Orientations Part 27

That lady turned very red. Her first impulse was to make a scene and call the housemaid to witness how Daisy treated her own mother; but immediately she thought how undignified she would appear in the maid's eyes. So she went out like a lamb....

She told George all about it as they sat in the private bar of the public-house, drinking a little Scotch whisky.

'All I can say,' she remarked, 'is that I hope she'll never live to repent it. Fancy treating her own mother like that!

'But I shall go to the wedding; I don't care. I will see my own daughter married.'

That had been her great ambition, and she would have crawled before Daisy to be asked to the ceremony.... But George dissuaded her from going uninvited. There were sure to be one or two Blackstable people present, and they would see that she was there as a stranger; the humiliation would be too great.

'I think she's an ungrateful girl,' said Mrs Griffith, as she gave way and allowed George to take her back to Blackstable.

XII

But the prestige of the Griffiths diminished. Everyone in Blackstable came to the conclusion that the new Lady Ously-Farrowham had been very badly treated by her relatives, and many young ladies said they would have done just the same in her place. Also Mrs Gray induced her husband to ask Griffith to resign his churchwardens.h.i.+p.

'You know, Mr Griffith,' said the vicar, deprecatingly, 'now that your wife goes to chapel I don't think we can have you as churchwarden any longer; and besides, I don't think you've behaved to your daughter in a Christian way.'

It was in the carpenter's shop; the business had dwindled till Griffith only kept one man and a boy; he put aside the saw he was using.

'What I've done to my daughter, I'm willing to take the responsibility for; I ask no one's advice and I want no one's opinion; and if you think I'm not fit to be churchwarden you can find someone else better.'

'Why don't you make it up with your daughter, Griffith?'

'Mind your own business!'

The carpenter had brooded and brooded over his sorrow till now his daughter's name roused him to fury. He had even a.s.serted a little authority over his wife, and she dared not mention her daughter before him. Daisy's marriage had seemed like the consummation of her shame; it was vice riding triumphant in a golden chariot....

But the name of Lady Ously-Farrowham was hardly ever out of her mother's lips; and she spent a good deal more money in her dress to keep up her dignity.

'Why, that's another new dress you've got on!' said a neighbour.

'Yes,' said Mrs Griffith, complacently, 'you see we're in quite a different position now. I have to think of my daughter, Lady Ously-Farrowham. I don't want her to be ashamed of her mother. I had such a nice long letter from her the other day. She's so happy with Sir Herbert. And Sir Herbert's so good to her.' ...

'Oh, I didn't know you were.' ...

'Oh, yes! Of course she was a little--well, a little wild when she was a girl, but _I've_ forgiven that. It's her father won't forgive her. He always was a hard man, and he never loved her as I did. She wants to come and stay with me, but he won't let her. Isn't it cruel of him? I should so like to have Lady Ously-Farrowham down here.' ...

XIII

But at last the crash came. To pay for the new things which Mrs Griffith felt needful to preserve her dignity, she had drawn on her husband's savings in the bank; and he had been drawing on them himself for the last four years without his wife's knowledge. For, as his business declined, he had been afraid to give her less money than usual, and every week had made up the sum by taking something out of the bank.

George only earned a pound a week--he had been made clerk to a coal merchant by his mother, who thought that more genteel than carpentering--and after his marriage he had constantly borrowed from his parents. At last Mrs Griffith learnt to her dismay that their savings had come to an end completely. She had a talk with her husband, and found out that he was earning almost nothing. He talked of sending his only remaining workman away and moving into a smaller place. If he kept his one or two old customers, they might just manage to make both ends meet.

Mrs Griffith was burning with anger. She looked at her husband, sitting in front of her with his helpless look.

'You fool!' she said.

She thought of herself coming down in the world, living in a pokey little house away from the High Street, unable to buy new dresses, unnoticed by the chief people of Blackstable--she who had always held up her head with the best of them!

George and Edith came in, and she told them, hurling contemptuous sarcasms at her husband. He sat looking at them with his pained, unhappy eyes, while they stared back at him as if he were some despicable, noxious beast.

'But why didn't you say how things were going before, father?' George asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders.

'I didn't like to,' he said hoa.r.s.ely; those cold, angry eyes crushed him; he felt the stupid, useless fool he saw they thought him.

'I don't know what's to be done,' said George.

His wife looked at old Griffith with her hard, grey eyes; the sharpness of her features, the firm, clear complexion, with all softness blown out of it by the east winds, expressed the coldest resolution.

'Father must get Daisy to help; she's got lots of money. She may do it for him.'

Old Griffith broke suddenly out of his apathy.

'I'd sooner go to the workhouse; I'll never touch a penny of hers!'

'Now then, father,' said Mrs Griffith, quickly understanding, 'you drop that, you'll have to.'

George at the same time got pen and paper and put them before the old man. They stood round him angrily. He stared at the paper; a look of horror came over his face.

'Go on! don't be a fool!' said his wife. She dipped the pen in the ink and handed it to him.

Edith's steel-grey eyes were fixed on him, coldly compelling.

'Dear Daisy,' she began.

'Father always used to call her Daisy darling,' said George; 'he'd better put that so as to bring back old times.'

They talked of him strangely, as if he were absent or had not ears to hear.

'Very well,' replied Edith, and she began again; the old man wrote bewilderedly, as if he were asleep. 'DAISY DARLING,-- ... Forgive me!...

I have been hard and cruel towards you.... On my knees I beg your forgiveness.... The business has gone wrong ... and I am ruined.... If you don't help me ... we shall have the brokers in ... and have to go to the workhouse.... For G.o.d's sake ... have mercy on me! You can't let me starve.... I know I have sinned towards you.--Your broken-hearted ...

FATHER.'

She read through the letter. 'I think that'll do; now the envelope,' and she dictated the address.

When it was finished, Griffith looked at them with loathing, absolute loathing--but they paid no more attention to him. They arranged to send a telegram first, in case she should not open the letter,--

'_Letter coming; for G.o.d's sake open! In great distress._--FATHER.'

George went out immediately to send the wire and post the letter.

XIV

The letter was sent on a Tuesday, and on Thursday morning a telegram came from Daisy to say she was coming down. Mrs Griffith was highly agitated.