The white sugared cake was to be a surprise to Bessie:

"A little present from me," Emily said as she set it on the table.

"Oh, you dear old thing! You must stop to eat some. Cut the cake, Deleah."

Deleah would not usurp the bride's privilege, and Bessie, attempting the operation without removing her glove, split it down the palm! "There, I've spoilt my glove!" she cried, and turned upon her sister. "That's your fault, Deleah. You should have cut the cake when I asked you." Then she began to cry. "I get married," she sobbed; "mama and Deda care no more than if I had gone out for a walk. No one cares. They sit there and stare, and won't say anything; no one cares."

"Oh, Bessie, my poor girl, God knows I care!" the mother said. "But what can I say? It is done; what can I say?"

"Say s-s-omething! Don't sit there!" Bessie sobbed. "Deda might sew up my glove, instead of s-s-sitting there."

Deleah had already found needle and cotton. "Take your glove off, Bessie."

Bessie tried to tear it from her hand. Her tears fell on the white kid. "It is tight. I shall never get it on again. Oh, what shall I do, mama? I have to be there in half an hour. What's the time now? No. I can't eat the cake, Emily. You can eat it, and Deleah, when I'm g-g-gone. Little Franky would have liked some. Poor little Franky. I—I always loved Franky, mama. I'm—I'm crying now because of Franky."

They all cried then, and hushed and petted her, and made her drink a glass of poor Emily's wine, which still further flushed her cheeks, and made her laugh across her tears. Then they had to be stern with her, and scold her, lest she should be in hysterics. And through it all she kept looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Only five minutes more, mama! Deda, Emily, only five minutes more!"

"Dear, you're going to see the London sights," Emily comforted her, the tears raining down her own leather-coloured cheeks. "And your own kerridge, and all! And your man in livery a-waiting at the door! And your gentleman that fond of you, he could eat you a'most!"

But, in spite of these considerations, Bessie spent the last five minutes in the room she had so grumbled at having to live in on the sofa, her head buried in the pillow, her feet kicking, in the old ungoverned fashion, upon the horsehair cover.

Deleah fetched her own hat and the cloak which was to cover Bessie's white muslin for travelling, and eau-de-cologne wherewith to dab the tear-stained cheeks. "I'm coming with you, Bessie, to the station," she promised. "Emily must come too."

"I'm a-comin'," Emily, still in her bonnet and shawl, assured her. "Don't you never think I'm a-goin' to leave you, my dear, till I'm forced to it. And I may as well tell you, ma'am," she went on, turning to Mrs. Day, "that when my young lady and her husban' returns from their honeymooning, I'm a-goin' to live along of 'em. Sorry I am to part from you and Miss Deleah, but Bessie have always come first with me, and always will do."

Then the five minutes were up: "Good-bye, mama dear."

"Good-bye, my own precious Bessie."

"I've got three new frocks, besides this; and I'm to have some more afterwards. The luggage was such a trouble to pack, without you and Deleah knowing! I hope I've got everything."

"You'll write, Bessie?"

"And you'll come and stay with me, mama? There'll be the carriage to drive out in. It will make a nice change."

"It will indeed, dear."

"Is my bonnet straight? I had the forget-me-not wreath put in because you always said blue was my colour."

"Go now, darling. There is not another minute."

"Oh, Mama! Mama! Mama!"

"Go instantly, Bessie. Deleah, take her downstairs—"

The bridegroom, dressed for the character in blue frock-coat, lavender trousers, with gloves and tie to match, and a flower in his buttonhole, was in waiting to help his bride to alight. He, who had never struck her as looking so before, suddenly appeared quite old to Deleah, in spite of his careful array, and the whiskers which had been oiled and curled. Bessie with the forget-me-nots surrounding her plump, fair-skinned face, looked almost a child in comparison.

"Late!" he said, smiling upon the ladies. "But better late than never, eh, Sister Deleah?"

"That depends on how you look at these things," said Deleah, for the first time in her life feeling the desire to be unpleasant.

"We sprang a surprise on you, eh?"

"We were not at all surprised, Mr. Boult."

"It will have to be 'George' now, won't it? We can't have Sister Deleah 'Mr. Boult-ing' me. Eh, Bess?"

"You may call him 'George,' Deda," said a magnanimous Bessie.

"Thank you," said Deleah, in the tone of one who is not at all grateful. She followed the happy pair to the platform. Both were too smartly dressed for ordinary travellers, and people, guessing them to be bride and bridegroom, looked at them with interest.

"How they all stare! I hope they find us worth looking at."

"I always have thought you were, my dear," Mr. Boult said gallantly.

