Читать книгу The Other Man - Mary Gaunt - Страница 5

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All their lives Ruth and Dorothy Grant had been accustomed to comfort, not to say luxury, for their father had been in the Government service, had received a good income, and had spent it lavishly, and the girls had wanted for nothing. Unfortunately, Thomas Grant had made very little provision for his daughters' future, and when he died, a month before my story opens, the two girls found that all they had in the world only amounted to £60 a year. Sixty pounds a year is hardly enough for two young ladies accustomed to every luxury to live upon, and the two Miss Grants began to look about them, and to wonder if they could not possibly turn their expensive education to good account. Then came Mr. Grant, of Kooringa's offer, a kindly offer, couched in the kindliest terms. Blood was thicker than water, he wrote; his cousin Tom had been his nearest of kin, and he would be only too delighted to give his children a home. His household was a large one. They would find brothers and sisters in his children, a mother and father, he hoped, in his wife and himself. Two lonely girls could not live in Melbourne by themselves; would they come?

And Ruth had accepted gratefully. She had never seen this cousin, did not know any of the Kooringa Grants, but she accepted his offer gratefully, and this bitter dreary day in June saw them arrive at their new home.

It was depressing, certainly. Put as brave a face upon it as she would she could not but sympathise with her sister's tears. If this evening was to be taken as a sample of their future life she wondered how indeed they were to manage to exist. She looked round the room, dimly illumined by the one candle. It was not badly furnished, and yet over the whole there was a comfortlessness that was painfully evident. To begin with, the floor was covered with Indian matting, which, though it is perhaps better than the bare boards, is certainly cold and cheerless in the depth of winter; the bed was hung with most funereal curtains; the looking glass, perched high on a chest of drawers—for there was no dressing-table—had lost one of its supports, and was propped up on that side by a pile of tracts and a hair-brush that had seen better days; a hard sofa stood in the window, and in the opposite corner was a broken-down child's cot, which had apparently seen good service and was now passing a serene old age as a receptacle for the superfluous family bedding. The fireplace was filled with faded bracken which crumbled at a touch, and the walls were adorned in lieu of pictures with familiar and well-worn texts, picked out in all the colours of the rainbow.

Ruth poured some water into the basin. It was icy-cold, and she rubbed her hands hard with the stiff coarse towel to try and restore animation to her frozen fingers, but she only hurt them, and there was a lump in her throat as she stood gazing out of the curtainless window into the dreary night. Away in the distance faintly gleamed a light—the light from the men's hut—and then it vanished. Was it the rain outside that shut it out, or the tears that filled her own eyes? She put up her hand and brushed away those tears determinedly and defiantly. She was no mere girl, she told herself, to break down and weakly cry just because she was cold and uncomfortable. Dolly might do it, but then Dolly was only a girl still, though she was but a year younger than the elder sister, who had cared for and loved and shielded her all through their motherless lives. She crossed over to the bed and put her hand on her sister's shoulder.

"Dolly, Dolly, dear, don't cry so."

Dolly lifted up her tear-stained face.

"Well, Ruth, isn't it wretched?"

"Yes, dear, but don't cry—please don't cry, or you'll make me cry, too."

"Can we live here?" her sister asked, sitting up on the bed and putting the question with desperate earnestness.

"Dear, we'll have to. What else can we do? What in the wide world is there for two girls like us to do?"

"Other girls earn their own livings, and and—we have £60 a year between us."

Ruth knelt down by her sister's side, and put her arm round her waist.

"And we have spent more than that on our clothes alone—much more. Just look at these furs. Besides, how do girls earn their living? Governessing, I suppose, is about the only thing we could do. And what sort of governesses should we make? I couldn't teach—I couldn't—I'm sure I couldn't. I wonder am I worth £20 a year to anybody. Oh, and Dolly, you don't want to part from me, do you?"

Dolly put a caressing hand on her sister's shoulder, and lifted up her face to be kissed.

"No, dearie, no, we couldn't part, could we? We've always been such mates. Better dependence—humiliating dependence—and the Grants than to be parted altogether," and she emphasised her decision with another kiss.

