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Sparrows

H >> Horace W.C. Newte >> Sparrows



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Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




SPARROWS

THE STORY OF AN UNPROTECTED GIRL

CHAPTER ONE

THE DEVITTS


Everyone at Melkbridge knew the Devitts: they lived in the new,
pretentious-looking house, standing on the right, a few minutes
after one left the town by the Bathminster road. It was a
blustering, stare-one-in-the-face kind of house, which defied one to
question the financial stability of its occupants. The Devitts were
like their home in being new, ostentatious folk; their prosperity
did not extend further back than the father of Montague, the present
head of the family.

Montague Devitt did little beyond attending board meetings of the
varied industries which his father's energy had called into being.
He was a bluff, well-set-up man, who had married twice; both of his
wives had brought him money. Each time Montague chose a mate, he had
made some effort to follow the leanings of his heart; but money not
lying in the same direction as love, an overmastering instinct of
his blood had prevailed against his sentimental inclinations; in
each case it had insisted on his marrying, in one instance an
interest in iron works, in another, a third share of a Portland
cement business.

His first wife had borne him two sons and a daughter; his second was
childless.

Montague was a member of two or three Bohemian clubs in London, to
which, as time went on, he became increasingly attached. At these,
he passed as a good fellow, chiefly from a propensity to stand
drinks to any and everyone upon any pretence; he was also renowned
amongst his boon companions for his rendering of "The Village
Blacksmith" in dumb show, a performance greeted by his thirsty
audience with thunders of applause.

Harold, his first born, will be considered later.

Lowther, his second son, can be dismissed in a few words. He was a
good-looking specimen of the British bounder. His ideas of life were
obtained from the "Winning Post," and the morality (or want of it)
suggested by musical comedy productions at the Gaiety Theatre. He
thought coarsely of women. While spending money freely in the
society of ladies he met at the Empire promenade, or in the Cafe d'
l'Europe, he practised mean economics in private.

Victoria, Montague's daughter, was a bit of a puzzle to friends and
relations alike, all of whom commenced by liking her, a sentiment
which, sooner or later, gave place to a feeling of dissatisfaction.
She was a disappointment to her father, although he would never
admit it to himself; indeed, if he had tried to explain this
displeasure, he would have been hard put to it to give a
straightforward cause for a distressing effect. On first
acquaintance, it would seem as if she were as desirable a daughter
as heart of father could want. She was tall, good-looking, well
educated; she had abundance of tact, accomplishments, and
refinement; she had never given her parents a moment of anxiety.
What, then, was wrong with her from her father's point of view? He
was well into middle age; increasing years made him yearn for the
love of which his life had been starved; this craving would have
been appeased by love for his daughter, but the truth was that he
was repelled by the girl's perfection. She had never been known to
lose her temper; not once had she shown the least preference for any
of the eligible young men of her acquaintance; although always
becomingly dressed, she was never guilty of any feminine foibles,
which would have endeared her to her father. To him, such
correctness savoured of inhumanity; much of the same feeling
affected the girl's other relatives and friends, to the ultimate
detriment of their esteem.

Hilda, Montague's second wife, was the type of woman that successful
industrialism turns out by the gross. Sincere, well-meaning, narrow,
homely, expensively but indifferently educated, her opinion on any
given subject could be predicted; her childlessness accentuated her
want of mental breadth. She read the novels of Mrs Humphry Ward; she
was vexed if she ever missed an Academy; if she wanted a change, she
frequented fashionable watering-places. She was much exercised by
the existence of the "social evil"; she belonged to and, for her,
subscribed heavily to a society professing to alleviate, if not to
cure, this distressing ailment of the body politic. She was the
honorary secretary of a vigilance committee, whose operations
extended to the neighbouring towns of Trowton and Devizeton. The
good woman was ignorant that the starvation wages which her
husband's companies paid were directly responsible for the existence
of the local evil she deplored, and which she did her best to
eradicate.

Miss Spraggs, Hilda Devitt's elder sister, lived with the family at
Melkbridge House. She was a virgin with a taste for scribbling,
which commonly took the form of lengthy letters written to those she
thought worthy of her correspondence. She had diligently read every
volume of letters, which she could lay hands on, of persons whose
performance was at all renowned in this department of literature
(foreign ones in translations), and was by way of being an agreeable
rattle, albeit of a pinchbeck, provincial genus. Miss Spraggs was
much courted by her relations, who were genuinely proud of her local
literary reputation. Also, let it be said, that she had the disposal
of capital bringing in five hundred a year.

Montague's eldest son, Harold, was, at once, the pride and grief of
the Devitts, although custom had familiarised them with the calamity
attaching to his life.

He had been a comely, athletic lad, with a nature far removed from
that of the other Devitts; he had seemed to be in the nature of a
reversion to the type of gentleman, who, it was said, had
imprudently married an ancestress of Montague's first wife. Whether
or not this were so, in manner, mind, and appearance Harold was
generations removed from his parents and brother. He had been the
delight of his father's eye, until an accident had put an end to the
high hopes which his father had formed of his future. A canal ran
through Melkbridge; some way from the town this narrowed its course
to run beneath a footbridge, locally known as the "Gallows" bridge.

