Apples of Gold

by Warwick Deeping

  Bliss, that privileged mocker, used to laugh at him.

  "Well, Big One, who is to be the next lady?"

  "My wife," said Jordan promptly.

  "Is she still an unrisen star?"

  "Well, I have not seen her yet."

  "Did not someone once whisper to me about a little girl with red hair?"

  "O, that was when I was a boy," said Jordan.

  He had seen Douce twice in three years, and he thought about her hardly at all. She had ceased to matter to him; she had lost her lure, though he may have carried in some odd corner of his heart a pleasant memory of Douce the child. He had grown so much bigger; so much broader, and a man in his strong years has no use for a little prude. He saw more of her brother, for the life of the town threw them against each other from time to time, and "Superfine St. Croix" still contrived to be superfine in his little way and to keep out of a debtor's prison. Mr. Durand's had become Durand and St. Croix, and Maurice—the fine gentleman—was an expert in selling silks to the ladies. He displayed the rare stuffs to them with the gallantry of a man who was offering his heart, and as a salesman he had great successes.

  As blunt old Durand put it to one of his cronies: "The fellow is a fop and a prig, but he knows how to blandish the women. Why—my dear sir—dozens of them come in just for the pleasure of being wheedled. A pretty leg in the showroom and a hard head in the counting-house. That's how I work it."

  Sylvester St. Croix was growing very old, though he continued to preach his dismal and damning sermons, and to totter about among the folk of French extraction and those English who liked plenty of brimstone in their prayers. His shanks were thinner than ever, and they were a problem to Douce in that she had to knit him special stockings which did not wrinkle on his legs. His goat's beard was a white tuft; there were blue smudges under his eyes, and he had the look of a man who never in his life had been comfortably warm. The thinner he grew the more narrow became his outlook. His mind was like a knife-edge dipped in vinegar, and each day it left its mark on Douce's youth. He was exacting, and she had set herself to humour him, not realizing that as she herself grew set in the frame of her new womanhood she developed a little defensive hardness, a shell, a premature austerity. She was cumbered with much serving. She was for ever repressing herself without being conscious of the repression or of what it signified. She was quick, efficient, and apt to be a little sharp of tongue and tart in her wisdom. She put people right; she was more Jeanne than Douce.

  Yet she had her moments of rebellion, though it was the natural woman in her which rebelled, only to be scolded and shut up in the dark cupboard of repression. She dressed in dove grey or black; she darned, cooked and cleaned; she grew the salads and made the preserves; she read horrible dry books to her dry stick of a father. Her blotched old mirror still misused her little, creamy face, and her red hair, curbed and repressed, was drawn back tightly from her forehead.

  Maurice came over from his lodging twice a week, a man of the world patronizing this dusty corner of life. He was the only human thing which brought a gleam into Sylvester's cold eyes, but he usually managed to quarrel with his sister. Her austerity, her air of staid self-importance—for, like many little women, Douce had a considerable sense of self-importance, were as tempting to him as her rag doll had been to the boy. He teased her, and he was quite the wrong person to tease her, and he teased her in the wrong way.

  "You will have to marry an old gentleman, sis. You have got just the hand for a poultice."

  "Thank you, I do not wish to marry."

  "Don't be so sure."

  He patronized her, and treated her like a child, and it annoyed her. She was always at her worst with Maurice.

  "Look here," said he. "I know two or three sober, steady codgers. I'll bring them over to see you, and you can try your tongue on them."

  "Men are such fools," she retorted; "they seem to think that a woman has only one idea in her head."

  "Nor has she," said her brother; "you go and ask King Solomon."

  But Maurice had a certain volatile shrewdness. He foresaw the day when Sylvester would be no more, and when a penniless sister would have to be considered. It was a woman's business to get married, and though Maurice had humoured his father by airing his views on the duties of spinsterhood, his attitude became more human when it ceased to be impersonal.

  Mary Nando patronized Durand's, partly because there silks and velvets were excellent, and partly because she felt it was her duty to help the son of her husband's friends. She made Jordan's purchases for him, and when Jordan wished to make her a birthday present of a length of silk, it was Maurice who sold it to him.