"Yes, dear, yes."

"You know," she went on, cheering up, as Dolly always did after she'd had a good cry and thoroughly ventilated her grievance, "after all, we always made our own happiness. The house was comfortable, and we had plenty of good things to eat and plenty of clothes, but there was Dad—and, well Dad wasn't a model father."

"Hush, Dolly."

"I won't hush. You always hush me when I talk about it, but was he a model father, now?"

"Plenty of clothes, plenty of good things to eat, and a comfortable home," repeated Ruth; "well, really, Dolly——"

"I didn't say a comfortable home. I said house—most emphatically house—house—house. Home is quite another thing. I don't think we had a comfortable home. Seriously now, Ruth, do you miss father?"

Ruth hung her head.

"Well—perhaps—not as——"

"There, I knew it," said Dolly, getting quite cheerful and triumphant. "How could you possibly. Did he ever in his life speak a solitary word to us if he could help himself? Did he love us, do you think?"

"I suppose so."

"He had a funny sort of way of showing it. Do other fathers shut their daughters up, I wonder, and not let them have a single friend—man, woman, or child. Do other fathers never address a word to their daughters unless it is to growl at something that has gone wrong that is as much their fault as the man in the moon's?"

"Oh, Dolly, don't talk like that."

"Well, but it's true. And it is cruel, whatever you may say, to bring us up in luxury all our lives and then turn us adrift with barely enough to keep body and soul together."

"He was our father."

"So he was; so I won't say anything more about him; but, oh, Ruth! his relations are worse than himself. However are we to live in this awful hole? At least, Dad was a gentleman; but Ann, and Mrs. Grant, and those children—Ruth, aren't they just awful?"

"I wonder did we expect too much," pondered Ruth. "Perhaps we have seen so little of the world. Perhaps they wouldn't strike other people as strangely as they do us."

"H'm; I don't know. They're awfully pious, aren't they? How'll you and I get on with a pious family, Ruth, when Scripture and manners were entirely left out of our education? What do you suppose we'll be expected to do?"

"Help in the Lord's work by teaching in Sabbath-school," quoted Ruth. "At least, that's what Ann told me on our way here."

"What a prospect. But I'm hungry. What time's dinner!"

"Dinner? Tea, you mean. It's a movable feast, I believe, held some time between six and eight. Come now, Dolly, since we've decided to make the best of it, suppose you take off your things, brush your hair, and let's go and be introduced to our new family."

Five minutes later the two girls stood timidly before a fast-closed door, and Ruth raised her hand and knocked.

"It mightn't be the right room after all," she said. "I'd better knock."

"Come in," said someone from the inside, "Come in," and they pushed open the door and entered.

The dining-room at Kooringa was a long low room crowded with furniture. No one would have dreamt of calling it a handsome room, though some of the furniture had evidently cost money. It was not even a cosy room, for the linoleum which covered the floor was a very poor substitute for a carpet, and the blindless windows, over which it had occurred to no one to draw the curtains, let in the dreary night, and made the room seem cold and comfortless, even though there was a roaring fire on the hearth. At the first glance Ruth decided that never in all her life had she seen such an untidy room, but she had no time to look round, for a grizzled rough old man struggled up out of a shabby arm-chair as they entered, and greeted them kindly enough.

"Well, my girls," and it struck her at once that his accent was not that of an educated man; it was so different from her father's cultivated tones, "Well, my girls; welcome to Kooringa. Take a seat now and warm yourselves till tea's ready."

They drew up two cane chairs to the fire, and while he asked Dolly questions about their journey, Ruth took stock of the room. A long dining-table ran down the middle of it, covered with a course white cloth roughly laid for tea. A common earthenware flower pot turned upside down formed a stand for a kerosene lamp, which smelt so abominably she found herself wondering if her new relatives could possibly have any noses, and round this were ranged tumblers of various sorts and sizes, which did duty as jam pots. The cutlery, crockery, and plate were all of the plainest, commonest description, and the table lacked those adornments in the way of flowers which she had always considered necessary additions to a meal. At the further end of the room, blocking a window, stood a handsomely carved American organ, the top of which was covered with cheap Bibles and hymn books piled up in the most hopeless disorder and overflowing on to an old horsehair sofa, out of which the stuffing was protruding. There were two bookcases in the room, but the upper halves were carefully locked, while the lower were stuffed so full of papers, principally, it seemed, tracts, that they, too, overflowed on to the floor. Indeed, the Grant family seemed to have a difficulty in stowing away their numerous possessions. The sideboard and the dinner-waggon were so laden with entirely foreign material that they themselves were hardly distinguishable, but the mantel-shelf was first favourite. Each member of the family had apparently put something down there, till now there was not an available square inch of room.

