The History of David Grieve Part 39

He sat down and looked at a bit of her embroidery, which lay uncovered beside her on the frame.

'I say, that is fine work!' he said, wondering. 'I hope you get well paid for it, Miss Dora. You ought. Well, now, I do want to ask your advice. This business of the house has set me thinking about a lot of things.'

He lay back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and threw one leg over the other. He was in such a state of nervous excitement, Dora could see, that he could hardly keep himself still.

'Did I ever tell you about my sister? No, I know I haven't. I've kept it dark. But now I'm settled I want to have her to live with me. There's no one but us two, except the old uncle and aunt that brought us up. I must stick to her--and I mean to. But she's not like other girls. She's a queer one.'

He stopped, frowning a little as the recollections of Louie rushed across him, seeking for words in which to draw her. And directly he paused, Dora, who had dropped her silks again in her sudden astonishment, burst into questions. How old was his sister? Was she in Manchester? Had she a trade? Her soul was full of a warm, unexpected joy, her manner was eager--receptive. He took up his parable and told the story of his childhood and Louie's at the farm. His black eye kindled as he looked past Dora into the past--into the bosom of the Scout. Owing partly to an imaginative gift, partly to his reading habit, when he was stimulated--when he was, as it were, talking at large, trying to present a subject as a whole, to make a picture of it--he rose into ways of speech quite different from those of his cla.s.s, and different from his own dialect of every day. This latent capacity for fine expression was mostly drawn out at this time by his attempts at public speaking.

But to-night, in his excitement, it showed in his talk, and Dora was bewildered. Oh, how clever he was! He talked like a book--just like a book. She pushed her chair back from the silks, and sat absorbed in the pleasure of listening, environed too by the happy thought that he was making a friend of her, giving her--plain, insignificant, humble Dora Lomax--his confidence.

As for him, the more he talked the more he enjoyed talking. Never since he came to Manchester had he fallen into such a moment of unburdenment, of intimacy, or something like it, with any human being. He had talked to Ancrum and to John. But that was quite different. No man confides in a woman as he confides in a man. The touch of difference of s.e.x gives charm and edge, even when, as was the case here, the man has no thrill whatever in his veins, and no thought of love-making in his head.

'You must have been very fond of your sister,' Dora said at last, tremulously. 'You two all alone--and no mother.'

Somehow the soft sentiment in her words and tone struck him suddenly as incongruous. His expression changed.

'Oh, I don't know,' he said, with a sort of laugh, not a very bright one. 'Don't you imagine I was a pattern brother; I was a brute to her lots of times. And Louie--ah, well, you'll see for yourself what she's like; she's a queer customer sometimes. And now I'll tell you what I wanted to ask you, Miss Dora. You see, if Louie comes it won't do for her to have no employment, after she's had a trade all day; and she won't take to mine--she can't abide books.'

And he explained to her his perplexities--the ebbing of the silk trade from Manchester, and so on. He might hire a loom, but Louie would get no work. All trades have their special channels, and keep to them.

So it had occurred to him, if Louie was willing, would Dora take her as an apprentice, and teach her the church work? He would be quite ready to pay for the teaching; that would be only fair.

'Teach her my work!' cried Dora, instinctively drawing back. 'Oh, I don't think I could.'

He coloured, and misunderstood her. In a great labour-hive like Lancas.h.i.+re, with its large and small industries, the native ear is very familiar with the jealous tone of the skilled worker, threatened with compet.i.tion in a narrow trade.

'I didn't mean any offence,' he said, with a little stiffness. 'I don't want to take the bread out of anybody's mouth. If there isn't work to be had, you've only to say so, Miss Dora.'

'Oh, I didn't mean that,' she cried, wounded in her turn. 'There's plenty of work. At the shop last week they didn't know what to do for hands. If she was clever at it, she'd get lots of work. But--'

She laid her hand on her frame lovingly, not knowing how to explain herself, her gentle brows knitting in the effort of thought.

Her work was so much more to her than ordinary work paid for in ordinary coin. Into these gorgeous altar-cloths, or these delicate wrappings for chalice and paten, she st.i.tched her heart. To work at them was prayer. Jesus, and His Mother, and the Saints; it was with them she communed as her st.i.tches flowed. She sat in a mystic, a heavenly world. And the silence and solitude of her work made one of its chief charms. And now to be asked to share it with a strange girl, who could not love it as she did, who would take it as hard business--never to be alone any more with her little black book and her prayers!

And then she looked up, and met a young man's half-offended look, and a shy, proud eye, in which the nascent friends.h.i.+p of five minutes before seemed to be sinking out of sight.

'Oh yes, I will,' she cried. 'Of course I will. It just sounded a bit strange to me at first. I've been so used to be alone always.'

But he demurred now--wished stiffly to take back his proposal. He did not want to put upon her, and perhaps, after all, Louie would have her own notions.

But she could not bear it, and as he retreated she pressed forward.

Of course there was work. And it would be very good for her, it would stir her up to take a pupil; it was just her old-maidish ways--it had startled her a bit at first.

And then, her reserve giving ay more and more as her emotion grew, she confessed herself at last completely.

'You see, it's not just _work_ to me, and it's not the money, though I'm glad enough for that; but it's for the church; and I'd live on a crust, and do it for nothing, if I could!'

