leaning forward and looking into the fire, "why don't he come forward and say so; why don't he see your father?"

"Would it be any use any gentleman coming to see Father? Besides, he's got his parents to think of—they wouldn't let him betroth himself until he's of age, and there's six months to wait. He's got to be prudent. Discreet, he calls it."

"Ah! Prudent! Discreet!" muttered Mrs. Fenton. "Meanwhile there's presents, walking in the Folly Woods— That's not what we'd have called prudent and discreet in my young days."

"You were a dairymaid, Mother, a farmer's daughter, and I've been brought up like a lady. I know how to manage these affairs."

"Do you?" Mrs. Fenton was half shrewd, half baffled. "It's a pretty bonnet," she added vaguely, "it's a pretty glittering string of pink stones."

"I'll read you some of his letters one day, Mother," conceded Adelaide. "Not now. I've got them upstairs."

"Oh, he sends you letters, does he? And how do you get them, my girl, without my knowing of it?"

"Oh, you thought you had me watched, didn't you, Mother?" Adelaide checked herself up as if conscious that a common note had come into her tone. "Well, I don't suppose you would understand. Sometimes he puts them in a hole in a tree in Folly Woods, in Seagrove Park."

"Oh, you go there, do you?"

"Yes, round the old Folly. That's where he leaves the messages for me, where I leave mine for him. To-morrow there's to be a ring—that's to show that he intends to marry me."

"He'd better see your father," insisted Mrs. Fenton sullenly. "Why don't you tell me his name? All this about his coming of age—"

"He has only a grandfather, and he's an old man, and there's lawyers to look after him, and a tutor who's a clergyman. My sweetheart's a boy not much older than I am and he loves me very much."

Mrs. Fenton was silent, she moved her lips as if conning over some reply, but it remained unuttered. Adelaide sighed and put the bonnet into the cardboard box with the silver paper.

"You'd like me to be a lady, wouldn't you, Mother? You'd like to see me with a great deal of money, with fine clothes and a carriage? You shall have some luxury, too, Mother. I'd see that you were well treated."

"And what would happen to your father?" asked Mrs. Fenton. "Twenty years he's been in bed. Doctor Barton said it might be another twenty— There's something to look forward to, Adelaide—another twenty years for your father there in bed, paralysed, an imbecile—"

"But he's not always imbecile. He often knows what he's talking about. Sometimes he can speak more sense than you or I, Mother. Well, if I'm a lady married to a great gentleman—"

"A great gentleman!" repeated Mrs. Fenton quickly.

"I said if I was a great lady married to a great gentleman," and Adelaide tossed her head, "I'd have someone to nurse Father so that you needn't have any trouble, Mother." She crossed over to the elder woman and put her arms round her neck. "Come, now help me!"

"Help you! You don't seem to want any help! You seem to have done well enough for yourself!"

"But I do, Mother, I do—Carrie is watching me. She's spiteful, jealous! of course she would be, wouldn't she?"

"Carrie's just as good-looking as you are, and I dare say will have just as much luck; it's only that she's three years younger."

"I know. I dare say she'll be prettier when she's my age. But now—well, Mother, she's watching me and you can see she does! And tell her what I say is true, and tell Father that I've got an admirer, a gentleman who wants to marry me, that he's sent me letters—oh, I can show you the letters—and that I'm making him handkerchiefs with his name embroidered on in my hair! Mother, you will, won't you? You see, it's difficult. It's a question of his guardian, his grandfather's consent, and the lawyers. He's got to be quiet for a while. But he loves me truly, indeed he does."

"I wonder, my girl, if you know what you're talking about?" asked Mrs. Fenton, putting her daughter aside.

"Oh, don't wonder, Mother; just trust me."

"He bought you the bonnet, a string of pink stones—"

"Only paste," sighed Adelaide, rising. "But one of these days he'll give me diamonds—a diamond ring and a diamond necklace, and diamonds in my hair, and even diamonds on my shoes, Mother."

"And what will there be for me?"

"Oh, anything you like, Mother; why not?"

"Why not, indeed! I've heard stories like these—they used to be called fairy tales in my time."