Quite a little crowd collected to see Bessie handed into the first-class carriage, on which the word 'engaged' had been pasted: "We shall be alone. I have seen to that," the bridegroom said, proud of his man-of-the-world ways.

Deleah climbed into the carriage with her sister. "You wish you were coming with us?" Mr. Boult inquired facetiously.

"Not at all!"

"Your turn will come. How about Mr. Gibbon? Now that Bessie is out of the way you can have your chance."

"Good-bye, Bessie. I do so hope you may be happy."

"You're a lucky young lady, tha's what you are!" Emily said, putting her head into the carriage. "You couldn't marry all of 'em what was in love with you, Bessie; but you've made a wise ch'ice—"

The guard cut her eloquence short by slamming the door. Mr. Boult, oblivious of the fact that Bessie might also have liked to show herself, filled up the window. Emily, determined that no item of the ritual proper to such ceremonies should be omitted, promptly threw a handful of rice in his face. It stung, half blinded him, but had the effect of driving him from his position, so that Bessie for one minute could appear. The poor face in the white tulle and forget-me-nots looked anxious, frightened, appealing; and as the train, rushing on, carried it from them the women left on the platform looked at each other through eyes blinded with tears.

"Poor Bessie! She is such a child always," Deleah said.

"She is that, Miss Deleah. I tell you how 'tis with me and Bessie—spite of her having such a way with her with the gentlemen, and such a will of her own—I have always felt I haven't never lost the little girl I had to wait on when first I come to service with your ma."



CHAPTER XXXII

The Man With The Mad Eyes

The other women being employed in the daytime, the sitting-room had been more especially Bessie's domain. How strange and chilling was the thought it would be empty of Bessie for evermore. Her untidy work-basket peeped out from under the sofa where she always pushed it on the appearance of a visitor; the penny weekly paper in which she read of the fashions, and the romantic love-matches of which she had dreamed while making an absolutely sordid marriage herself, was tucked behind the cushion of her chair. Deleah stood within the doorway for a minute, without entering, feeling strangely bereaved and forlorn. Not much sympathy had been between the pair, but the ties of blood are stronger than is realised till "marriage or death or division" snaps the cord.

With a lagging step Deleah went forward into the so pathetically empty room. On the table some flowers were lying. Two deep purple blooms of clematis. The creeper so carefully trained to climb beside a certain hall door came into her mind. She had noticed on an occasion she would fain have forgotten, without knowing she had done so, that it bore two buds. Deleah looked at the blossoms with an odd feeling of repulsion. She walked round the table to the side that was farthest from them. Then lifting her eyes, she saw that Charles Gibbon was standing by the opposite wall. The open door had screened him from her on entering.

"Mr. Gibbon!" she said, and her voice faltered with dismay; only apprehension was in her eyes.

He looked at her without speaking. It was curiously disturbing to see him standing there, his back to the wall, saying nothing; the broad, short figure, at one time so familiar in that room, now so alien and strange, the commonplace, plain-featured face, tragic with its new grey hue, the eyes—Deleah remembered with a shudder some words recently spoken about the eyes! They were fixed upon her face.

"Won't you come and sit down, Mr. Gibbon?"

He advanced a few steps, and stood at the table opposite her.

She looked at the flowers. "You brought these?"

"For you," he said, speaking thickly. "They are the only two the clematis had. If it had ten thousand they would have been for you."

Deleah kept her eyes upon the flowers. She felt that she could not touch them. "You are very kind," she said.

"You would say as much as that to any stranger in the street who had kicked a stone out of your path, and I—I—." He was stammering curiously in his thickened voice. It seemed that the words he wanted to speak would not come. "And I—after all that I suffer—only kind?" he got out at last.

With something of the expression of a trapped creature in her eyes, Deleah looked past him to the door. He turned instantly, and shut it, and came back to his place opposite her at the table.

"Your sister is married to Mr. Boult, to-day," he said. "At one time you could not marry me because of your sister. That impediment's gone. Another time, you had some other excuse. Again another. Come, what excuse have you to-day?" He leant across the table to bring his face closer to hers. "You don't intend to marry me, do you?"

She gazed at him with fear in her eyes, but did not speak. "You let me live beside you, set my heart on you, till there was nothing else on earth or heaven for me but you. You let me slave to serve a man I hated as a means of getting you. You let me get ready my house—every brick in it, every pound of paint laid on it, for you. You—"

"Mr. Gibbon, do wait! I think you are saying too much. I never deceived you. I never said I would marry you. I tried to make you understand."

