The throats of the two girls were contracting. Two cats rolled together in one ball in the sun could not have led a more intimate life, yet there was very little they had shared, with the consequence that Belle, now that they were being drawn apart, began to ransack her mind for some little favour, preferably of a secret cast, to offer her cousin as evidence of her true affection.
‘Lolly,’ she said, at last, ‘we have not thought what I shall carry on the day. Everything will be in flower, yet nothing seems suitable. To me. You are the one who must decide.’
Laura did not hesitate.
‘I would choose pear blossom.’
‘But the sticks!’ protested the bride. ‘They will only be unmanageable, and look ugly.’
It was like Laura, herself at times stiff and awkward, to suggest anything so grotesque.
‘You are not in earnest?’ Belle asked.
‘Yes,’ said Laura.
And she looked at her cousin, who was the more poignant in that her pure poetry could transcend her rather dull doubts. The blossom was already breaking from her fingertips, and from the branches of her arms.
Then Belle knew that she must do as Laura saw it.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, murmuringly. ‘If the wind will not dry it up before the day.’
All this, trivial in itself, was spoken over the busy heads of the women who were clustered round the bride. The two girls alone read the significance of what their hearts received, and locked it up, immediately.
At this period Mrs Bonner had every reason to feel satisfied, but her nature demanded that her whole house be in order. She must make her last attempt. With this end in view, she approached her niece one day as the latter was standing with the child in her arms, and said:
‘You must come in, my dear, and meet the Asbolds.’
‘The Asbolds? Who are the Asbolds?’
‘They are good people who have a little property at Penrith,’ Aunt Emmy replied.
But Laura began protecting herself with her own shoulders.
‘I am not decent,’ she complained. ‘And I do not want to inflict Mercy on the kitchen.’
‘Then, indecent as you are,’ laughed the aunt, who was in a good humour. ‘You may bring Mercy, too. They arc quite simple people.’
‘These Asbolds,’ asked the niece, as she was swept through the house, ‘are they acquaintances of long standing?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Mrs Bonner, ‘although I have known them, well, some little while.’
Which was true. All this time Laura’s wise child was looking at the older woman.
Then they went into the little, rarely used parlour, where the visitors were waiting, as befitted quite simple people from Penrith.
Mrs Asbold, who had risen and made some deferential gesture, was a large, comfortable body, with pink cheeks that the sun had as yet failed to spoil. On the other hand, her husband, who had led a life of exposure to all weathers in both countries, was already well cured; he was of seasoned red leather, and beginning to shrivel up. So clearly was honesty writ upon their faces, one felt it would have been dishonest to submit the couple to proof by questioning.
However, when everyone was seated, and shyness dissolved, a pleasant talk was begun, in the course of which Mrs Asbold had to exclaim:
‘And this is the little girl. How lovely and sturdy she is.’
The baby, who had but lately gone into frocks, was indeed a model child, both in her rosy flesh, and, it appeared, in her unflinching nature.
‘Would you come to me, dear?’ asked Mrs Asbold, her grey-gloved hands hesitating upon her comfortable knees.
Mercy did not seem averse, and was soon planted in the visitor’s lap.
‘Are you as Christian as your name, eh?’ asked the husband, feeling the substance of the child’s cheek with his honest fingers, and grinning amiably, up to the gaps in his back teeth. ‘We could do with such a little girl. Eh?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the woman, as if she had been hungry all these years.
Like Mr Asbold, Laura was also smiling, but stupidly. She felt ill.
‘She would be killed with kindness, I feel sure,’ said Mrs Bonner, fidgeting with the ribbons of her cap.
The aunt remembered a play she had once seen in which all the actors were arranged in a semicircle, in anticipation of a scene the dramatist had most cunningly prepared, and just as he had controlled his situation, Mrs Bonner now hoped to manage hers, forgetting that she was not a dramatist, but herself an actor in the great play.
‘The Asbolds,’ said Aunt Emmy, looking at Laura, but lowering her eyelids and fluttering them as if there had been a glare, ‘the Asbolds,’ she repeated, ‘have the finest herd of dairy cows at Penrith. And the prettiest house. Such pigs, too. But it is the house that would take your eye, Laura, so I am led to understand, and in the spring, with the fruit blossom. Is not the fruit blossom, Mr Asbold, looking very fine?’
‘They are nice trees,’ the man said.
‘In such healthy, loving surroundings, a little girl could not help but grow up happy,’ suggested Mrs Bonner.
Mrs Asbold wetted her lips.
‘You have no children of your own?’ asked Laura, whose limbs had turned against her.
‘Oh, no,’ said the woman, shortly.
She was looking down. She was busy with the child’s short skirt, touching, and arranging, but guiltily.
‘It must be a great sadness for you,’ said Laura Trevelyan.
Her compassion reached the barren woman, who now looked up, and returned it.
Mrs Bonner had the impression that something was happening which she did not understand. So she said, almost archly:
‘Would you not be prepared to give Mercy to Mrs Asbold, Laura?’ Then, with the sobriety that the situation demanded: ‘I am sure the poor child’s unfortunate mother would be only too grateful to see her little one so splendidly placed.’
Laura could not answer. This is the point, she felt, at which it will be decided, one way or the other, but by some superior power. Her own mind was not equal to it.
‘Will you take it, Liz?’ Mr Asbold asked, doubtfully.
His wife, who was ruffling up the child’s hair as she pondered, seemed to be preparing herself to commit an act of extreme brutality.
The child did not flinch.
‘Yes,’ said the woman, peering into the stolid eyes. ‘She knows I would not hurt her. I would not hurt anyone.’
‘But will you take her?’ asked the man, who was anxious to be gone to things he knew.
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘She would not be ours.’
Her mouth, in her amiable, country face, had become unexpectedly ugly, for she had committed the brutal act, only it was against herself.
‘Oh, no, no,’ she said. ‘I will not take her.’
Getting up, she put the child quickly but considerately in the young lady’s lap.
‘She would have too many mothers.’
Everybody had forgotten Mrs Bonner, who was no longer of importance in that scene, except to show the Asbolds out. This she did, and immediately went upstairs.
Because she, too, was powerless, Laura Trevelyan continued to sit where left, and at first scarcely noticed the persistent Mercy. Important though it was that the child should remain, her considerable victory was by no means final. No victory is final, the unhappy Laura saw, and in her vision of further deserts was touching his face with a renewed tenderness, where the skin ended and the rather coarse beard began, until the little girl became frightened, first of her mother’s eyes, then of her devouring passion, and begged to be released.