It was an achievement to jump this stretch of water; Harold Devitt
was renowned amongst the youth of the neighbourhood for the
performance of this feat. He constantly repeated the effort, but did
it once too often. One July morning, he miscalculated the distance
and fell, to be picked up some while after, insensible. He had
injured his spine. After many weeks of suspense suffered by his
parents, these learned that their dearly loved boy would live,
although he would be a cripple for life. Little by little, Harold
recovered strength, till he was able to get about Melkbridge on a
self-propelled tricycle; any day since the year of the accident his
kindly, distinguished face might be seen in the streets of the town,
or the lanes of the adjacent country, where he would pull up to chat
with his many friends.

His affliction had been a terrible blow to Harold; when he had first
realised the permanent nature of his injuries, he had cursed his
fate; his impotent rage had been pitiful to behold. This travail
occurred in the first year of his affliction; later, he discovered,
as so many others have done in a like extremity, that time accustoms
the mind to anything: he was now resigned to his misfortune. His
sufferings had endowed him with a great tolerance and a vast
instinct of sympathy for all living things, qualities which are
nearly always lacking in young men of his present age, which was
twenty-nine. The rest of the family stood in some awe of Harold;
realising his superiority of mind, they feared to be judged at the
bar of his opinion; also, he had some hundreds a year left him, in
his own right, by his mother: it was unthinkable that he should ever
marry. Another thing that differentiated him from his family was
that he possessed a sense of humour.

It may be as well to state that Harold plays a considerable part in
this story, which is chiefly concerned with a young woman, of whom
the assembled Devitts were speaking in the interval between tea and
dinner on a warm July day. Before setting this down, however, it
should be said that the chief concern of the Devitts (excepting
Harold) was to escape from the social orbit of successful
industrialism, in which they moved, to the exalted spheres of county
society.

Their efforts, so far, had only taken them to certain halfway houses
on their road. The families of consequence about Melkbridge were
old-fashioned, conservative folk, who resented the intrusion in
their midst of those they considered beneath them.

Whenever Montague, a borough magistrate, met the buffers of the
great families upon the bench, or in the hunting field, he found
them civil enough; but their young men would have little to do with
Lowther, while its womenfolk ignored the assiduities of the Devitt
females.

The drawing-room in which the conversation took place was a large,
over-furnished room, in which a conspicuous object was a picture,
most of which, the lower part, was hidden by padlocked shutters; the
portion which showed was the full face of a beautiful girl.

The picture was an "Etty," taken in part payment of a debt by
Montague's father, but, as it portrayed a nude woman, the old
Puritan had employed a Melkbridge carpenter to conceal that portion
of the figure which the artist had omitted to drape. Montague would
have had the shutters removed, but had been prevailed upon by his
wife to allow them to remain until Victoria was married, an event
which, at present, she had no justification for anticipating.

The late afternoon post had brought a letter for Mrs Devitt, which
gave rise to something of a discussion.

"Actually, here is a letter from Miss Annie Mee," said Mrs Devitt.

"Your old schoolmistress!" remarked Miss Spraggs.

"I didn't know she was alive," went on Mrs Devitt. "She writes from
Brandenburg College, Aynhoe Road, West Kensington Park, London,
asking me to do something for her."

"Of course!" commented the agreeable rattle.

"How did you know?" asked Mrs Devitt, looking up from the letter she
was reading with the help of glasses.

"Didn't you know that there are two kinds of letters: those you want
and those that want something?" asked Miss Spraggs, in a way that
showed she was conscious of saying a smart thing.

"I can hardly believe human nature to be so depraved as you would
make it out to be, Eva," remarked Mrs Devitt, who disliked the fact
of her unmarried sister possessing sharper wits than her own.

"Oh! I say, is that your own?" guffawed Devitt from his place on the
hearthrug.

"Why shouldn't it be?" asked Miss Spraggs demurely.

"Anyway," continued Mrs Devitt impatiently, "she wishes to know if I
am in want of a companion, or anything of that sort, as she has a
teacher she is unable to keep owing to her school having fallen on
bad times."

"Then she's young!" cried Lowther, who was lolling near the window.

"'Her name is Mavis Keeves; she is the only daughter of the late
Colonel Keeves, who, I believe, before he was overtaken by
misfortune, occupied a position of some importance in the vicinity
of Melkbridge,'" read Mrs Devitt from Miss Annie Mee's letter.

"Keeves! Keeves!" echoed her husband.

"Do you remember him?" asked his wife.

"Of course," he replied. "He was a M.F.H. and knew everyone"
(everyone was here synonymous with the elect the Devitts were pining
to meet on equal terms). "His was Sir Henry Ockendon's place."

The prospects of Mavis Keeves securing employment with the Devitts
had, suddenly, increased.

"How was it he came 'down'?" asked the agreeable rattle, keenly
interested in anything having to do with the local aristocracy, past
or present.

"The old story: speculatin' solicitors," replied Montague, who made
a point of dropping his "g's." "One week saw him reduced from money
to nixes."

Mrs Devitt raised her eyebrows.