"Listen! Have you always hated me? When you took my flowers and fruit—all the presents I lavished on you—tell me, did you hate me then?"

"Certainly I did not. I thought you very kind and generous."

"Do you hate me now?" When she told him 'no' he stretched out a shaking hand to her across the table. "Then—?"

Deleah stepped back from the hand and shook her head.

"Why?"

No answer.

"Why?"

"Oh, where would be the use of my telling you!"

"But you shall tell me."

"No."

"Then I will tell you. You think you are going to marry some one else."

Deleah lifted her head and looked at him with proud offence. "You are not to say that, Mr. Gibbon. It is not true."

"You think so," he persisted. "But you are not. Do you know why? Because I will stop you. I know! know! know!" He mercilessly slapped one of his shaking hands upon the table. "And I will stop you."

He turned away, walked to the door, stood staring at it for a moment, his back to her, then suddenly faced her again: "Sir Francis Forcus," he said. He walked to the table his eyes fixed on hers. "Sir Francis Forcus," he repeated. And once again, leaning across the table to bring his face close to hers, "Sir Francis Forcus."

Then he laughed in the girl's frightened face, and went out of the room.

Emily put an inquiring head in at the door.

"He haven't gone? Mr. Gibbon haven't gone, Miss Deleah? Well, now, when the mistress told me he was up along of you, I hoped 'twas another weddin' comin' off. You shouldn't have let him go so quick, my dear."

Deleah had a dazed look about the eyes. "He was horrible! I believe he is mad," she said.

Emily clapped her hands together. "Bessie's marriage have done that! I always told Bessie she'd send some of 'em to the lunatic asylum, or their graves."

"I believe he is mad. Which way did he go, Emily?" She ran down into the shop where Mrs. Day, if daughters were married or daughters were threatened, must never forget that she was licensed to sell tobacco and snuff, was still toiling away at her stocktaking. "Mama, did you see Mr. Gibbon go away?"

"No. Is he gone, my dear?"

Deleah dashed to the door, still open, although the windows were shuttered, and looked up and down the street.

"Do you want to call him back?" her mother asked of her, in mild surprise.

"I believe he is mad." Deleah was breathless, shaking with excitement or fear. "He was in the sitting-room—hiding behind the door—waiting for me."

"Mr. Gibbon! My dear, he couldn't have been. Why should he do that?"

"He was doing it. How did he get there?"

"He came in just as usual—there is really nothing the matter with him, Deleah—to ask me if I knew where his pistol was that he and Franky used to shoot at bottles with when he first came, out of his bedroom window. You remember? I told him it was in his bedroom still, for all I knew; I told him to run up and get it?"

"Did he get it? Had he a pistol in his pocket while he talked to me?"

Emily had followed Deleah into the shop. "He'd no pistol," she put in confidently. "He'd never find it. I'd never liked the nasty dang'rous thing, with Franky into every mischief, and I hid it up on the top of the wardrobe. He'd never find it!"

"Run and see," Mrs. Day said. She began to be impressed by the look of fear on Deleah's face; the girl was trembling violently, now, her teeth chattering as if with extreme cold.

In less than a minute Emily was back. "He've got it," they heard her calling as she came. "The pistol's gone. He've got it. Sure as we're living, he's goin' to shoot hisself, on account of Bessie!"

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Day cried sharply. "Deleah, there is really nothing to be frightened about, my dear. The pistol was Mr. Gibbon's own. He naturally wanted it."

Deleah stood in the middle of the shop, lit by the half-open door and the jet of gas above Mrs. Day's desk. She was squeezing her hands together, her arms strained against her breast as if trying desperately to stop her trembling. "Could I get there?" she said to her mother. "Could I get there first?" Her body was bent forward as if with the impulse to run, but she waited, squeezing herself in her arms, her brow knit, trying to steady her thought. "If I can get there first—!" she said.

"Where, dear? Get where? What is it you want to do, Deleah?"

She seemed not to hear: "If I can get there first!" she said to herself; then, going stumblingly, reached the door, and was gone.

The two women left, stared at each other's blank face in the mingled lights of the shop. "She isn't running after Mr. Gibbon, surely!" Mrs. Day said, helplessly perplexed.

"There's no good in her a-doing that. Gibbon's heart's set on Bessie," Emily declared.

"Do go after her, and bring her back, Emily."

The great yard of the Hope Brewery was nearly empty. A young clerk, his pen stuck in the bushy hair above his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets, was whistling as he walked across it, stepping lightly from the shadows cast by the huge buildings to the sunshine of the open spaces. An enormous drayman was backing a pair of powerful horses, in order to bring his wagon under that portion of the wall over which a barrel hung suspended; two other men also of gigantic proportions, with red-shining faces and aprons tied over their ample bodies, stood to watch the manoeuvres. A groom in charge of a saddle-horse by the entrance to the main building patted his horse's neck as he also looked on.