  "This looks like marriage, sir."

  "It is for Mrs. Nando," said Jordan.

  Maurice was very charming to him, almost as charming as he was to a pretty woman. He ordered the two assistants about, and had nearly every bale in the shop brought out for Jordan to see. He showed off the stuffs with his own white hands, laying the blues, golds, greens, and crushed roses over his sleeve.

  "I rather fancy Mrs. Nando is old rose, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion."

  Jordan was inclined to agree with him, and since Maurice was making himself so pleasant, Jordan returned favour for favour.

  "How is Mr. Sylvester?"

  "Not so bad, sir, for a man of seventy."

  "And Douce? I have not see your sister for more than a year, and then it was on the other side of the street."

  Maurice appeared to be troubled about Douce.

  "She is so unselfish, my dear sir. A girl of twenty ought to go out more; it is not good for her to give up everything to her father. Don't you agree with me?"

  Jordan took the same view.

  "I am sure Mrs. Mary would be glad to see more of her," he said, meaning far less than Maurice wished him to mean.

  The conversation ended there, and Jordan, having chosen his silk and paid for it, Maurice bowed him out of the shop.

  "You will have it sent to Spaniards Court, Mr. March? Yes. Good morning."

  Nor was young St. Croix's new attitude a pose of the moment. He heard a good deal of gossip, and he happened to know that Jordan had given up hunting petticoats and had settled down to hard work. Nando's was flourishing, and old Tom Nando was a sleeping partner, which more than suggested that Jordan was a man of substance as well as the best swordsman in London. St. Croix respected success, and he respected money, perhaps because he always was so short of it.

  But he was a young Agag; he walked delicately, knowing that he had trodden so often on his sister's toes that she was apt to be critical and suspicious. Strolling over to St. Pancras in the cool of the evening, he sat with Mr. Sylvester under the walnut tree in the garden, while Douce prepared the supper. Their chairs were at no great distance from the parlour window, and since Mr. Sylvester was growing a little deaf, Maurice had every excuse for letting someone else hear all that he said.

  "Who do you think I saw to-day, sir? And quite a reformed character. Mr. Jordan March."

  His father failed to catch the name, and Maurice had to repeat it, and he did so with half an eye on the parlour window. Douce was passing across the room, and he was aware of her pausing and drawing towards the window. She was there behind the curtain, and Maurice tilted his chair and kept an innocent back towards her.

  "Quite a reformed character, sir. He has sown his wild oats and he has settled down."

  Mr. Sylvester replied that sin was sin, and that you could not get away from it.

  "I grant that, sir," said his son. "But I will say this for March, that he seems to have repented handsomely. He goes to church each Sunday with Mrs. Nando. After all, sir, he had a good deal to contend with. I think people mocked him a little, and it made him reckless. I must say I find him steady and quiet and much more modest than he was."

  Sylvester waggled his white beard.

  "He may yet prove a brand snatched from the burning. A child of shame——"

  "O, come, sir
," said the more modern son; "after all, the poor beggar had not much say in the matter. But I do know that Mrs. Nando is mighty proud of him, and half the gentlemen in London go to him for practice with the sword."

  "A violent profession, my son."

  "Well, no, sir, not wholly that. It teaches a man to defend himself against villains. The better swordsman you are the less likely you are to have quarrels unloaded on you. March is no bully. By the way, Mrs. Nando was speaking to me a few days ago—she had come in to buy some of our Italian velvet—and she said that Douce is quite a stranger and that you have not been near them for six months."

  "My legs are not what they were, Maurice."

  "But that does not apply to Douce, sir. After all, Mrs. Mary is her godmother and the best-hearted creature in all the world."

  Sylvester agreed that Douce ought to see more of her godmother, and Douce herself—gliding along the far wall towards the kitchen door—was of the same mind as her father.

  XVIII

  Mrs. Mary peeped round the bowl of red roses on the window ledge and saw Jordan walking across the court with a gentleman to whom he had been giving a fencing lesson. Jordan was wearing his white fencing coat, and he had a foil in his hand. The gentleman was laughing, and Mrs. Mary saw him clap Jordan on the shoulder.

