The money sense; a novel

Chapter I

‘ What has she been doing now ?’ asked a soft woman’s voice in a questioning tone.

‘ Doing !’ was the reply, ‘doing ! Oh ! always the same. It’s the same old tale from morning till night. I am utterly sick of it. Oh ! Gwyn, Gwyn, I’m so tired of hearing the recital of my own dark doings and misdeeds. Is it wicked that I want to be out in the world ; that I want to be up and doing some bigger, better, nobler work than setting new collars and cuffs on Father’s shirts — not even dress shirts, by the by? Has Mother no soul beyond under-linen and pots of jam ?’

‘ Mother is only the natural outcome of a very young marriage,’ Gwyn replied. Gwyn Torville was a widow, living at home for the sake of convenience, a woman who had lived her life, a woman whose ideals had long ago been shattered, who had but too plainly seen the feet of clay under the garment of the idol of gold, and whose only remaining desire in this world was for peace — that peace which never comes upon a household where mother and daughters are each striving to go totally different ways.

‘ It ought to have taught her something,’ muttered Angelique, dropping down in a heap on the hearthrug, and staring with great, grey, angry eyes at the flickering flames of the newly mended fire.

‘ It has taught her how to dovetail yesterday’s dinner into to-day’s,’ said Gwyn mildly, ‘ and the inestimable value of white work.’

‘ Oh, yes, I know,’ cried the girl on the hearth with a weary sigh. ‘ I know it all. And also when to judiciously ruffle Father into a temper against one of us. Also the whole duty of daughters, especially the unmarried ones. One ought to have no secrets from Mother, no aspirations that Mother hasn’t had, one ought to ask leave to walk down the village, and to let Mother choose one’s frocks, and not to mind when she travels round in her noiseless, flat-footed fashion, gathering up little items of information from one’s letters and one’s pockets. Oh ! Gwyn, Gwyn, is there no way out of it ?

Must I go on for ever living this useless little petty, paltry life? Why should it be so different for girls and for boys ? Look at the difference that has always been made between the boys and us. Jack went out as soon as he left school; he earns his own money, and spends it as he will; he lives his own life, he is making his own way; he is beholden to nobody, independent, unfettered, free.’

‘Jack works,’ put in Gwyn quietly.

‘ I am ready to work — longing to work — aching to work,’ cried Angelique passionately. ‘ I ask you, Gwyn, did you ever consider me lazy when there was anything worth doing? Iff am going to a dance, I don’t mind working day and night at dressmaking ! You know that. It’s a small thing, I know, but it shows what I can do. Straws show which way the stream flows, the whole world knows that ! If we want a room changing about — who works with such a will as I? No one — and as for Mother, her work consists chiefly in making everybody feel that they are doing nothing, and that the whole burden has fallen on her. Oh ! Gwyn, I’m so sick of it all — I’m so sick of it.’

‘ I know you are,’ said Gwyn, dropping her needlework on her knee, and looking with beautiful, compassionate eyes at the stormy face of her impetuous younger sister. She was full of compassion. She had borne the heat and burden of the day, had gone through this phase of disquietude and craving after a life not wholly filled with petty domestic cares, she had married in a desperate moment the first man who came her way, had found herself, to use an old adage,

‘ out of the frying pan into the fire,’ had put up uncomplainingly with a bad husband, had seen one frail baby life after another drop silently into the grave, and had come back to the old home, to the well-known trials, thankful for the smallest mercy in the shape of peace. She knew so well where the shoe pinched ; she knew so well where the goads pricked ; and she knew, too, the uselessness of trying to kick against the one or to walk off the other.

‘Why can’t they bring up boys and girls on an equal footing?’ Angelique said piteously.

