The Baker’s Daughter (8 page)

“Well, it's good of ye, Mr. Darnay,” said Bulloch at last. “The truth is I'm at a loss what to say. I'm thinking yon picture of Sue is valuable whether it's a study or a portrait or whatever ye call it. Mrs. Bulloch—well—I'll see what she says. I'm sure she'll think the same as me.”

“She won't if you put it to her the right way,” Darnay assured him.

And that, as Bulloch found, was exactly the trouble, for no matter how carefully he explained the whole thing to Susan—and as a matter of fact he knew all the time that he was explaining it far too much and far too carefully—he could see that Susan thought he had been “won over” by Mr. Darnay: fed on the fat of the land, cosseted with good talk, and bribed with the picture he had so admired.

“A man need not be good for all he can quote the Scriptures,” said Mrs. Bulloch at last with a sigh. “Look at David himself! I'd not have trusted Sue alone in a house with David five minutes.”

There was nothing more to be said.

Darnay began to appreciate his housekeeper more highly now that there seemed a chance of losing her—and he began to realize how comfortable he was. He was comfortable with Miss Bun not only in the sense of being well fed and well looked after, but also in mind and spirit. She was exactly the sort of person he needed, a parcel of complements to his own nature. He needed her practical common sense, for it made him feel safely anchored to the earth, and he needed her admiration that, though perfectly obvious, was never merely silly. She had a flavor all her own, and Darnay knew that he would never find anybody else who suited him so well. It never crossed his mind that the girl's reputation might suffer through being alone with him in the house. His mind was keen and flexible, but he had the egotism of the peculiarly gifted, and the very brilliance of his vision blinded him to the small worldly problems of his neighbors.

Sue could have eased his mind if she had known what was troubling him, for she had not the slightest intention of leaving Tog's Mill. It was good for her to be here and she had never been so happy since her mother died. Looking back at her childhood, Sue saw it as a mosaic of small unrelated pictures, or of pictures related only by one figure—her mother's—which could be seen in them all. Herself, the small Sue, seemed different in each picture—sometimes bold, sometimes shy, sometimes happy. She scarcely knew which of the pictures were real memories and which were only stories kept green by her mother, for Mary had been so proud of her small daughter that she loved to tell stories about Sue's cleverness. Sue had worshipped her mother—there was nobody like her, there never could be. Mary had made life seem like a song, an old familiar song, a safe lullaby. She had danced through life, but her very lightheartedness had made life safe. When Mary died the unthinkable had happened and life became dangerous and grim. It became grim in reality, for Will Pringle was strange and moody after the death of his wife; sometimes he was silent for days on end and, at other times, sarcastic and cynical. Sue, struggling with the house—which in her mother's lifetime seemed to run itself—had been an easy victim, and even when she had gained the mastery of housekeeping, she was not safe from his caustic tongue.

All that was changed now, and Sue had come out of the shadow into warm sunshine. Darnay, though he might ignore her when entranced with his work, was as frank and open as the day and had nothing but praise for his housekeeper.

“You do too much,” he told her. “Honestly, you do. Who minds a little dust in the corners! The house is old and far too big—let the dust lie quietly and peacefully. All I want is my bed made and an occasional meal.”

It was perfectly true. Darnay was the most easily pleased man in the world, but Sue had been trained to fight dust—the battle was bred in her bone—and it was quite impossible for her to obey his command and let the dust lie. Besides, she loved the work and went about it with a glow at her heart, for no task, however monotonous or hard, is menial when one serves a king.

The new happy atmosphere and the daily contact with Darnay's mind were doing strange things to Sue. She felt the stirring of growth, not consciously but more as a plant must feel its ripening. The river was a thread of melody, running through her life as a thread runs through beads, binding it into a harmonious whole. She heard it all day as she went about the house, but it was at night that she was most conscious of its song. Sometimes in the stillness the sound of the river would change with the rise in the level of its waters and she would hear it swell from a trickle, which splashed over the old wheel, into a turbulent roar like a giant, suddenly enraged—or she would go to sleep with the roar of a rainstorm in her ears and wake to find it past.

* * *

Sue had not forgotten her desire to know more about the birds that frequented the place, and Darnay was quite ready to instruct her in their names and habits. In the little patch of garden outside the kitchen window there were dozens of birds that came daily for a largesse of crumbs: tits and wrens and chaffinches and countless numbers of sparrows and a cheeky robin that was Sue's especial friend. They would hop from twig to twig upon the branches of an old gnarled apple tree or shelter in the beech hedge that still retained its copper-colored leaves.