A clock stood in the middle—a handsome bronze clock which ticked away busily—but something hand gone wrong with the hands, and they both hung down together, hopelessly pointing to half-past 6. Two candlesticks in the form of mailed warriors stood at each end, but one had been temporarily extinguished by a child's sun bonnet, and the other, being broken somewhere about his middle, leaned drunkenly against the wall in a manner hardly in keeping with the ferocious expression of his countenance. Besides these three articles it was difficult to say what there was not on that mantelpiece. Packets of letters supported the clock on either hand and protruded from behind it; on top was a small white jar containing about a teaspoonful of honey and a large medicine bottle marked "Lotion" and "Poison." There were three or four other medicine bottles at intervals on the shelf, mostly half empty and corkless. There were two or three half-finished socks with knitting needles attached, an old slipper, evidently belonging to Mr. Grant and in the last stages of decrepitude, two odd children's shoes, a half-empty pot of marmalade, a crust of bread and half a jam turnover, three candle ends, four skeins of mending cotton, a reel of thread, a slouch hat, a pair of broken shears, a rusty spur, a pot of vaseline, several crumpled newspapers, and various other odds and ends, such as broken shoelaces and discarded hair ribbons. There were no pictures on the walls, and the only pretence at adorning them and breaking the monotony of the bare plaster was a large framed text over the fireplace, "God Bless Our Home."

"Want your tea, my girl, eh?" said Mr. Grant. "Well, hold on a bit. We're only waiting till the others come in."

"Out on such a day as this," murmured Ruth.

"A prayer meeting and mothers' meeting at Dog Leg Gully," said Mr. Grant. "We never neglect the Lord's work. I pray we never may."

A moment later "the others" came in. Two women wrapped up in wet woollen shawls and the very muddiest ulsters Ruth had ever seen. One was a tall, strapping, buxom young woman, about her own age, and so like Ann it was hardly necessary her father should introduce her as his second daughter Lily. The other was a little shrivelled-up old maid of fifty, with an aquiline nose, and a sharp voice, whom Lily introduced as "our Auntie."

"Just an adopted auntie, you know," she added. "Her real name's Miss Kennedy. But we like her, and she likes us, and we're all so earnest in the same work, that she lives with us, and is our Auntie. Aren't you, dear?"

"Yes, and yours, too," said Miss Kennedy, bestowing on each girl a frozen peck, which Dolly afterwards declared nearly turned her to stone.

"Tea, tea, tea," said Mr. Grant, rapping with a knife-handle on the table to call attention to his wants. "We'll have tea now you've come."

"Oh, Cousin John——"

"Call me 'Uncle,' my girl. It sounds better."

"Oh, uncle," said Dolly, "I was only going to ask you not to hurry them for us. We can easily wait while they change their things."

"Change," said the florid Lily, somewhat contemptuously, "change, that's just one of your town notions. We don't spend much time on titivation here, I can tell you. We'll just slip out of our wet ulsters and we're ready. Ring the bell, Auntie."

Miss Kennedy seized an old cow bell, which was evidently past service in the field, and rang it as loud as it would ring. She and Lily slipped off their wet muddy outer garments and flung them on top of the Bibles and hymn books, just as Mrs. Grant, bearing a huge tray of scones, and followed by her numerous family, appeared on the scene.

"I've had no end of bother with these scones," she said somewhat fretfully. "Ann, where's a plate for them?"