  "You are an honest man, March."

  Mrs. Mary nodded her head and turned to her visitor, who was seated beside her on the settee.

  "That's Lord St. Maur, my dear. He thinks the world of Jordan."

  Jordan walked as far as the entry with Lord St. Maur, and leaving that gentleman to enter his coach, he came back playing with the foil and smiling to himself over some incident that had amused him. He was turning towards the doorway of the fencing school when Mrs. Mary put her head out of the parlour window and called to him.

  "I have somebody who is quite a stranger here."

  Jordan did not ask who it was.

  "I have one more lesson to give, mother."

  "Very well, my dear. Meg shall bring us in some chocolate at half-past four."

  At half-past four Jordan walked into the parlour and saw Douce sitting on the blue settee with the afternoon sunlight shining on her hair. She was dressed in a green and white flowered gown, and she wore black mittens and a black cap with white ribbons. He was surprised and his eyes showed it.

  "How do you do. Miss St. Croix?" said he, bowing.

  She rose and curtsied to him.

  "Very well, thank you, Mr. March."

  Jordan sat down on one of the Dutch chairs facing the window. He looked at Douce as though he did not know what to say to her, or whether she expected him to say anything to her. In fact he had the air of a man watching a bird which might rise with a sudden flutter of wings and disappear out of the window. His impression of her littleness was even stronger than it had been of old, but if it made any appeal to him the appeal was different.

  "And how is Mr. St. Croix?" he asked.

  She replied that her father was very well, and sitting there very solemnly with her hands clasped in her lap, her dark eyes made him feel that he was being watched and questioned by the girl behind the eyes. It was as though she expected something of him, or had asked him a riddle of which he had to find the answer, while his awareness of her was tinged with the memory of a little hand drawing a curtain.

  Mrs. Mary, meanwhile, had bustled off to discover why Meg was late with the chocolate, and Jordan, having nothing serious to say to Douce, took refuge in grave playfulness.

  "Are you still fond of raspberries, Miss St. Croix?"

  Her eyes gave a little flicker. It seemed to her that Jordan was willing to forget certain incidents which she now wished him to forget, and that his recalling of the boy and girl days was a holding-out of the hand.

  "I grow my own—now, Mr. March."

  "O, do you?" said he, wondering whether she had grown less pretty, or whether his own taste had changed. Also, he was a little curious as to what had brought her to Spaniards Court, and why she seemed ready to forgive him what he could not help. Her eyes were friendly, more like the eyes of the Douce whom he had known of old.

  "I suppose you are kept very busy these days," she said, "now that Mr. Nando has given up the work to you?"

  "It is my business to be busy. I get a ride on my horse before breakfast."

  "O, you ride a horse?"

  "Yes, a big black fellow; I bought him some months ago. And I suppose you are busy—too? Maurice told me that you were a regular little stay-at-home."

  She smiled her solemn smile at him.

  "What you do for Mr. Nando, Mr. March, I do for my father."

  "Cook and sew and read?"

  "And grow the salads and mend the linen."

  "And make jam of the raspberries?"

  "Yes, and sew my own clothes."

  "You must be a complete housewife, just like Mrs. Mary!"

  Mrs. Mary, fluttering in again at this moment, after a little breeze with Meg, wanted to know what Jordan was saying about her.

  "Bless us, these wenches! I think that Meg must sleep half the day as well as all night. And what were you saying about me, my dear?"

  Jordan told her that Douce appeared to be following in her godmother's footsteps, and that her holy of holies was either the linen cupboard or the larder.

  "And why not, my dear?" said Mrs. Mary; "isn't that a woman's business—that and her children? A nice pother you men would make if we were all like the pretty die-away ladies who are too fine to sew a button on a man's shirt. I like a girl's hands to be useful as well as pretty."

  "I think Miss St. Croix's hands are both," said Jordan, smiling at her as he would have smiled at a child.