“How nice it will be when we have apples!” said Sue one day, when they were leaning out of the kitchen window watching the birds.

“Apples!” exclaimed Darnay. “Oh, we shan't have any apples from that tree. It's too old. See how gnarled and twisted the branches are, and the little twigs are like an old man's fingers. If I were a proper gardener, I should cut it down.”

“I'm glad you're not a proper gardener,” Sue declared.

“The hedge is nice.” He continued:

“…deep in brambly hedges dank

The small birds nip about and say

Brothers, the Spring is not so far away…

“But they are wrong, of course,” he added, “for spring is still a long way off. They've got to weather the storms of winter first, poor little beggars!”

“Poetry,” said Sue.

“Yes, poetry,” he replied, smiling. “No, I can't remember any more. I've got a scrap bag mind, Miss Bun. Just a little bit of this and a little bit of that—not big enough scraps to be of any use except, perhaps, to make a patchwork quilt.”

Sue was silent. A patchwork quilt made of poetry was a strange idea. A few weeks ago she would have said it was nonsense, but she had learned to see things in his way now.

“Do you like poetry?” Darnay inquired.

“We had it at school,” said Sue thoughtfully. “‘The Lady of Shalott' and all that. I didn't mind it, but it was an awful waste of time getting it off by heart.”

“What about Burns?” he asked.

“Oh, that's different—it's music,” Sue told him.

“And ‘The Lady of Shalott' is a picture,” Darnay declared. “It's a sort of medieval decoration—a frieze in scarlet and blue and gold. You can see the knights riding by and the barge drifting down the river between the green waving reeds.”

“Go on, I like it,” Sue said.

“Here's another poem that makes a picture. A modern one this time.

“O fat white woman whom nobody loves,

Why do you walk through the fields in gloves?”

“I can't remember any more,” he continued. “I told you I had a scrappy mind, but there you are. It's a problem picture, of course: Why does she?”

“There might be lots of reasons,” Sue said, a trifle breathless with following his flights of fancy.

“I can't think of any,” Darnay declared. “No, not one. Give me three good reasons why she should do such an odd thing and I'll paint her for you, Miss Bun.”

She thought hard, for she wanted the picture desperately. “Maybe she was on her way to church,” she said at last.

Darnay nodded gravely. “That's possible,” he agreed.

“Or she might have been going to tea with the minister's wife,” cried Sue eagerly. “That's two reasons, Mr. Darnay.”

“Hold on! It was in England, you know.”

“The vicar's wife, then.”

“I suppose I must let you have that,” Darnay said doubtfully. “It isn't really very fair because your two reasons are much the same. She was ‘dressed up' in both cases, wasn't she? What's your third reason?”

“It's dressed up too. She was the vicar's wife and she was going to call on the parish.”

“No,” he cried indignantly. “No, Miss Bun. You forget that nobody loved her. Do you mean to tell me that the vicar—a man of God—didn't love his wife after promising to love and cherish her until death did them part?”

Sue shook her head. “I'd forgotten that. Wait a minute, Mr. Darnay. Somebody had given her the gloves for her birthday and she was so taken up with them that she just had to put them on.”

“Nobody loved her,” declared Darnay firmly. “Nobody loved her, so nobody gave her gloves for her birthday.”

“She was vain, then,” cried Sue in desperation. “She put stuff on her hands to make them white and gloves over the top. She was going out to an evening party and wanted her hands to look nice. Will that do?”

“It'll do,” he said grudgingly. “I don't believe a word of it, really, but it's very ingenious. Come see me paint her picture, Miss Bun?”

Sue followed him into the studio and watched with interest. He took a small wooden panel that was already prepared and set it on the easel near the north light. Then he began to paint.

The picture took shape before Sue's eyes: a field starred with flowers, a hedge, and a far-off clump of dark trees, and, in the foreground, the plumpish lady whom nobody loved, dressed in white and leaning against a stile. The face was turned away and half hidden by the hat, but there was dejection in every line of the figure and hopelessness in the droop of the fat white hands.

“Oh dear, she
is
miserable!” Sue said softly.

“Nobody loves her,” muttered Darnay, painting away industriously.

“But maybe she doesn't mind.”