Deleah, flinging herself from the door of the four-wheeler which had brought her, dashed through the yard, consciously seeing none of these things, which yet photographed themselves on her brain and remained indelibly printed there till her dying day. She knew her way to the private room of Sir Francis, and made towards it, without pausing to heed the one or two men who endeavoured to stop and question her. In the ante-room to the inner sanctum, a confidential clerk who always sat there flew up from his desk.

"Excuse me, miss. A moment, please. You can't go in there. Sir Francis is particularly engaged."

When she took no notice, he tried to reach the door before her; but Deleah, too quick for him, dashing forward, opened, and shut it in his face.

Sir Francis was standing in his favourite position with his back to the mantelpiece, in riding dress, his gloves and whip in his hand. Deleah, bolting into the room, and falling back upon the door, the more effectually to close it upon the confidential clerk, had an instant's vision of him in his calm unassailableness, in that unruffled perfection of appearance, which, while it had always awakened her girlish admiration, had ever seemed to remove him to an immeasurable distance. The sight of him, even in what was to her a supreme moment, had its habitual effect of pouring cold waters of discouragement upon her mood, of making her doubtful of herself and any claim she could possibly make upon his attention. She had been presumptuous in pushing herself into his presence. Of course he was safe. Of course nothing could hurt him. The poor Honourable Charles, the erstwhile draper's assistant, with his common, thick-set figure, his hoarse voice, his unrefined accent—it was an offence even to think of him in the same breath with this elegant gentleman. How could this one on his high eminence of aloofness and security be endangered by such an one as that?

To see and feel all this was the work of a moment. The moment in which she slammed the door on the protesting clerk, the moment in which also she felt the shock of awaking from her frenzied zeal that would have beaten down all obstacles to save this man's life, to the perception that her zeal would in his eyes seem an absurdity; that her presence there was superfluous if not impertinent; that she had made a fool of herself for nothing.

Sir Francis suffered this inexplicable noisy invasion of his privacy with a look of annoyance and surprise breaking up the composure of his face. Then, seeing who it was who had thus burst upon him, who leant upon the door she had slammed, panting as if pursued, turning frightened, appealing eyes to him, the expression of his face changed, the whole man seemed to change. With a look such as Deleah had never dreamed it possible he could wear he went forward to her; in a tone she had not known his voice to take, he spoke her name.

"Deleah!" he said.

She looked at him; but in rapturous wonder at the light in his eyes, listening spellbound to the delight of her name so spoken, forgetting who she was, where she was, in the whirl of bliss where her senses momentarily swam. Then he held out his hands and took hers, and held them locked in his against his breast.

"My dear child, I was coming to you," he said. "You have come to me instead, my little Deleah!"



CHAPTER XXXIII

The Moment Of Triumph

"While you were in my house I reckoned up the years, many times." He smiled a little sadly, and shook his head, looking down at her. "They never grew any less, Deleah. There are twenty-five between you and me. It is too much! Too much!"

"No!" breathed Deleah, with upturned, adoring eyes.

"And, dear, they are not the only things between us—dividing me from you. A love I felt—a great love I thought never to feel again—in the past—" He looked away from her, over her head into the years that were gone. Then his eyes came back to the eyes that were lifted to him, and he grasped her hands tighter against his breast.

"There was Reggie, too," he said. "Poor Reggie! But I made what reparation I could. I gave him his chance. Did he ever have a chance, Deleah?"

She shook her head. "Never!"

"What will he say to us?"

There came a rap upon the door, and Sir Francis dropped the hands he held, and started back. "I am particularly engaged, Rogers," he said.

The door was discreetly opened to admit not Rogers, but Rogers's voice: "I beg your pardon, sir, but there is a matter of some importance; if you could come for a few minutes."

"I have told you I am engaged," the voice of authority protested. With a kind of discreet reluctance the door closed again, and Sir Francis, with the impatience of a lover whose ardour has received a momentary check, took the girl into his arms. With a hand pushed against his chest she held herself away from him.

"Why?" he asked her. "You are not afraid of me, Deleah?"

"Yes. Very much afraid."

"Tell me why, my dearest child?"

"Oh, you know," said Deleah, turning away her head.

"No! It is I who should be afraid of you; you, with your youth and beauty, and sweet and gentle goodness. I confess it—all those months you lived in my house, I was afraid."