‘ What were we brought up for ? The marriage market — nothing more or less ! The boys were educated, properly educated, with thorough technical educations which would fit them for the lives they were intended to lead ; they were put out, given a start, encouraged to do their best. But we — what was ever done for us? Just a cheap education, a smattering of this, a dabbling in that. We were meant and intended for no career but marriage, and we were never given a good start even at that. Why, Mother will keep us stitching at shirts until Father and the boys are clogged up with shirts. But a frock — that is vanity, nothing but vanity. A dance is running after the world, an admirer is the abomination of wickedness, and a little harmless flirtation is “ making oneself cheap and she^ who was married at seventeen, she never did that. Oh ! Gwyn, Gwyn, I’m so tired of it all.’

‘ But there’s Gustave,’ put in Gwyn in a mild voice.

‘ Gustave — ah, yes, Gustave is a love, a darling ; but there are times, Gwyn, when even Gustave is useful as a scourge to flay me with. If I really loved Gustave as a girl ought to love the husband of her heart, I should never want to go to a dance, I should never want to mix with people until he came back again ; if Gustave knew how flighty and fickle I am, he would put an end to himself, he would break his heart, and a great deal more. Oh ! I’ve heard it all so often ! And Gustave is away on the other side of the world. God only knows when he will come back again, or what we shall have to live on when he does. And yet — yet ’

‘ Yet you love him, my poor impetuous Angelique,’ murmured Gwyn tenderly.

‘ Love him ! ’ Angelique echoed, ‘ love him ! Oh, dear God, how much, how much ! But I have still the instinct of living, even though Gustave is on the other side of the world. I don’t want him to come back to find that I have forgotten how to smile, or how to dress myself, to find me with my complexion gone to paste because I have sat stitching more under-things than I can ever wear out. I don’t want to have forgotten how to enjoy. things — that’s not my idea of love. Gwyn, you know how I love Gustave, you know how I live for him, long for him, yearn and count the days to the joyful time

when we shall meet again, but — but ’

‘ I think I know — go on,’ said Gwyn.

‘ There are times,’ Angelique went on, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘ there are times when I feel that life might not be worth living if Gustave is all that Mother paints him. Yes, she talks and talks and talks of him, his looks, his family, his doings, his sayings, what he likes and what he dislikes, how he explains this and how he objects to the other, and the result is a Gustave whom I don’t know, a Gustave whom I hate, a Gustave whom I could not, would not live with for a day ! Oh ! Let me tell you, even a Gustave is not an unmixed blessing. ’

‘ But what would you do, dear?’ Gwyn asked.

* Do ? Anything — anything — so that I could get away from home and earn a living for myself, so that I could be independent and quiet.’

‘And just when you were beginning to make headway, Gustave would come back again, and all your energy and effort would have been wasted, ’ Gwyn put in.

‘ Not wasted. Honest work is never wasted! ’ Angelique cried triumphantly.

‘ But you wouldn’t go on with any work that you might have taken up.’

‘ I don’t know. I should never be the worse off for having a profession at my fingers’ ends. ’

‘ But what could you do ?’

‘Anything — I wouldn’t care what! I play above the average, though I’ve never had lessons worth calling by the name. The money,’ speaking bitterly, ‘was always wanted for the boys. I might go to Berlin and study under

Madame Schumann for six months, and ’

‘It would cost a fortune,’ said Gwyn, half scared, married woman and widow as she was, by her sister’s daring and enterprise.

‘A fortune I Pooh! Next to nothing. You live in a pension for about a pound a week. The lessons would be the greatest expense. ’

‘ And when you had done with her — I mean at the end of the six months?’

‘ I should be independent. There is always room for a good pianist, always. I should go to London, take rooms — you could live with me and share expenses if you liked — and get engagements. I should do well at it. ’

‘ And if you got no engagements ? I don’t believe you would play well enough even if you went to Madame Schumann for six months. Supposing t hatyou found engagements impossible, what then ?’

‘ Then — why, I should take up something else. There’s the stage.’

‘ I don’t believe Gustave would like that,’ said Gwyn with decision.

