Chapter VIII: The Return of the Prodigal

‘Home at last,’ cries the wanderer, with glad thankfulness.

This is a night of rejoicing in Dr. Faunthorpe’s modest dwelling. The prodigal daughter has returned, and the fatted calf, or at least so much of him as a cutlet, fried as only Hester can fry a veal cutlet, is served up in her honour. How cheery and homely the common parlour, with its shabby old furniture, dimly illuminated by two composite candles which leave the paneled corners in densest shadow, seems to those tired eyes!

‘It is so nice to be at home again, uncle,’ says Sibyl lovingly, as she draws her chair a little nearer the doctor’s at supper-time. ‘What an old dear Hester is! and how deliciously she cooks!’

‘If you’re so fond of home, I wonder you stayed away so long,’ remarks Marion, who cannot help being occasionally disagreeable in her petty way. There was nothing large-minded about Marion, Sibyl used to complain. She would never commit a big sin, but would forfeit heaven by a multitude of infinitesimal faults.

‘Marion’s faults are like the animalculæ in a glass of water,’ remarked Sibyl on another occasion, ‘too minute to be seen without a microscope, but making the water unwholesome all the same.’

‘I had to stop away to suit other people’s convenience,’ replies the prodigal, looking downward as she squeezes lemon juice upon her cutlet.

‘How altered you must be!’ says that odious Marion. ‘Other people’s convenience used to be the last thing you thought about. When is your luggage coming?’

‘My luggage? I brought it with me.’

‘I mean the rest of your luggage. The omnibus man brought in nothing but a carpet bag.’

‘That is my luggage,’ answers Sibyl, colouring to the roots of her hair. It is the first tinge of red that has warmed her delicate cheek since her arrival. ‘I gave one of Mrs. Hazleton’s servants that horrid old heavy trunk of mine.’

‘But your dresses, your linen, you can’t get them all into that carpet bag,’ cries Marion, almost in a shriek. To be without variety of clothes is the last calamity she can conceive among the miseries of humanity.

‘I have not one dress besides this. You can’t have any notion how one’s dresses wear out in a schoolroom--mischievous romping girls pulling one about all day long, ink spilt in every direction, candle-grease on all the tables, cups of tea perpetually turned over. I was determined to buy nothing during the last quarter, so I wore my old dresses till they were almost in rags, and gave them to my favourite housemaid when I came away.’

‘I dare say it was an excellent plan,’ says Marion, shrugging her thin shoulders, ‘but you won’t be in a condition to make a very good appearance in Redcastle till you’ve new things. People will expect you to bring down the London fashions too. They come out on the first of March, don’t they?’

‘What a pity Fate made you a gentleman’s daughter Marion,’ remarks Sibyl, with a cold sneer. ‘You would have made such a capital milliner. Your soul would have been in your work.’

Dr. Faunthorpe sits back in his chair, reposeful, after that little bit of hot supper, which is not an every-day luxury. The small snappings and snarlings of his nieces hardly discompose him, he is so used to their sisterly talk. He is glad to have his handsome niece at home again, seated close to his chair, with all those familiar winning ways which have won her the first place in his heart; small gushings of loving speech, tender little smiles, gentle touches of a white fluttering hand--graces of manner which may mean very little, but are very sweet; petty Circean arts which have beguiled honest men to ruin and death before to-day.

‘My darling,’ he says presently, as the dark brown eyes smile upon him, brightening in the candlelight, ‘I am so glad you have come back. It wasn’t wise to stay away so long at the risk of vexing your uncle Trenchard: but I’ll say no more about that. You are here, and all is well. You must go and see him to-morrow.’

‘How can she,’ exclaims Marion, ‘in that gown?’ pointing contemptuously to Sibyl’s shabby alpaca, an alpaca which has seen much service, cockled by the rain, and frayed at the edges of the cuffs, and with that shrunken and dwindled appearance that ill-used garments are apt to assume.

‘Pshaw, what does her gown matter? You can lend her a gown. You have gowns enough and to spare.’

‘None that will fit Sibyl,’ replies Marion, who prides herself on her superior height. ‘She’s welcome to wear one, but it’ll be two inches on the ground.’

‘Can’t she run a tuck, or cut a bit off?’ argues uncle Robert.

‘I shall have to give you a tonic, my love,’ he adds, contemplating his elder niece anxiously, ‘you are looking so fagged and worn.’

