Читать книгу The Abbey Girls Again - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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“You’ll come, won’t you?”

“Of course she’ll come. We couldn’t go to the pictures without her. Six o’clock at the corner, all of you!”

“I can’t manage it before half-past,” and Biddy Devine hesitated. “I really ought not to come at all. It’s the third time this week, Doris. Poor old Mary won’t like it.”

“Oh, but she can’t stop you! You must have some fun, like everybody else. Be a sport, Biddy, and dodge her somehow!” said another of the girls, who were standing in a bunch at the door of a big commercial training college in the heart of London.

“Bring her, too,” suggested a girl who only knew Biddy slightly.

“My hat! She’d never go to the pictures!” laughed Doris. “She’s as old as St. Paul’s!”

“Can’t be, if she’s Biddy’s sister. Biddy’s only fifteen. Is she a step, Biddums?”

“No, she’s my whole sister. She’s the eldest and I’m the youngest. The three boys in between are abroad,” Biddy said. “She isn’t so fearfully old, but she’s settled down and doesn’t care about going out.”

“Awfully stodgy for you!” one of her friends said sympathetically. “But you must get round her this time, Biddy. For the boys are going to meet us, and you know they like you to come.”

Biddy knew it very well. She was pretty and good company, and a general favourite with this set into which she had drifted at the college, girls and boys alike. She knew her sister did not like her friends; but she argued that as they were all preparing for the same life, planning to be clerks or typists, she might as well find her companions among them at once.

But, reason as she might, an uncomfortable feeling remained, and as she climbed the long, bare stairs to their top flat Biddy was wondering if Mary would be very much upset to hear she wanted to go out again.

“It does leave her alone an awful lot!” she mused, as she went more and more slowly up the stairs. “I wonder she doesn’t make me stop in sometimes! I’d hate it if she did, but it’s queer that she doesn’t try it on. But I must have some fun; I’m only fifteen! Mary’s so awfully stodgy to live with!”

Then, perforce, she banished all such thoughts, and pushed open their door, which was standing ajar.

“Mary’s in before me to-night! I must have stayed talking longer than usual.”

The one who reached home first was expected to put the kettle on the gas ring and begin preparations for tea, so Biddy, putting away the latchkey she had had ready, entered hopefully, and was not disappointed. The kettle was singing, and Mary sat on the hearthrug making toast.

“Smells good!” Biddy sniffed happily. “Am I fearfully late, Mary, or are you early? I got talking with the rest, and you know what I’m like when that happens!”

“When doesn’t it happen?” Mary laughed a little. “You’re the biggest talker in London, I believe, Biddy. Come and finish this slice, and I’ll make the tea. I was just going to start without you.”

Biddy glanced at her as she curled up on the rug. “Anything nice happened? You look brightened up, somehow. Oh, is it those violets? Who gave them to you?”

Mary laughed again as she bent to fill the brown teapot from the kettle on the ring. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Well, I won’t tease. It was a girl who came into the office this afternoon. Sit in to the table, and I’ll tell you about her.”

“No, I’m going to sit here by the fire. We’ll put things on the floor. Tell me about the violet girl!”

“Such a pretty girl; such a happy girl!” Mary said wistfully. “She came in a little car, and brought some manuscripts; it’s a series of articles, written by her father, and I’m to type them. She asked to see the typist who would do the work, so Mrs. Taylor called me up, and Miss Robins—she’s the pretty girl—said I might take the work and look through it to-night, and her father would let me have some special instructions by to-morrow morning. She asked for my address, in case he wanted to post them to me, and left the papers for me to get used to the writing, she said.”

“But what about the violets?” Biddy demanded. “Everyone who floats in doesn’t give you flowers! At least, I’ve never heard of it before.”

“It’s not always done,” Mary agreed gravely. “Miss Robins was carrying these, and wearing some more. They smelt so sweetly that I had to look at them, and she said, ‘Aren’t they perfect? Would you like them?’ and she laughed and shoved the whole lot into my hands, and ran off. Wasn’t it kind?”

“What was she like? Dark or fair?”

“Oh, fair! Her hair was yellow, and cut short, all in curls, and she had the happiest blue eyes, and the sweetest mouth, as if she had laughed all her life.”

“What was she dressed in?” demanded Biddy.