‘ I know he would not. That was why I did not put it first. I would try everything else before I went in for that, just because of Gustave. I might take up art. Women make lots of money at art work nowadays — all those umbrella stands and plaques and things. I should enter at South Kensington and work for shops, and study hard for the Academy in between. I could do black and white and Christmas cards.’

‘ But why could you not work at home ?’ Gwyn asked. ‘ You would live for nothing. Mother would never expect you to pay her for that, no matter how much you might make. And then you would have all the money to put by for the time when Gustave comes home. ’

But Angelique shook her head. ‘No, no, it couldn’t be done that way. You must be on the spot, you must be in the swim, or you are out of it altogether. Besides, I should never get the time to do it in. Mother would always call it a waste ! She would come buzzing round teaching me how to do it all, and irritating me till I didn’t know black from white, or green from yellow. I tell you, I want to get out of it all — the everlasting fuss and worry and nagging, the morning, noon, and night of it all, and the unending catalogue of an impossibleand preposterous Gustave’s virtues. I want to be free.’

‘I understand,’ murmured Gwyn softly. ‘I used to feel just like that once. Only — you must not forget, Angel, that to be free sometimes, oh, often means to be unsheltered ; independence may mean having no one to turn to ; earning a living doesn’t always mean paying for pocketmoney things, but for the stern necessities of a bare existence. Don’t do anything rash. I know Mother is trying sometimes — oh ! how well I know it ! — but don’t decide in a hurry ; don’t burn your boats behind you.’

‘And you will help me to get away?’ said Angelique eagerly.

lO

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘ They will never let me go without you — you’ll go if need be ?’

‘Yes, I will go if need be,’ said Gwyn Torville steadily, a sudden blaze of light in her eyes. ‘Oh, Angel,’ she said, ‘don’t you think / sometimes feel it all still ? I am ten years older than you, and life has been pretty much of a failure for me, but I have longings, aspirations, ambitions. I yearn to be free sometimes.’

‘ We will go together !’ cried Angelique, catching hold of her sister’s hand and holding it close.

For a moment Gwyn caught the girl to her and kept her fast in her arms. ‘ Dear Angel, you have a Gustave, and he loves you. I think sometimes you forget it. ’

‘ No, no ; dear Gustave — I worship him,’ cried Angelique, who w^as thinking of her great schemes for asserting her independence.

‘ There is the bell for tea. Let us go down,’ said Gwyn, going back soberly to everyday life.

The two went down the handsome stairs together. They were wide and shallow stairs, leading down into a spacious entrance hall, which was cold and cheerless, not an entrance hall of to-day with gay rugs and a wealth of bright colours, but sparsely furnished and chill both in atmosphere and aspect.

II

‘Think what we might make of it,’ said Angelique, as they went down; ‘but, no, it would be a sin to cover up the marble pavement, and a crime to hang pictures and rubbish on the pahited walls. And a fire would be reckless extravagance, and a tablecloth would look ridiculous. Ah! Letters!’ she exclaimed, in a totally different tone.

She was down the remaining steps in half a minute and across the hall to the polished table under the window. Upon its shining and immaculate surface reposed several letters, among them one with a New Zealand postmark. Before Gwyn had reached the door of the dining-room, Angelique had torn the cover and was eagerly devouring the contents. As the elder sister laid her hand on the door an exclamation made her look back. ‘ Angel — what is it ?’ she asked ; then turned and went nearer to her. ‘ Gustave is coming home ? He has had good luck ?’

Angelique put out her hand as if to ask for silence, devouring the letter with wide-open eyes the while. Then she folded the sheet and put it back in the envelope.

‘ I may as well tell you,’ she said. ‘ Gustave is never coming back. Gustave has had luck, but it’s not the kind of luck that he can ask me to share. He is going to be married to somebody else — she’s rich.’

‘ My poor Angel,’ Gwyn began, but Angelique turned upon her with flaming eyes.