‘I am at home with you, uncle Robert; that is the best tonic for me,’ replies the girl fondly.

She is fond of him to-night. This shabby old home, which she abandoned in sheer discontent two years ago, seems very dear to her just now. It is a haven for a storm-beaten soul.

‘You will have a better home than this, my pet, I hope, for the greater part of your time,’ answers the doctor, cheerily. ‘I’ve no doubt your uncle Trenchard will ask you to stay with him as he did Marion. She was quite three months at Lancaster Lodge, and is to go back again by-and-bye. I look upon her as little more than a visitor here; but she is kind enough to make the best of her old uncle Robert’s humdrum house.’

‘It is a great relief to be here for a change, uncle,’ answers Marion. ‘I felt a fine lady at uncle Trenchard’s, but I feel my own mistress here. If it wasn’t for that tyrannical old Hester your house would be liberty hall; and I can forgive even Hester when she is in a good humour and makes hot cakes for breakfast.’

An hour later and uncle Robert has smoked his after-supper pipe, and the girls are in their bedroom, the old room which Sibyl knows so well, with its ridiculous flowered paper, low ceiling, and high painted dado, and curious brass safety bolts upon the door, as if burglars were a contingency to be provided against in that humble dwelling. How well she remembers the long narrow chimney-piece, the basket-shaped grate with its wide hobs, the open-work brass fender, the painted four-post bedstead, drab and green, with skimpy dimity valance, and two starveling curtains. The rickety deal dressing-table, the streaky looking-glass, which used to reflect a fair girl’s face wondering at its own beauty. The tall mahogany wardrobe that never was opened without threatening to topple over and wreak destruction on its violator. The scanty strips of bedside carpet, dull in colour and perplexing in pattern. How often she has pored and puzzled over those interwoven scrolls, in sheer idleness of thought. All things are unchanged. There are the wretched old ornaments on the mantelpiece. The pasteboard spill-boxes, adorned with faded gold paper, ancient works of art by fingers that have long been dust. The little black Wedgwood vases, urn-shaped, funereal. The hand screens with lithographs of Dr. Syntax pasted thereupon, and more paper gilding. The two black profile miniatures of dead and forgotten relatives.

It seems a dear old room somehow to Sibyl to-night, for it brings back the feelings of her innocent girlish days, when life, if it had few pleasures, had no cares. Now life means perplexity. Existence is an entanglement from which only some happy turn of fortune can extricate her.

She sits in her old place on the window-seat, and loosens the long twisted roll of rich brown hair, which falls over her bare shoulders like shining drapery.

‘Goodness!’ cries Marion, ‘how skinny your shoulders have grown!’

‘Have they?’ says Sibyl, coolly, glancing downwards at a white neck and arms in which the bones are too sharply defined for beauty. ‘Then we shall look more like sisters when we wear low dresses. Your shoulders were always skinny.’

Marion is silenced for the moment, and proceeds with the destruction of that elaborate edifice of hair and hair-pads which she constructs with infinite pains every morning, even though no one outside her own small family circle is likely to be gratified by the sight thereof. Marion’s hair has been washed and doctored to the fashionable pre-Raphaelite colour. It is thick and fluffy, and short, only just covering the points of her bony shoulders, and standing out round her head like an exaggerated nimbus. It is not bad hair altogether, and Marion thinks it one of her strong points, like her pre-Raphaelite figure, her long narrow foot, eighteen-inch waist, arched eyebrows, white teeth, and other small graces, some of which are the praiseworthy result of patient training.

‘Do let me see your pretty things, Sibyl,’ the younger sister exclaims presently, twisting one of her yellow tresses in and out of a hair-pin.

The elder looks up, startled out of a profound reverie.

‘What pretty things?’

‘Well, you must have something to show me--presents--things you have bought out of your salary. I’m sure I should have a lot to show out of forty pounds a year for two years. Glove-boxes, sealskin purses, card-cases, neck-ties, lace, gloves, and so on. I dare say that carpet bag is bursting with them.’

‘It is doing nothing of the kind. I found that it was as much as I could do to dress myself decently for Mrs. Hazleton’s parties and pay my laundress. Evening dresses are so unprofitable.’

‘They must be, if you have _nothing_ to show out of eighty pounds. I never thought you could bring yourself to wear such a dress as that alpaca thing,’ adds Marion, pointing contemptuously to Sibyl’s shabby gown hanging on a peg upon the door. ‘I expected to see you come home quite a woman of fashion.’