"Tell Father and Carrie it's true, please, please."

Mrs. Fenton rose and in her ungainly person there was a power that made the homely room drab and shrunken.

"I'll tell Carrie it's true, I'll tell anything you like to your father—it doesn't matter what I say to him—if you will let me known all about it yourself, Adelaide. So far you haven't told me anything, you know. It's only just tales. And now, to-day, the bonnet—"

"Yes, I'll tell you, Mother. He will come and see you, I'll take you where you can see him. You can watch us walking together. He often says: 'Dearest Adelaide, I must be presented to your mother! I admire her so much.'"

Mrs. Fenton's eyes flashed, but she did not reply to this, for the door opened and Carrie entered the room.

"I heard your step on the stair, my girl; creeping down, you were, trying to listen, but you stumbled on the last rod and so had to open the door and come in. Oh, I know all your tricks."

"Why should I want to listen?" asked Carrie sullenly. "There's nothing interesting being said. Oh, Adelaide, you've cleared the tea service away!"

"She's not washed up the china or the cutlery," said Mrs. Fenton. "It's all been left in there for Susan, and that'll mean trouble to-morrow. Never mind. Come here, Carrie. I've got a word to say to you. Has your father gone to sleep?"

"Yes, Father's asleep, the same as usual. When's Doctor Barton coming?" The girl glanced at the clock that had a pale, moonlike face on which were painted wreaths of blue flowers.

"You go upstairs, Adelaide," commanded Mrs. Fenton, and the girl obeyed at once, as if she responded, not to the mere words, but to some inner meaning conveyed by her mother.

Caroline picked up a copy of The Family Friend that lay in the window-place. "Don't look at that so scornfully," protested Mrs. Fenton. "I suppose it is worth twopence a month."

"Is it?" The girl, in flat accents, read out from the cover of the magazine that she held: "'All that is excellent and elevating in literature, happily mingled with all that is useful in life, while the price places it within the reach of all'—what does that mean, Mother?"

Mrs. Fenton's heavy face had a cloudy expression; she replied sullenly to what she knew to be a taunt.

"It is for ladies—you see what people who know say about it—"

Caroline read out in a high-pitched, expressionless voice from the letterpress inside the front cover of The Family Friends "'Thirty-two closely printed pages, price twopence monthly. It is emphatically a magazine for the family. Its pages present something for all, there is no member of the domestic circle forgotten, and no class of society overlooked. It is in itself a Gentleman's Magazine, a Lady's Magazine, a Mother's Magazine, a Youth's Magazine and a Child's Companion. It is, as its title correctly declares, a Magazine of Domestic Economy, Entertainment and Practical Science..."

"You are making a fool of me," put in Mrs. Fenton grimly. "Ladies ought to understand these things, and I've paid away good money, that my father earned hard, to have you educated as ladies."

Ignoring this, Caroline continued to read aloud. "'We have received it into our home circle with great pleasure, for it is not only a family visitor, but a family friend—it is a work especially adapted to cheer the happy fireside of home, and to aid the development of social affection.'"

"You know I can't understand that," protested Mrs. Fenton, sullenly.

"Why do you pay twopence a month for it?" asked Caroline. "You've no common sense."

"That's a way to talk to your mother! Just because I've brought you up above my own station in life! That is a magazine for gentlewomen; well, I wanted you both to be that. I've done my best."

"Your worst, I think."

"What is your meaning, Caroline?"

"Too late to explain now, Mother."

"Too late—and you sixteen years only, Caroline!"

"Never mind. I dare say it was too late before I was born—"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You don't want to—"

"Talk respectful, Caroline."

The girl turned her back on her mother and tossed over the pile of books that lay among the worn cushions. "Treasures in Needlework, Elegant Arts for Ladies, the Wives' Own Book of Cookery, and The Practical Housewife."

"Well, I bought them for you because I wanted you to be ladies," declared Mrs. Fenton defiantly.

"Ladies," emphasized Caroline. "Well, I suppose so—but what is this mystery about Adelaide; has that any connection with—genteel accomplishments?"

The mother replied obliquely.