‘For God’s sake, don’t pity me!’ she cried, in a fierce undertone — ‘ anything but that. But if you love me, help me to get away. If it is ragged over and ragged over, I shall go mad. Don’t ask me any questions. I’ll show you the letter, and you will know as much and as little as I know. You can tell them to-morrow — only, for God’s sake, no pity.’

Chapter II

I CAN only describe the life which was lived by Angelique Dodsworth, after she received Gustave Maynard’s letter of renunciation, as a martyrdom.

The contents of the letter could not long be kept from her Mother’s knowledge — that was a matter of course. Mrs. Dodsworth was a good woman of a peculiar aggravating type. That is to say, she was a woman of unblemished virtue. Possibly she had never had any temptation to be other than virtuous, for she had married while very young, and her husband was an easy-going kind of man, who was capable upon occasion of feeling and showing the most furious jealousy. And, like many other easy-going persons, he was also capable of the most outrageous transports of rage. There were times when he could be thrown into perfect avalanches of passion; and in course of time his wife had learned so accurately to gauge his mental conditions, that she could by a word or two effectually put him out of conceit with any one. This little trait was one which she found most useful in her dealings with her children, and it was also one of which she never scrupled to make the fullest use in the furtherance of her own ends.

One of the most curious sides of Mrs. Dodsworth’s remarkable and exceedingly complex character was that she invariably overestimated the value and importance of even the most trifling incident which concerned herself. She always spoke of herself as a good woman sorely tried ! I have said that she was virtuous — no doubt ever was or ever had been raised on that point — but in her virtue had to stand sponsor for a great deal. Of the minor virtues, such as are instinct with many women, she knew absolutely nothing. She did not understand that it is a greater kindness to leave an open wound unprobed than it is to offer bread to the hungry. She loved to talk things over, to look at them from this point and from that, to explain them as they appeared to be from her particular standpoint; and having wearied her hearer into a jaded acquiescence, it was her joy to then turn right about, march round until she reached an exactly opposite coign of vantage, when she would mentally plant herself down and explain the entire situation to her own extreme satisfaction, so as to make the new stand-point fit joint by joint with the old one. It was an exhaustive process for the audience ; and in such a case as that of Angelique’s broken love affair, it was one fraught with living agony to the one who was obliged to listen. For there was no getting away from Mrs. Dodsworth. As easily might the wedding guest have got away from the Ancient Mariner as a luckless fly get out of the web of Mrs. Dodsworth’s complicated converse.

‘ Will it never stop ?’ Angelique cried desperately to Gwyn one morning when Gustave Maynard’s letter was a three-days’ -old wonder. ‘ Is she going on for ever ?’

‘ My poor Angel!’ murmured Gwyn pityingly.

‘ She wonders how he could have the effrontery to treat a daughter of hers like that!’ Angelique went on derisively. ‘ It is a far more weighty matter to Mother that he has dared to treat her daughter ill than that he has broken my heart. What’s the good of ragging it over and over? Cannot she see that it hurts, hurts hereV laying her hand on her heart and looking at Gwyn with great, grey, wide-open eyes.

‘ My dear, my dear, Mother doesn’t mean to be unkind. She could not,’ Gwyn cried. ‘If only she would not talk, or would talk to me of it ! ’

‘ If we could only get away,’ Angelique cried. ‘Oh! Gwyn, cannot you help me to get away?

Cannot you tell Father how miserable I am, here where every one knows us, knows all about Gustave, knows that he has — has jilted me ? He surely will understand how Mother worries me, how she churns it over and over till I could shriek aloud for sheer nervousness lest she is going to begin it all over again ? Daddy is good-natured and kind — surely he will give me a chance of getting away from any more torture.’

‘ I’ll ask him. I’ll take the very first chance,’ said Gwyn soothingly. ‘ But I must find a chance first. I can’t rush it on him. Hush — is that Mother coming back again ?’

‘Yes — yes — I’m off. I can’t hear it all over again to-day,’ Angelique cried.

