The Literary Sense

Mrs. Despard, stunned, could think of no course save that suggested. She followed Mrs. Eden into the impossible parlour that bounded the shop on the north.

"Do sit down," said Mrs. Eden hospitably, "and the girl shall get you a cup of tea. It's full early, but a cup of tea's always welcome, early or late, isn't it?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Despard, automatically. Then she roused herself and added, "But please don't trouble, I can't stay more than a few minutes. I hope Miss Eden is well?"

"Oh, yes – she's all right. She lives in clover, as you might say, since her uncle on the mother's side left her that hundred a year. Made it all in fried fish, too. I should have thought it a risk myself, but you never know."

Mrs. Despard was struggling with a sensation as of sawdust in the throat – sawdust, and a great deal of it, and very dry.

"But I heard that Miss Eden was married – "

"Not she!" said Mrs. Eden, with the natural contempt of one who was.

"I understood that she had married a Mr. Cave."

"It's some other Eden, then. There isn't a Cave in the town, so far as I know, except Mr. Augustus; he's a solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths, a very good business, and of course he'd never look the same side of the road as she was, nor she couldn't expect it."

"But really," Mrs. Despard persisted, "I do think there must be some mistake. Because she came to see me – and – and she brought her baby."

Mrs. Eden laughed outright.

"Her baby? Oh, really! But she's never so much as had a young man after her, let alone a husband. It's not what she could look for, either, for she's no beauty – poor girl!"

Yet the Baby was evidence – of a sort. Mrs. Despard hated herself for hinting that perhaps Mrs. Eden did not know everything.

"I don't know what you mean, madam." The puce bodice was visibly moved. "That was my baby, bless his little heart. Poor Ellen's a respectable girl – she's been with me since she was a little trot of six – all except the eleven months she was away with you – and then my Fred see her to the door, and fetched her from your station. She would go – though not our wish. I suppose she wanted a change. But since then she's never been over an hour away, except when she took my Gustavus over to see you. She must have told you whose he was – but I suppose you weren't paying attention. And I must say I don't think it's becoming in you, if you'll excuse me saying so, to come here taking away a young girl's character. At least, if she's not so young as she was, of course – we none of us are, not even yourself, madam, if you'll pardon me saying so."

"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Despard. She had never felt so helpless – so silly. The absurd parlour, ponderous with plush, dusky with double curtains, had for her all the effect of a nightmare.

She felt that she was swimming blindly in a sea of disenchantment.

"Don't think me inquisitive," she said, "but Miss Eden was engaged, wasn't she, some time ago, to someone who was killed in South Africa?"

"Never – in all her born days," said Mrs. Eden, with emphasis. "I suppose it's her looks. I've had a good many offers myself, though I'm not what you might call anything out of the way – but poor Ellen – never had so much as a nibble."

Mrs. Despard gasped. She clung against reason to the one spar of hope in this sea of faiths dissolved. It might be – it must be – some mistake!

"You see, poor Ellen" – Mrs. Eden made as much haste to smash up the spar as though she had seen it – "poor Ellen, when her mother and father died she was but six. There was only her and my Fred, so naturally we took her, and what little money the old lady left we spent on her, sending her to a good school, and never counting the bit of clothes and victuals. She was always for learning something, and above her station, and the Rev. Mrs. Peterson at St. Michael, and All Angels – she made a sort of pet of Ellen, and set her up, more than a bit."

Mrs. Despard remembered that Mrs. Peterson had been Miss Eden's reference.

"And then she would come to you – though welcome to share along with us, and you can see for yourself it's a good business – and when that little bit was left her, of course, she'd no need to work, so she came home here, and I must say she's always been as handy a girl and obliging as you could wish, but wandering, too, in her thoughts. Always pens and ink. I shouldn't wonder but what she wrote poetry. Yards and yards of writing she does. I don't know what she does with it all."

But Mrs. Despard knew.

Mrs. Eden talked on gaily and gladly – till not even a straw was left for her hearer to cling to.

"Thank you very much," she said. "I see it was all a mistake. I must have been wrong about the address." She spoke hurriedly – for she had heard in the shop a step that she knew.