She looked up at him--that ardent dream-life of hers leaping to the eyes, transforming the pale face.

David sat silent and embarra.s.sed. He did not know what to say--how to deal with this turn in the conversation.

'Oh, I know you think I'm just foolish,' she said, sadly, taking up her needle. 'You always did; but I'll take your sister--indeed I will.'

'Perhaps you'll turn her your way of thinking,' said David, with a little awkward laugh, looking round for his hat. 'But Louie isn't an easy one to drive.'

'Oh, you can't drive people!' cried Dora, flus.h.i.+ng; 'you can't, and you oughtn't. But if Father Russell talked to her she might like him--and the church. Oh, Mr. Grieve, won't you go one Sunday and hear him--won't you--instead of--'

She did not finish her sentence, but David finished it for her: 'Instead of going to the Hall of Science? Well, but you know, Miss Dora, I being what I am, I get more good out of a lecture at the Hall of Science than I should out of Father Russell. I should be quarrelling with him all the time, and wanting to answer him.'

'Oh, you couldn't,' said Dora eagerly, 'he's so good, and he's a learned man--I'm sure he is. Mr. Foss, the curate, told me they think he'll be a bishop some day.'

'All the better for him,' said David, unmoved. 'It don't make any difference to me. No, Miss Dora, don't you fret yourself about me.

Books are my priests.'

He stood over her, his hands on his sides, smiling.

'Oh, no!' cried Dora, involuntarily. 'You mustn't say that. Books can't bring us to G.o.d.'

'No more can priests,' he said, with a sudden flash of his dark eyes, a sudden dryness of his tone. 'If there is a G.o.d to bring us to--prove me that first, Miss Dora. But it's a shame to say these things to you--that it is--and I've been worrying you a deal too much about my stupid affairs. Good night. We'll talk about Father Russell again another time.'

He ran downstairs. Dora went back to her frame, then pushed it away again, ran eagerly to the window, and pulled the blind aside. Down below in the lighted street, now emptying fast, she saw the tall figure emerge, saw it run down the street, and across St. Mary's Gate. She watched it till it disappeared; then she put her hands over her face, and leant against the window-frame weeping. Oh, what a sudden descent from a moment of pure joy! How had the jarring note come? They had been put wrong with each other; and perhaps, after all, he would be no more to her now than before. And she had seemed to make such a leap forward--to come so near to him.

'Oh! I'll just be good to his sister,' she said to herself drearily, with an ache at her heart that was agony.

Then she thought of him as he had sat there beside her; and suddenly in her pure thought there rose a vision of herself in his arms, her head against his broad shoulder, her hand stealing round his neck. She moved from the window and threw herself down in the darkest corner of the room, wrestling desperately with what seemed to her a sinful imagination. She ought not to think of him at all; she loathed herself. Father Russell would tell her she was wicked.

He had no faith--he was a hardened unbeliever--and she could not make herself think of that at all--could not stop herself from wanting--_wanting_ him for her own, whatever happened.

And it was so foolish too, as well as bad; for he hadn't an idea of falling in love with anybody--anyone could see that. And she who was not pretty, and not a bit clever--it was so likely he would take a fancy to her! Why, in a few years he would be a big man, he would have made a fortune, and then he could take his pick.

'Oh! and Lucy--Lucy would _hate_ me.'

But the thought of Lucy, instead of checking her, brought with it again a wild gust of jealousy. It was fiercer than before, the craving behind it stronger. She sat up, forcing back her tears, her whole frame tense and rigid. Whatever happened he would _never_ marry Lucy! And who could wish it? Lucy was just a little, vain, selfish thing, and when she found David Grieve wouldn't have her, she would soon forget him. The surging longing within refused, proudly refused, to curb itself--for Lucy's sake.

Then the bell of St. Ann's slowly began to strike ten o'clock. It brought home to her by a.s.sociation one of the evening hymns in the little black book she was frequently accustomed to croon to herself at night as she put away her work:

O G.o.d who canst not change nor fail, Guiding the hours as they roll by, Brightening with beams the morning pale, And burning in the mid-day sky!

Quench thou the fires of hate and strife, The wasting fever of the heart; From perils guard our feeble life, And to our souls thy peace impart.

The words flowed in upon her, but they brought no comfort, only a fresh sense of struggle and effort. Her Christian peace was gone.

She felt herself wicked, faithless, miserable.

Meanwhile, in the stormy night outside, David was running and leaping through the streets, flouris.h.i.+ng his stick from side to side in cut and thrust with an imaginary enemy whenever the main thoroughfares were left behind, and he found himself in some dark region of warehouses, where his steps echoed, and he was king alike of roadway and of pavement.

The wind, a stormy north-easter, had risen since the afternoon.

David fought with it, rejoiced in it. After the little hot sitting-room, the stinging freshness, the rough challenge of the gusts, were delicious to him. He was overflowing with spirits, with health, with exultation.

As he thought of Purcell he could hardly keep himself from shouting aloud. If he could only be there to see when Purcell learnt how he had been foiled! And trust Daddy to spread a story which would certainly do Purcell no good! No, in that direction he felt that he was probably safe from attack for a long time to come. Success beckoned to him; his enemy was under foot; his will and his gifts had the world before them.