"You've a sharp tongue, Carrie; it won't get you a rich husband—"

"Is there nothing else in the world worth having but rich husbands?"

"And you only sixteen! I don't know where you get it from! We were always respectable, God-fearing people—"

"The devil is more to be feared than God," smiled Carrie. "What can He do?"

"You wicked girl!" But Mrs. Fenton laughed slyly. "But to come to practical matters—Adelaide has a rich sweetheart—a gentleman. Your sister has been telling me about this admirer, this gentleman who gives her the presents," added Mrs. Fenton steadily. "It's true, Carrie, I know it's true. You are not to make jokes about it or to mention him. It's something important that's going to mean a great deal to all of us. It may be you'll get a good marriage out of it yourself. So hold your tongue, do you hear? Or I'll find means of making you."

Caroline did not reply to this threat. She was moving carelessly the pile of books in the window recess.

"Adelaide never looks at these," she remarked, "and they cost eight shillings and sixpence each."

"Well, you read them." Mrs. Fenton was defiant.

"The needlework and cooking, those are useful—but it is silly to try to make wax fruit, pictures in sand or bugle work."

"Adelaide did try—and the porcupine quill frames—and the seaweed pictures."

"There was a horrid mess, and a deal of money wasted," smiled Caroline. "Adelaide only tried because she thought it genteel and elegant—the same reasons as those you bought the books for."

"She was right. Ladies have those books and those accomplishments. I wish I had a pianoforte. Adelaide was clever at her music. Miss Fullam said—"

"Miss Fullam flattered you because she was charging too much for our schooling. That was a miserable place at Clapham, Mother. I wish you had not sent us there. I would rather have had the money. Besides the pupils weren't really ladies."

"They seemed so—and Mr. Bisset recommended the establishment."

"You don't know, Mother. I do, even going about Clapham a little, and once or twice to London. Mr. Bisset wanted to oblige Miss Fullam—he's her lawyer, too."

Mrs. Fenton looked startled for a second, then her face became again drab and dull.

"You don't speak correctly—after all I've spent on you—I do as well myself, just by listening to the Bissets, and to the gentry coming out of church—and—other ways."

"Adelaide reads too many silly books—she did at school; why do you allow her to join the circulating library?"

"Ladies read these tales. I've looked at them myself; there's no harm in them." Mrs. Fenton defended herself obstinately, then suddenly perceiving how she had been drawn from the important subject she had been discussing, she added sternly: "You're only sixteen, my girl, and pert; you keep your tongue between your teeth. I know that what your sister says is true."

Carrie was unimpressed; almost alarmed, her mother peered at her, and tried to follow up her advantage.

"Adelaide's love story is a secret, but it's true."

"I like mysteries and secrets," conceded Caroline. She glanced at the table now cleared of the cloths and dishes, took down her sewing basket from the side and began to wind up spools of tangled bright-coloured cottons.

"It's true," repeated Mrs. Fenton heavily.

The girl did not answer.

"You're to believe it's true, and you're not to tell anybody about it, do you understand?" continued her mother sternly. "It's a question of being careful for a little while, and then, as I say, all the good fortune that I hoped for when I gave you both the education of ladies will be yours."

Caroline picked over the cottons with her plump, smooth, white fingers.

"I don't think Adelaide's so very pretty," she remarked, reflectively, without spite or jealousy. "I've seen them walking in the woods," she added irrelevantly.

Her mother turned with a quickness surprising in one so heavily built.

"Seen who walking in the woods?" she demanded. "You said so—but I wondered."

"Why, Adelaide and the gentleman, the gentleman who gave her the pink bonnet. The woods by Seagrove Folly—you know. You said you knew everything, that it was true."

Mrs. Fenton was sullenly silent.

"I should tell her to be more careful, Mother, if it's a mystery or a secret. Other people might see them, might they not?"

"You're to mind what I tell you, and never bother about what others do."

Mrs. Fenton spoke clumsily, with the labouring attempts at elaboration of one who has been shocked and tries to delay action; she rose from her rocking-chair, moved the kettle farther back on the hob so that the jet of steam did not hiss so loudly, and went slowly out of the parlour leaving Caroline turning over her sewing materials.