Mrs. Dorriman Volume Ii Part 25

His wife rushed out of the room, and disdained answering him.

In the meantime Jean was bravely facing all her difficulties. Her princ.i.p.al difficulty was that she had a woman to deal with in the shape of a landlady who was what Jean termed a "slithery" creature. When she found that Jean looked after things she was impertinent; but that had no effect. Jean looked over her head and ignored her altogether.

Then she took to being disobliging, and would neither answer a bell nor give any help. Her next move was to let the kitchen fire out perpetually, and when Jean wanted to heat some soup and get anything hot there was no fire.

She calculated that as Grace was very ill and could not be moved, she would get the best of it in the long run.

But Jean was not a woman who would allow herself to be put out of it without giving her opinion and trying to remedy matters. She had a great contempt for the "wishy-washy" voice and untidy ways of Mrs. Cripps, a woman who lived in a black cap, and knew nothing of any but baker's bread, and could neither make "a scone or even oat-bread, let be bannocks," Jean said to Grace when she was dwelling upon the shortcomings of the house one day.

"I am glad," said Grace, laughing. "I never cared for oat-bread. I always feel, if I ever try to eat it, that I am eating sand; please do not be offended."

"I'll take no offence where none is meant," said Jean, quietly; "and people are not a' born wi' a good taste."

The landlady tried in vain to speak her high-bred English, and to put herself above her. There are a good many like her that cannot distinguish between provincialism and vulgarity. Jean had a ready tongue, and, though she a.s.sured Grace that she kept it well between her teeth, the landlady heard it occasionally, and felt it in all its roughness.

The skirmishes were invariably amusing to Grace, who used to lie in her chair and laugh over the scenes afterwards, and tell them to Paul Lyons, who showed how little any real love had existed for her by the way in which he still came to see her and to hear of Margaret.

She could not help asking herself what she gained in all this unhappiness; she was as badly off as ever. She was still dependent on Mr. Sandford. She was living in a tiny lodging. She disliked the doctor, and never would see him if she could help it, and the sister, who had all their lives been her one great stay and support, had no liberty to come and see her.

She had planned her life so differently, and it came vividly before her.

How proud she had always been of the cleverness, which tested at length, had failed in every particular. But once she rallied, hers was not at all the nature to dwell upon unpleasant things. The first day she went out she drove to the Limes, taking Jean with her, and they asked for Mrs. Drayton.

"Mrs. Drayton is out," said the man-servant, who did not dare say otherwise.

"Hoot! man," said Jean, "you need not tell me that. Why, Mrs. Drayton is never out."

"Shut that door immediately," called out an angry voice, and Mr.

Drayton, looking very haggard and wild, came to the door.

"My sister! I want to see my sister," and Grace held out her hands imploringly.

Mr. Drayton came down the steps and looked at her; then he made a perfectly diabolical face, burst into a roar of laughter, and slammed the door in her face.

Grace, weak and terrified, clung to Jean as they went home. "What shall we do? What shall we do?" she sobbed. "Oh, Jean! that man is mad, and she, my poor Margaret, is in his power!"

"Whist, my dear bairn," said Jean, who was nigh upon tears herself.

"Whist! I think we will be guided," she said, reverently, and she sat silent for a few minutes. "I doubt we will have to speak to the police,"

she added, as that brilliant idea came to console her.

Grace wrote a letter to Mrs. Dorriman that night, in which she told her all she knew, all she feared, for the first time; she expressed her grat.i.tude for all the kindness she had received; for the first time she acknowledged that she was to blame, and she asked to express something of her feeling to Mr. Sandford.

This done she felt more happy than she had done lately, and rose next day trusting that in some way her sister's freedom would be brought about.

Mr. Lyons called early, and was delighted to receive her confidence.

Might he go and call? Surely there could be no harm, he asked, anxiously; it might save time.

"It would only make matters worse for my sister," Grace said, "and you would do no good."

"But it will show that she--that your sister--has friends near her."

"That very fact might rouse him to more violence, and my sister would suffer."

"I might go and call on _him_. I do not believe he would be violent if I asked for him. I am afraid he knows me, otherwise I might take some circulars and call upon him about business."

"As if you know anything about business."

"I a.s.sure you I have been very hard at work lately. I have gone into the question of employment very seriously."

"I doubt your having done anything seriously," laughed Grace.

"That is rather hard on a fellow, when a fellow has really tried."

"Come, Mr. Lyons, what have you tried?"

"I have offered myself as an agent to begin with. Agency is a very good thing. You spend no money yourself, and other people's money sticks to your fingers; it is really a very simple thing."

"And what are you agent for, may I ask?"

"Oh! the appointment is not confirmed, but I think I am on the high road to it. It does not much matter what it is as long as you can get people to buy. I have at this moment two things before me, of which I have really a very fair chance."

"Have you?"

"Are you sufficiently interested, Miss Rivers, to hear what they are?"

"I am doing my best to show my interest by listening to you with both my ears."

"Ah! but you are _not_ giving me your undivided attention. You are knitting, and just now I quite distinctly heard you count five. A fellow cannot talk of his prospects to a girl while she counts five," Mr. Lyons said, in a tone of disgust, and looking round the room appealing to an imaginary audience.

"I will not count again--only just this once. I have made a mistake already;" and Grace wrinkled her forehead and became absorbed in her work for a few moments.

"Miss Rivers, will you really let a fellow talk to you? life and death does not hang upon a few st.i.tches more or less."

"No, but a sock does; and dear Mrs. Dorriman took such pains to teach me to make one."

"You are always knitting," the young man said, discontentedly.

"No; only when I feel very good," she answered, gravely; "then I knit all kinds of things into my sock."

"What sort of things--colours? that thing looks all the same colour to me."

"Oh, I do not mean material things, but sorrow and penitence--and the bitterest repentance," she added the last words in a lower tone, and her eyes were concealed under lowered lids; then she sighed.

Mr. Lyons sighed also, he had a very good idea what she referred to.

"To return to your wishes," said Grace, laughing a little, to carry off a feeling of awkwardness at having shown emotion; "what do you wish to tell me?"

"It--it sounds a little frivolous now. I only wanted to say I have tried to get into every agency you can think of. I have gone steadily down the alphabet and picked out everything you can think of. It is quite astonis.h.i.+ng how many things there are to be canva.s.sed for. I did the W's yesterday, and the X's and Y's to-day. I took the W's out of their turn because of wine; there are such an enormous number of firms who sell or want to sell _the_ only drinkable wine; and it is a subject I know a little about."

"And you got nothing?"