‘People who teach unruly children, and have to take them out walking in all weathers, have not much chance of being fashionably dressed,’ answers Sibyl, wearily. ‘Perhaps if you could contrive to put dress out of your mind for five minutes or so, Marion, we might have a little rational conversation.’

‘Oh, very well; of course I know what an inferior mind mine is. You used to tell me so often enough. But you were once rather fond of talking about dress, and I thought, perhaps, if you’ve nothing to show me you might like to see my dresses--_not_ home-made. Miss Eylett has made every one, and a pretty price she has charged me.’

Marion wrenches open the refractory door of the wardrobe, and displays three calico-shrouded garments, hanging in a row, like sheeted ghosts. One by one she brings forth these treasures, whisking off their covering, and displaying each to Sibyl with a dexterous twirl of her arm. A bronze brown silk; a pale gray, with elaborate ruchings of satin; a black silk, which stands on end for very richness of fabric.

‘There,’ she exclaims, swelling with pride, ‘I wore the gray--new--at Colonel Stormont’s.’

‘At Colonel Stormont’s! Is the world coming to an end, or what convulsion of nature brought you and the Stormonts together?’

‘I was asked to dinner with uncle Trenchard.’

‘And uncle Trenchard gave you the money to buy those dresses, of course.’

‘Yes. He said, “Well, my dear, I suppose you’ll want a new gown;” and then he gave a heavy sigh, and took a bank note out of an old-fashioned red pocket-book, and then he looked at the note so long that I was afraid he was going to change his mind, and then he gave another sigh, deeper than the first, and handed me the note--a ten-pound note. I tried to kiss him the first time, but he didn’t seem to like that, for he gave me a little peevish push, and said “There, my dear, that’ll do.”’

‘Funny old man! How many ten-pound notes has he given you?’

‘Four altogether. He always sighs just in the same way, as if every note was a wrench. He’s inordinately rich, of course, but it seems to hurt him so to part with his money that I can’t help thinking of that dreadful story of Douglas Jerrold’s, “The Man made of Money,” and fancying that uncle Trenchard is unrolling a bit of himself when he gives away a bank note.’

‘It’s only such people who get inordinately rich,’ replies Sibyl, plaiting her long thick hair into one massive tail for the night. ‘And how did you get on with uncle Trenchard, upon the whole?’

‘Oh, very well indeed. It was so nice driving about in his new barouche, with a lovely pair of chestnuts, and feeling one’s self looked up to by all Redcastle; and I had a splendid bedroom and dressing-room, and we dined at half-past seven every day, with two men waiting upon us. I used to feel afraid of them just at first, especially the butler, who looks the image of Mr. Groshen the banker, and that took away from the grandeur; but I soon got accustomed to them, and learned to speak to them in an offhand way, just like Mrs. Stormont.’

‘Marion,’ says Sibyl, earnestly, ‘do you think uncle Trenchard intends to leave us his money?’

‘Well, I should think he must leave it to us or to hospitals; and if we can manage to please him----’

‘We must please him, Marion, and wind ourselves into his withered old heart somehow. It would be ridiculous, abominable, shameful, for the money to be left to hospitals when we want it so badly. It’s no use to enjoy the luxuries of his house, to take a ten-pound note from him now and then. That kind of thing will only make poverty seem worse to us afterwards. We must have his fortune.’

Her eyes dilate and brighten, her lips tremble faintly as she leaves off speaking, and then her face changes in a moment, and tears run down her wan cheeks.

‘Gracious, Sibyl!’ cries Marion, rushing at her with a bottle of eau de Cologne and a towel, and dabbing her forehead with the perfume. ‘I declare you’re quite hysterical. Of course we must have his money--if we can get it. What has the fidgety old thing come home to England for except to make our acquaintance and leave us his fortune? He has as good as said so ever so many times.’

Marion’s sisterly attentions check that hysterical attack of Sibyl’s, and the two girls lie down side by side affectionately, after a brief formula in the way of evening prayer.

Deep in the chill spring night Sibyl’s head tosses restlessly on the pillow, and the sleeper’s lips murmur sorrowfully in troubled dreams,--

‘Alex, Alex--don’t be so cruel, Alex. Forgive--you know--your sake--yes, yes--as much as for my own.’

So pleads the sinner’s vexed soul; self-excusing, self-accusing, even in dreams.