For one moment a white face peered in at the glass door – then vanished; it was Miss Eden's face – her face as it had been when she told of her lost lover who died waving his sword at Elendslaagte! But the telling of that tale had moved Mrs. Despard to no such passion of pity as this. For from that face now something was blotted out, and the lack of it was piteous beyond thought.

"Thank you very much. I am so sorry to have troubled you," she said, and somehow got out of the plush parlour, and through the shop, fruit-filled, orange-scented.

At the station there was still time, and too much time. The bookstall yielded pencil, paper, envelope, and stamp. She wrote —

"Ella, dear, whatever happens, I am always your friend. Let me know – can I do anything for you? I know all about everything now. But don't think I'm angry – I am only so sorry for you, dear – so very, very sorry. Do let me help you."

She addressed the letter to Miss Eden at the greengrocer's. Afterwards she thought that she had better have left it alone. It could do no good, and it might mean trouble with her sister-in-law, for Miss Eden, late Mrs. Cave, the happy wife and mother. She need not have troubled herself – for the letter came back a week later with a note from Mrs. Eden of the bursting, bright-buttoned, velvet bodice. Ellen had gone away – no one knew where she had gone.

Mrs. Despard will always reproach herself for not having rushed towards the white face that peered through the glass door. She could have done something – anything. So she thinks, but I am not sure.

"And it was none of it true, Bill," she said piteously, when, Mabel and Gracie safely tucked up in bed, she told him all about it. "I don't know how she could. No dead lover – no retired tea-broker – no pretty house, and sweet-brier hedge with … and no Baby."

"She was a lying lunatic," said Bill. "I never liked her. Hark! what's that? All right, Love-a-duck – daddy's here!"

He went up the stairs three at a time to catch up his baby, who had a way of wandering, with half-awake wailings, out of her crib in the small hours.

"All right, Kiddie-winks, daddy's got you," he murmured, coming back into the drawing-room with the little soft, warm, flannelly bundle cuddled close to him.

"She's asleep again already," he said, settling her comfortably in his arms. "Don't worry any more about that Eden girl, Molly – she's not worth it."

His wife knelt beside him and buried her face against his waistcoat and against the little flannel night-gown.

"Oh, Bill," she said, and her voice was thick with tears, "don't say things like that. Don't you see? It was cruel, cruel! She was all alone – no mother, no sister, no lover. She was made so that no one could ever love her. And she wanted love so much – so frightfully much, so that she just had to pretend that she had it."

"And what about the Baby?" asked Mr. Despard, taking one arm from his own baby to pass it round his wife's shoulders. "Don't be a darling idiot, Molly. What about the Baby?"

"Oh – don't you see?" Mrs. Despard was sobbing now in good earnest. "She wanted the Baby more than anything else. Oh – don't say horrid things about her, Bill! We've got everything – and she'd got nothing at all – don't say things – don't!"

Mr. Despard said nothing. He thumped his wife sympathetically on the back. It was the baby who spoke.

"Want mammy," she said sleepily, and at the transfer remembered her father, "and daddy too," she added politely.

Miss Eden was somewhere or other. Wherever she was she was alone.

And these three were together.

"I daresay you're right about that girl," said Mr. Despard. "Poor wretch! By Jove, she was ugly!"

THE LOVER, THE GIRL, AND THE ONLOOKER

The two were alone in the grassy courtyard of the ruined castle. The rest of the picnic party had wandered away from them, or they from it. Out of the green-grown mound of fallen masonry by the corner of the chapel a great may-bush grew, silvered and pearled on every scented, still spray. The sky was deep, clear, strong blue above, and against the blue, the wallflowers shone bravely from the cracks and crevices of ruined arch and wall and buttress.

"They shine like gold," she said. "I wish one could get at them!"

"Do you want some?" he said, and on the instant his hand had found a strong jutting stone, his foot a firm ledge – and she saw his figure, grey flannel against grey stone, go up the wall towards the yellow flowers.

"Oh, don't!" she cried. "I don't really want them – please not – I wish – "