  And Douce blushed, for she did not feel like a child.

  No sooner had Meg brought in the chocolate than two other ladies came to call on Mrs. Mary, and they were followed by Thomas Nando, who had pottered back from his St. Pancras garden with a basket full of fruit. Both the ladies were young and marriageable, and showed themselves very animated in Jordan's presence and very agreeable to Mrs. Mary and Thomas Nando. Douce sat solemnly on the blue settee, drinking her chocolate, a little figure apart, her austerity emphasized in the presence of these two eager and flattering rivals.

  "La, Mr. Nando, what lovely fruit!"

  "Out of—your—garden, of course."

  Jordan got hold of the basket, and finding a smaller basket of raspberries inside it, he extracted the smaller basket and presented it with an air of great gravity to Douce.

  "I know that you cannot resist these, Miss St. Croix."

  Douce's dark eyes showed little burrs of light. The other women were looking at her and Jordan, and she was woman enough to realize the significance of the fact that he had not offered them fruit.

  "Thank you, Mr. March; you may put them in my lap!"

  "I'm still rather fond of them myself," he said, sitting down beside her.

  "Please—I'm not greedy, and I can't eat them all."

  "Then I'll help you."

  Douce may not have been aware of it, but a most suggestive change had blossomed in her in the course of five minutes. She had come by quite a pretty colour; her face and her figure even looked fuller and more mature; her little red mouth had softened, and so had her eyes. She was lit up by an inward glow, and Mrs. Mary, watching her, was surprised by what she saw and by what it signified.

  "Bless us!" she said to herself; and then, "Why not? Even if she hasn't a penny!"

  The two other ladies, seeing that Jordan was otherwise occupied and disinclined to look seriously in any other direction, turned all their attention to Thomas Nando. Mrs. Mary's attentions were divided, though she was absorbed in considering the possibilities which had dawned on her in Douce's eyes. After all, Miss St. Croix was a dear little thing and an excellent daughter, and would make a man of sense an admirable wife. A little on the small side—perhaps, but was it not notorious that big men always fell in love with little women?

  When t
he party broke up, it was Mrs. Mary who suggested to Jordan that he should see Douce back to her father's house.

  "Why—of course, if I may?" said Jordan, looking at Douce.

  "I am sure I must not trouble Mr. March."

  But she wished to trouble him, and when he made it plain that he intended to see her home, she gave a little inward sigh of complacency and stood demurely beside him with an air of serene self-content. Jordan gave her his arm, and Mrs. Mary watched them cross the court.

  The two other ladies had departed, and Mrs. Mary, after burying her nose in the bowl of roses, confronted her husband with an enigmatic question.

  "Well, how would you like it, Tom?"

  "Like what, my dear?"

  Really, there were times when men were extraordinarily dense!

  "Jordan and little Douce."

  "What about them, sweetheart?"

  Mrs. Mary stood over him as though he were a child making a great mess of the saying of his prayers.

  "How would you like Jordan to marry Douce?"

  Nando felt for his snuffbox.

  "I have never thought about it. Why, he hasn't seen the girl for months."

  "My dear, does that signify?"

  "O, not a brass farthing! It's a good little thing, and gentle."

  "Not quite so gentle, Tom, as a man might think. Some of these little things are mighty obstinate. She has a will of her own, has my god-daughter."

  Tom Nando was going through the solemn business of taking snuff.

  "Do you think he is bitten, my dear?"

  "No—I don't. But the girl wants him. Anyone could see that."

  Douce, meanwhile, was enjoying that experience which comes to a woman but once in her life, and more especially so if her life has been a very dull one and lived for someone else. Her hand rested on a man's sleeve, and the man was big and strong and comely and very pleasant in her eyes. That other women had found him good to love was the exquisite thorn in the flesh of her desire. He towered over her protectingly; he kept the best part of the footwalk for her, and sent the rest of the world outside the posts. He looked down at her kindly with his blue-grey eyes; he talked as though he found it pleasant to talk to her; he smiled. And other women and other men looked at them both, and Douce had become aware of what was in these other people's eyes.