She smiled at Gwyn and bolted out of the room by a door ojjposite to the one which Mrs. Dodsworth was even then approaching. Gwyn thought of the smile with a shudder. What is there so sad as a smile which is only tears frozen hard?

‘Where is Angelique?’ asked the mother as she came into the room.

‘Angelique? She was here a few minutes ago,’ Gwyn replied. ‘ I don’t know where she went.’

Mrs. Dodsworth turned back again and carefully closed the door. Then she settled herself down by the fire just opposite to Gwyn, arranged her spectacles to a nicety at the right angle of her nose, and spread out a voluminous garment of white calico which was in process of fashioning.

‘The white hen has laid an egg to-day,’ she remarked casually; ‘the little white hen with the feathery legs.’

‘You don’t say so,’ returned Gwyn, feigning an interest which she was very far from feeling.

‘ Yes, I did not expect her to lay much before Christmas,’ said Mrs. Dods worth cheerfully.

‘I’m sure it is very considerate of her,’ said Gwyn.

‘ Yes — yes — it is. Ah! if everything else was as smooth and easy as the henyard, we should do very well,’ Mrs. Dodsworth remarked, her tone changing. ‘ Do you know, Gwyn, I cannot make out this affair at all. I don’t seem to be able to get at the rights of it.’

‘Oh! dear Mother, ’ cried Gwyn impatiently,

‘ the rights are easy enough to get at. He has no money, and Angelique has no money, and he has thrown her over for somebody who has — that’s all.’

‘ But for my daughter to be thrown over — it’s such an insult to me.’

‘I don’t suppose he thought of that,’ put in Gwyn sarcastically.

‘ But / think of it. I’m sure we ought not to let it pass. Father ought to take it up.’

‘ Taking it up won’t unmarry him or make him a true lover to Angelique,’ said Gwyn, with quick decision. ‘ You could not possibly get Father to take him to task. He has chosen to throw Angelique over ; it is not for any of us to make him think that she or we regret him.’

‘ But does Angelique regret him ? She won’t talk about him, not even to me. Just Yes and No, and that’s all the answer I get. Most girls would like to confide in their mother, to talk it over, to decide what to do. But everything is kept from me — it is always the same.’

‘ Dear Mother,’ cried Gwyn, ‘ it is not so. The child is knocked over altogether by this blow. It is a blow — she loved him. It was quite unexpected. Give her time to breathe again. She wants to talk to no one, to confide in no one. She wants to be left alone, to get over it, as an animal gets into covert and gets over its wounds — or — dies.’

‘Angelique won’t die,’ said Mrs. Dodsworth, in no wise moved by the entreaty and tenderness in Gwyn’s voice. ‘ In a few weeks’ time she will be gadding about as jauntily as ever. ’

‘ She would like to go away,’ began Gwyn.

‘Away — where ?’

‘ To London. She would like to do something — to work — to try to forget. It is so difficult to forget in a place where everybody knows.’

‘ It is difficult to forget one’s troubles anywhere, as I know from experience,’ said Mrs. Dods worth with a prodigious sigh. ‘As for work, bless me I there’s work enough here and to spare. I got all that linen for new sheets and pillow slips. It must all be drawn and feather-stitched ’

‘Not work of that kind,’ cried Gwyn, in despair of ever getting the subject broached.

‘What kind of work then?’ demanded her mother.

‘Well — more serious work. Art work, or black and white, drawing black-and-white pictures for illustrations, you know. Or she might take up music or go on the stage.’

Mrs. Torville uttered the last four words in a voice scarcely above a whisper ; but Mrs. Dodsworth, though at times she was most conveniently deaf, heard them distinctly.

‘On the stage! a daughter of mine go on the stage!’ she cried, in loud, astonished accents. ‘Why, Gwyn, what nonsense have you been putting in Angelique’s head?’