“Of course she minds. There you are, Miss Bun. Take it away and never let me see it again. The damned woman has wasted my whole afternoon, and the light's going.”

* * *

Sue returned to the kitchen with her prize. She stuck it up on the mantelpiece and made up the fire. Then she put the kettle on for tea. Every now and then she paused and glanced at the “White Lady” and smiled. It was her own. He had painted it for her. She would keep it always.

She was so happy over her latest acquisition that when the back doorbell rang, and she found Grace standing on the steps, she welcomed her quite warmly. Sue was in love and charity with everyone today.

“Hullo, Grace!” she said. “I was just going to infuse the tea.”

Grace came in. She was looking very smart in a brown coat with a fur collar and a red hat. It was a new outfit and Sue commented on it in a friendly manner.

“Are ye still liking it, Sue?” Grace asked when the subject of her new garments was exhausted.

“It's not so bad,” declared Sue. “How's everybody at home?”

“Everybody's fine,” replied Grace casually.

She said no more then, and it was not until they were sitting down to tea that she revealed the reason for her visit.

“Will sent me here. Ye're to come home, Sue,” she said simply.

“I'm to come home, am I?”

“Yes,” said Grace. “Will says it's not fit for ye to be here, yerself.”

“Supposing I'm not wanting to come home.”

Grace sighed gustily. “Will says yer to come. He says it's not decent living alone with a man.”

“And how would Mr. Darnay manage without a housekeeper?” inquired Sue with dangerous sweetness. “How would he get his meals and keep the place clean?”

“He can get some other body. He can get an old woman—there's plenty would be glad of the job.”

Sue laughed. “They'd not be glad long,” she declared roundly. “It's no job, this, for an old done woman to tackle. I'd like to see what the place looked like when she'd been here a week.”

“Maybe so, but that's no business of ours.”

“It's my business, then,” Sue told her, getting heated with the argument despite her efforts to remain calm. “It's my job, and I like it. I was miserable at home—you know that fine, and fine you know the reason.”

“I know ye were hard to get on with,” Grace said, keeping her temper with difficulty, “but maybe things would be better now, and maybe ye wouldn't be at home so long either.”

“So that's it!” cried Sue, her eyes flashing. “It's not that you're wanting me home at all. You're wanting me to marry Ben Grierson—I might have known that was the way of it if I'd had any sense. It's a pity Ben doesn't come ask me himself like a man!”

“He would!” cried Grace eagerly. “Ben's mad for ye, Sue. If I gave him the least wee hint, he'd be out here like a shot.”

“You can keep your hints, for I'm not wanting Ben Grierson nor any other man of your choosing.”

They glared at each other for a moment or two, and then Grace sighed, more deeply than before. The interview was not developing the way she had planned. “I can't think how we got onto Ben,” she said in a propitiatory tone of voice. “Nobody's wanting ye to take the man. It was Will sent me here, and ye've to come home—he's yer father, Sue.”

“So I've heard,” declared Sue dryly.

“What do ye mean?”

“He's my father, and I've worked for him since I was fourteen years old—and never a kind word out of his head—I'm not owing him much.”

Grace sighed. “He's a difficult man.”

There was a little silence and then Grace rose. “I'll need to go,” she said. “Time's getting on, and I've got stewing steak for supper—what will I say to him, Sue?”

“I've told you I'm not coming.”

“My, he'll be awful mad!” said Grace apprehensively.

Sue was somewhat melted at the look on her visitor's face—she knew only too well that it was not without justification. “I'm sorry, Grace,” she said. “I'm sorry, but it's no use saying one thing and meaning another. You're a great deal better off without me in the house.”

Grace did not reply at once. She considered the matter. The fact was they were no better off without Sue. There were not so many open quarrels, of course, but the atmosphere was just as strained and uncomfortable as ever, and Grace still felt an interloper in her husband's house. If she had been of an imaginative turn of mind it might have occurred to her that the house over the bakery was haunted by Mary's ghost, but she was far too matter-of-fact to consider such a possibility for a moment. The house was not haunted, of course; it was Will who was haunted by Mary. He had put another woman in her place, but unfortunately she could not fill it. Will never looked at his new wife's heavy stolid face without seeing Mary's fair merry one. He never heard her voice without hearing the gentle tones of Mary's. He could not even take Grace in his arms without experiencing a passion of longing for Mary.