"You said there were things between us—dividing us. You did not say what really is there. What papa did—"

As she faltered over the words there came a louder knocking upon the door, which opened almost at the same minute. Mr. Rogers's deprecating face appeared there, and behind it the face of a policeman.

"A minute, sir. I won't detain you a minute," the clerk said; and Sir Francis walked to the door with an impatient step and closed it behind him.

Deleah, left to herself—was it for an hour? was it for a minute?—looked with eyes dazed with happiness upon the hands that had been crushed in his.

"I used to think that to be loved by him would be heaven," she said. "And now—now I feel nothing. I am numb."

He came back very grave, his face unusually pale. "Your cab is waiting. I will take you home, my dear child," he said.

She crossed the big yard again at his side. The drayman was still at his horses' heads, the groom was taking the riding-horse round to the stables. On the opposite side of the yard beneath one of the arches of a heavy colonnade, a couple of policemen stood. One of them was making notes in a book. A group of workpeople stood near by; and Deleah remembered afterwards that there was about them and the rest an air of suspending something they were saying or doing while their chief and the girl at his side walked to the great entrance gates.

"A cab was waiting, by good luck," Sir Francis said as he put her in it, and Deleah awoke, it seemed to her, for the first time since he had called her name as she leant against his door, to full consciousness.

"It was mine," she said. "I took it to get to you quickly—before you started for home. I was afraid you might be hurt. A man—the man who used to lodge with us—came to me this afternoon, and he threatened you. I was so foolish—I believed he meant it. I was afraid. I thought, as you rode past his house to Cashelthorpe, he would wait there, behind the hedge, and shoot you. I seemed to see him doing it. So foolish of me! Of course he was simply frightening me; he would not dare—" She lifted the adoring eyes to his face as he sat beside her. Who would dare indeed to harm that Excellence! "I was afraid he had gone mad," she said, excusing the folly of her thought.

"Poor fellow, I think he had," Sir Francis said. He held her face turned to him, its pure oval in his hand. "Was it love of you that made him mad, Deleah?"

She was too shy of him yet, and too modest to answer the question by word of mouth; but he knew the answer.

"He won't trouble you any more, Deleah," he said very gently. "He won't hurt me. He is dead."

She would not believe it. It was impossible. "He can't be! He was with me half an hour ago. He was well as I am, and very strong. He can't be dead!"

"He seems to have come to the Brewery-yard—why we shall never know. Perhaps with some mad intention towards me. Perhaps—. But it is all conjecture. All we know is that he is there now. Dead."

"Was he there before me? Did he see me running through the yard—to you?"

"No one knows. No one noticed him till they found him lying behind one of the pillars of the colonnade, shot through the head. I am going back there now. They want me."

He lifted her from the cab and stood beside her till Emily opened the door: "I will be with you again as soon as I can, my darling child," he promised; and got into the cab again and drove away.

Deleah, creeping up the stairs, shut the door of the sitting-room upon Emily, voluble of questions but getting no satisfactory answers. Shaken with emotion, weak and shivering, she stood looking round the empty room, peopling it with its familiar circle. There was Bessie's place, and there Franky's especial chair. There, by the little table on one side of the fire the boarder had sat every evening, book in hand, but eyes wandering ever in Deleah's direction. She spoke, or laughed, or sighed, and the change in his face showed that he listened. Bessie had to call his name sharply twice before his attention was gained. Franky would ask some question about the mixing of his paints. The man would answer with a kind of anxious politeness, getting up to look over the child's shoulder. Passing Deleah, he would stoop for the book he had purposely dropped by her chair. "I love you!" she would hear his fierce low whisper in her ear.

She had been too depreciative of herself, too innocent of the workings of passion, to have felt anything but irritation and annoyance at the signs in him of a suffering she could not believe in or understand. Was it possible, after all, that she, Deleah, whose heart was so tender, whose ways so pitiful, who saved the drowning flies and would not willingly have afflicted the meanest of God's creatures, by means of a pale and pretty face only, had wrought that havoc?

With a sob in her throat she came forward into the room. Upon the table were lying the two purple clematis flowers, backed by a spray of their own foliage and tied with the tendrils of the plant. Deleah recalled the repulsion with which she had seen them lying there. She put out her hand towards them, but drew it back. She could not touch them even now.

To each of us, however mean our lives and obscure our history, living or dead, the moment of triumph comes. To Charles Gibbon his came, when Deleah, forgetful of her new-found bliss, and the Heaven of Happiness opening before her, laid her head upon the table beside the poor blooms of the clematis flower, and as if her heart were broken, cried for the fate of the Honourable Charles.

THE END