* I have not put the idea in her head. Mother,’ said Gwyn quietly. ‘Angelique is young and ambitious. All young girls, who have a soul above waiting till some man condescends to marry them, have ambitions, and long to be of use in the world.’

‘ Of use ! I never found that Angelique longed to be of use,’ Mrs. Dodsworth cried. ‘ When did that craze come in, pray ?’

‘ She has always longed to go out into the world — to work — to cut out a career for herself,’ answered Gwyn steadily.

‘ To get away from the restraints of home, you mean,’ returned the mother drily. ‘I know what that means. Why should my daughter not be satisfied to stay at home in comfort like other girls ? I always was. ’

‘You married at seventeen. Mother,’ said Gwyn, smiling ; ‘Angelique is four-and-twenty.’

‘ Well, and whose fault is that? Not mine. I knew what it would be when she was first engaged to Gustave Maynard. I said to her months before that even — “Angelique, you will go through the wood and through the wood, and you’ll pick up a crooked stick at last.” ’

‘And, poor child, she hasn’t picked up a stick of any kind,’ said Gwyn pitifully. ‘ Still, I do think. Mother, if you could make up your mind to let her try her wings for a time, say for six months or a year, you would not regret it. I would go with her, and we would share out together. You would be satisfied that she was being taken care of. If she succeeded, you would be proud, and she would be happy and satisfied ; and if she failed, why, she would be glad to come home to the old nest, and she would appreciate it more than she had ever done before.’

But what chance will she have up there of marrying and settling ?’ Mrs. Dodsworth asked anxiously.

‘ Dear Mother,’ said Gwyn, ‘ Madge’s marriage and mine have not been so successful that you need regret that chance for her. She met Gustave here. I think she might do better in a new circle.’

‘I don’t know but that you are right,’ Mrs. Dodsworth admitted.

Gwyn knew that the day was won, and pressed the question no further. She carried the news of her triumph to Angelique, whom she found in her bedroom busily engaged in turning out all Gustave’s presents and letters.

‘ I shall not want these now,’ she said, turning her sad eyes upon Gwyn. ‘ There’s nothing of any value excepting my ring. I shall send that back by post ; all the rest I shall put in the fire. I want to take nothing of the old life into the new. ’

‘Don’t burn your boats too completely,’ said Gwyn.

‘ Why not ? I can never go back now ; there’s no room for me in the past. I must get on — get on — and forget that there were ever boats to cross in.’

‘I think I have paved the way,’ Gwyn said, sitting down on the little stool which stood beside the fender.

‘Not really? With Daddy?’

‘ No — with Mother. I felt it was best to enlist her if I could. She has such power over Father, and can make such a difference to everything. I think it is all right.’

‘And she did not take fright at the stage?’ Angelique exclaimed.

‘ Well, she did, rather. But I am sure she sees how hard it would be for you to stay here where everybody knows or will know all about it. And I suggested to her that if you had a fair try at hard work for a year or even six months, and failed — that you would be willing to come home again.’

‘ Gwyn, you’re a wonderful woman,’ Angelique cried, her eyes beginning to blaze. ‘ I shall owe you a good turn for this all my life as long as I live. Fail ! Fail, did you say ? Oh! only let me once get a chance, and you see whether I fail.

Fail ! — I tell you there is no such word in my vocabulary. ’

‘ But you must go softly over the stones,’ said Gwyn, smiling in her tender way.

‘Yes, yes, old Safety-Valve, I’ll keep that in mind,’ Angelique cried.

She was almost gay, almost her old enthusiastic self. She discussed the prospect from this side and that, laid plans, arranged all manner of little details in a way which carried even Gwyn along with her. Gwyn had sucked the orange of life, and had found very early that it was a bitter one, and none too good at that. Yet even she was not proof against the fascination of the vivid pictures of time to come that slipped from Angelique’s persuasive and eloquent tongue. She thought that the prospect of change and rest from the tediousness of home had already dulled the sharp edge of the bitter humiliation which had just fallen upon her, and she was glad.