“A furry cap and a big fur coat. Her frock was blue, but I couldn’t see much of it. There was something about the way she walked that fascinated me. She cheered up our dull office just by appearing in it to-day. Have you much to do to-night?”

Biddy coloured, but spoke up sturdily. “No, I’ve almost done. But the girls asked me to meet them and go to the pictures, and I said I would. I know you won’t like it, but I can’t let them down.”

“No, but you needn’t have promised!” Mary jerked, and bit her lip. “It’s the third time this week. Biddy, you must not! You must stop this. You think of nothing but the cinema.”

“I must do something!” Biddy urged resentfully. “I can’t stick here all evening! I’m not so fearfully keen on the pictures themselves; sometimes they’re silly, and I get sick of them. What do you want me to do?”

“You might darn your own stockings for once!” Mary retorted sharply. “Or mend your clothes. You leave it all to me, as if you were a baby!”

Biddy looked conscience-stricken. “I will do my own this time, truth and honour, I will! You put them on my bed, and I’ll do the lot. Not just at once, perhaps, but I will do them. You see, I simply must go to-night; they’re expecting me; and I’ve saved enough off my dinners and bus fares, so it won’t cost you anything. And to-morrow is Doris’s party; her birthday, you know. But I’ll sit at home and darn all Saturday evening; I promise you that! So you don’t really mind, do you?” she coaxed.

“Yes, I do mind!” Mary’s lips had been pursed ominously as she listened, and now she broke out indignantly, “You’ve no right to save off your food for silly things like the cinema! You ought to begin to think—you ought to see—you’re such a baby! But I can’t—I’m no use at bullying you”—she rose hastily, her lips trembling, and began to clear the table.

Biddy gave her a scared glance. Then she began to help silently.

Mary, with her back to her, was tidying the cupboard. She spoke hurriedly, “You’d better go off to your friends. Don’t be too late home. I’m sorry—it’s so stodgy at home. I suppose it’s my fault.”

Feeling intensely uncomfortable, but determined to go out, Biddy crept away, leaving her sister rummaging in biscuit tins with unusual energy. “She’ll have got over it by supper time! When she thinks about it, she’ll know I couldn’t stick there doing nothing all evening!” she said to herself, as she flung on cap and coat and ran down the long stone staircase.

Mary heard her go. With tightened lips, she carried away the tea things and washed them up, and tidied the little sitting-room. Then, sitting on a footstool by the gas fire, she took up the manuscript Jen Robins had brought and glanced through it. That was all she could do till the “further instructions” arrived. She put the papers away carefully, and took up a basket of mending.

Then she flung the stockings on to the table, and dropped again on her stool before the fire. All this, even the study of the manuscript, was shirking, holding at bay the thoughts which cried aloud for attention.

The biggest of all her problems was Biddy.

“Why did that happen to-night?” she asked herself brokenly. “Why am I such a failure? I can’t blame the child. If she finds home and me stodgy and dull, she will go out, of course. I can’t control her either. I can’t make her want to stay at home, and I can’t force her to stay against her will. She’s far more determined than I am.”

For a time she stared helplessly into the untroubled glowing asbestos. But there was no help there, no solution or hope for the future. The problem baffled Mary, as it had done before. This was not the first time she had been driven to face the question.

“It’s perhaps because Biddy was away at school so long. We’ve grown apart, and now I don’t know how to enter into her feelings as she needs me to do. I have tried! I’ll go on trying, but I don’t see that I’m to blame if I fail. I suppose I’m soft with her, but I’m made that way.”

She stifled the whisper of a long-suffering conscience, but an uneasy feeling of failure remained.

And then, all unconsciously—except for that restless whisper which tried to show her the truth—she answered her questions as they were answered every time. For, putting aside the thought of Biddy and her own failure, she took up the basket and settled to a long evening of stocking-darning, and promptly was lost to the outside world in an inner world of dreams.

It had happened so simply. She had a vivid imagination, inherited from her father. She had tried to write down her dreams, but he had told her plainly she was on the wrong lines and was producing nothing which could be published. To change all her way of thought, and become practical in her imagining, had been too difficult and troublesome. She had kept the dreams, but had kept them for herself alone. Whenever the outer world was dull, or when problems were too hard, Mary lapsed into her dream-world and was happy.