The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes - Marie Belloc Lowndes

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      And then Daisy broke in coquettishly: “If I’d done anything I wouldn’t mind going for help to Mr. Chandler,” she said.

      And Joe, with eyes kindling, cried, “No. And if you did you needn’t be afraid I’d give you up, Miss Daisy!”

      And then, to their amazement, there suddenly broke from Mrs. Bunting, sitting with bowed head over the table, an exclamation of impatience and anger, and, it seemed to those listening, of pain.

      “Why, Ellen, don’t you feel well?” asked Bunting quickly.

      “Just a spasm, a sharp stitch in my side, like,” answered the poor woman heavily. “It’s over now. Don’t mind me.”

      “But I don’t believe—no, that I don’t—that there’s anybody in the world who knows who The Avenger is,” went on Chandler quickly. “It stands to reason that anybody’d give him up—in their own interest, if not in anyone else’s. Who’d shelter such a creature? Why, ’twould be dangerous to have him in the house along with one!”

      “Then it’s your idea that he’s not responsible for the wicked things he does?” Mrs. Bunting raised her head, and looked over at Chandler with eager, anxious eyes.

      “I’d be sorry to think he wasn’t responsible enough to hang!” said Chandler deliberately. “After all the trouble he’s been giving us, too!”

      “Hanging’d be too good for that chap,” said Bunting.

      “Not if he’s not responsible,” said his wife sharply. “I never heard of anything so cruel—that I never did! If the man’s a madman, he ought to be in an asylum—that’s where he ought to be.”

      “Hark to her now!” Bunting looked at his Ellen with amusement. “Contrary isn’t the word for her! But there, I’ve noticed the last few days that she seemed to be taking that monster’s part. That’s what comes of being a born total abstainer.”

      Mrs. Bunting had got up from her chair. “What nonsense you do talk!” she said angrily. “Not but what it’s a good thing if these murders have emptied the public-houses of women for a bit. England’s drink is England’s shame—I’ll never depart from that! Now, Daisy, child, get up, do! Put down that paper. We’ve heard quite enough. You can be laying the cloth while I goes down the kitchen.”

      “Yes, you mustn’t be forgetting the lodger’s supper,” called out Bunting. “Mr. Sleuth don’t always ring—” he turned to Chandler. “For one thing, he’s often out about this time.”

      “Not often—just now and again, when he wants to buy something,” snapped out Mrs. Bunting. “But I hadn’t forgot his supper. He never do want it before eight o’clock.”

      “Let me take up the lodger’s supper, Ellen,” Daisy’s eager voice broke in. She had got up in obedience to her stepmother, and was now laying the cloth.

      “Certainly not! I told you he only wanted me to wait on him. You have your work cut out looking after things down here—that’s where I wants you to help me.”

      Chandler also got up. Somehow he didn’t like to be doing nothing while Daisy was so busy. “Yes,” he said, looking across at Mrs. Bunting, “I’d forgotten about your lodger. Going on all right, eh?”

      “Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman,” said Bunting. “He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth.”

      His wife left the room, and after she had gone Daisy laughed. “You’ll hardly believe it, Mr. Chandler, but I’ve never seen this wonderful lodger. Ellen keeps him to herself, that she does! If I was father I’d be jealous!”

      Both men laughed. Ellen? No, the idea was too funny.

      Chapter 12

       Table of Contents

      “All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can’t always do just what one wants to do—not in this world, at any rate!”

      Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular, though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room. She was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy. There was in her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which they were both acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other would have to bow.

      There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately, “I don’t see why I should go if I don’t want to!” she cried. “You’ll allow I’ve been useful to you, Ellen? ‘Tisn’t even as if you was quite well.”

      “I am quite well—perfectly well!” snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her stepdaughter.

      “‘Tain’t often I has a chance of being with you and father.” There were tears in Daisy’s voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at his wife.

      An invitation had come to Daisy—an invitation from her own dead mother’s sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave Square. “The family” had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and Aunt Margaret—Daisy was her godchild—had begged that her niece might come and spend two or three days with her.

      But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square. Aunt Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern employer is always sighing. While “the family” were away it was her joy—she regarded it as a privilege—to wash sixty-seven pieces of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room; she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired. These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece to assist her, and Daisy’s soul sickened at the prospect.

      But the matter had to be settled at once. The letter had come an hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret was not one to be trifled with.

      Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go—that there was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife. But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set on her own view.

      “What the child says is true,” he observed. “It isn’t as if you was quite well. You’ve been took bad twice in the last few days —you can’t deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn’t I just take a bus and go over and see Margaret? I’d tell her just how it is. She’d understand, bless you!”

      “I won’t have you doing nothing of the sort!” cried Mrs. Bunting, speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done. “Haven’t I a right to be ill, haven’t I a right to be took bad, aye, and to feel all right again—same as other people?”

      Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. “Oh, Ellen!” she cried; “do say that you can’t spare me! I don’t want to go across to that horrid old dungeon of a place.”

      “Do as you like,” said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. “I’m fair tired of you both! There’ll come a day, Daisy, when you’ll know, like me, that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when your Aunt Margaret’s left her savings to somebody else just because you wouldn’t spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you’ll know what it’s like to go without—you’ll know what a fool you were, and that nothing can’t alter it any more!”

      And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it snatched from her.

      “Ellen is right,” Bunting said heavily. “Money does matter—a terrible deal—though I never thought to hear Ellen say ’twas the only thing that mattered. But ’twould be foolish—very, very foolish, my girl, to offend your Aunt Margaret. It’ll only

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