"Oh, never mind," said Ann. "Here, clear a space and the tray'll do as well as anything else. Now children—children—don't make such a noise, but take your places quietly if you can. Children—children—what will your new cousins think of you?"

There were such an array of them—twelve in all—ranging from Will, a great hulking fellow of seventeen, who thought himself a man, down to the fairy-like little Vera, whom they had before noticed. Seven girls and five boys. Ruth wondered if she should be ever able to remember them all. All, with the exception of Vera, were like their two elder sisters, stolid, healthy-looking country children, two or three of whom were curiously unlike in features to their brothers and sisters.

"You see you have plenty of cousins, Ruth," said Mrs. Grant, smiling as her family shuffled into their seats, not without much wrangling and bickering.

"Yes, I had no idea, Aunt, you had so many children."

"Well, they're not all mine. You see, your uncle, he has views, and he don't approve of orphans. He thinks when all the world's true Christians there'll be none. They'll all be adopted into other families that can afford to keep them."

"And you ——, how good of you," murmured Ruth, hardly knowing what to say, and wondering if the adopted orphans minded being spoken about thus publicly.

"Good, oh, not at all," said Mrs. Grant, "four of these are adopted, and they're very good children, too, ar'n't you, Teddy?" and she laid her hand on the shoulder of a smiling, good-humoured black-eyed boy of thirteen.

Mr. Grant rapped the table again with his knife-handle.

"Mother, mother," he called out, as if his wife were somewhere out on the run and not at the opposite end of the table, "mother, mother, we want a blessing."

"Vera," said Mrs. Grant, "say grace."

This child, too, was evidently one of the adopted orphans, so different was she in face and figure from her brothers and sisters. As the youngest there she was called upon to say grace; but there was a mutinous expression upon the pretty little face, and she did not at once obey.

"Vera," repeated Mrs. Grant, "say grace."

"Don't like my tea," said Vera.

"What's that got to do with it, Sis?" asked Willie, bending over her kindly.

The child turned her face away.

"Don't like veal," she said again; "shan't say no grace," and though Mrs. Grant administered what she called a "good sound smack," Vera adhered to her determination. The principal dish on the table was a fore-quarter of cold boiled salt veal, and Dolly kicked her sister under the table in token that she was in perfect accord with her little cousin, and didn't like veal in that form either.

"Vera, you get no tea till you say your grace," said her mother.

"Don't want no tea—don't like it," protested Vera.

"Vera," said Ann, solemnly, unctuously Ruth though, "the Lord will never love little girls who are so wicked as not to thank Him for their good food."

"'Tain't good," protested Vera. "The Lord wouldn't like that veal for tea, I know."

Ruth and Dolly, trying to be grateful to their earthly benefactors for the unsavoury delicacies on their plates, thoroughly sympathised with the child, but it was evident no one else did, for "Vera" came in tones of varying degrees of horror from all round the table, and Mrs. Grant promptly swooped down on the offender, laid her across her knees, and administered condign punishment there and then with a very substantial slipper, taken off for the purpose. Then she placed the child on a chair, with her face to the window curtain, and returned to the table with the virtuous air of a woman who has done her duty.

"Vera is very strange just at present," she said, half-apologetically to Ruth, after she had poured out tea all round. "She has only been with us two months, and her father was a curiously careless man about some matters. However, in time I trust we shall bring her into the fold and make her one of the Lord's own little lambs."

"Shan't be a little lamb," said Vera, from her place of punishment; "I'se goin' to be a pwincess."

"Vera!"

"I is. My muvver was a pwincess, an' I'll be one, an' wear a white wilk dwess wif goldie thweads on it, an'——"

Vera's imagination was apparently good for another half-hour had not Ann left her seat and shaken her with truly Puritan vigour.

Mrs. Grant looked at her eldest daughter. The family might be very pious and given over to Christian works, but it was evident to the strangers that mother and daughter were not in accord.

"Come here, Vera," she said.

Ann let her go reluctantly.

"Vera, will you be good?"

The little maid pursed up her mouth and nodded.

Mrs. Grant lifted her up on to the high chair.

"Now, say your grace."

"Thank God, for all his mercies," said Vera, and accepted the cold veal without another word.