"I mean nothin'," corrected Devitt.

"How very distressing!" remarked Victoria in her exquisitely
modulated voice. "We should try and do something for her."

"We will," said her father.

"We certainly owe a duty to those who were once our neighbours,"
assented Miss Spraggs.

"Do you remember her?" asked Mrs Devitt of her husband.

"Of course I do, now I come to think of it," he replied.

"What was she like?"

He paused for a moment or two before replying.

"She'd reddy sort of hair and queer eyes. She was a fine little
girl, but a fearful tomboy," said Devitt.

"Pretty, then!" exclaimed Mrs Devitt, as she glanced apprehensively
at her step-daughter.

"She was then. It was her hair that did it," answered her husband.

"H'm!" came from his wife.

"The pretty child of to-day is the plain girl of to-morrow"
commented Miss Spraggs.

"What was her real disposition?" asked Mrs Devitt.

"I know nothin' about that; but she was always laughin' when I saw
her."

"Frivolous!" commented Mrs Devitt.

"Perhaps there's more about her in the letter," suggested Lowther,
who had been listening to all that had been said.

"There is," said his step-mother; "but Miss Mee's writing is very
trying to the eyes."

Montague took the schoolmistress's letter from his wife's hand. He
read the following in his big, blustering voice:

"'In all matters affectin' Miss Keeves's educational qualifications,
I find her comme il faut, with the possible exception of freehand
drawing, which is not all that a fastidious taste might desire. Her
disposition is winnin' and unaffected, but I think it my duty to
mention that, on what might appear to others as slight provocation,
Miss Keeves is apt to give way to sudden fits of passion, which,
however, are of short duration. Doubtless, this is a fault of youth
which years and experience will correct.'"

"Rebellious!" commented Mrs Devitt.

"Spirit!" said Harold, who all this while had been reclining in his
invalid chair, apparently reading a review.

Mrs Devitt looked up, as if surprised.

"After all, everything depends on the point of view," remarked Miss
Spraggs.

"Is there any more?" asked Harold.

By way of reply, his father read from Miss Mee's letter:

"'In conclusion, I am proud to admit that Miss Keeves has derived
much benefit from so many years' association with one who has
endeavoured to influence her curriculum with the writin's of the
late Mr Ruskin, whose acquaintance it was the writer's inestimable
privilege to enjoy. With my best wishes for your welfare, I remain,
dear Madam, your obedient servant, Annie Allpress Mee.' That's all,"
he added, as he tossed the letter on to the table at his wife's
side.

"Did she know Ruskin?" asked Harold.

"When I was at her school--it was then at Fulham--she, or her
sister, never let a day go by without making some reference to him,"
replied his step-mother.

"What are you going to do for Miss Keeves?" asked Harold.

"It's so difficult to decide off-hand," his step-mother replied.

"Can't you think of anything, father?" persisted Harold.

"It's scarcely in my line," answered Montague, glancing at his wife
as he spoke.

Harold looked inquiringly at Mrs Devitt.

"It's so difficult to promise her anything till one has seen her,"
she remarked.

"Then why not have her down?" asked Harold.

"Yes, why not?" echoed his brother.

"She can get here and back again in a day," added Harold, as his
eyes sought his review.

"Very well, then, I'll write and suggest Friday," said Mrs Devitt,
not too willingly taking up a pen.

"You can always wire and put her off, if you want to do anything
else," remarked her sister.

"Won't you send her her fare?" asked Harold.

"Is that necessary?" queried Mrs Devitt.

"Isn't it usual?"

"I can give it to her when she comes," said Mrs Devitt, who hated
parting with money, although, when it was a question of entertaining
the elect of Melkbridge, she spent her substance lavishly.

Thus it came about that a letter was written to Miss Annie Mee,
Brandenburg College, Aynhoe Road, West Kensington Park, London, W.,
saying that Mrs Devitt would expect Miss Keeves, for an interview,
by the train that left Paddington for Melkbridge at ten on Friday
next; also, that she would defray her third-class travelling
expenses.




CHAPTER TWO

MAVIS KEEVES


The following Friday morning, Mavis Keeves sprang from bed on
waking. It was late when she had gone to sleep the previous night,
for she had been kept up by the festivities pertaining to breaking-
up day at Brandenburg College, and the inevitable "talk over" the
incidents of the event with Miss Helen and Miss Annie Mee, which
conversation had been prolonged till nearly twelve o'clock; but the
excitement of travelling to the place of her birth, and the
certainty of getting an engagement in some capacity or another
(Mavis had no doubt on this point) were more than enough to curtail
her slumbers. She had fallen asleep laughing to herself at the many
things which had appealed to her sense of humour during the day, and
it was the recollection of some of these which made her smile
directly she was awake. She tubbed and dressed quickly, although she
had some bother with her hair, which, this morning, seemed intent on
defying the efforts of her fingers. Having dressed herself to her
somewhat exigent satisfaction, she went downstairs, passing the
doors of those venerable virgins, the Misses Helen and Annie Mee, as
she descended to the ground-floor, on which was the schoolroom. This
was really two rooms, but the folding doors, which had once divided
the apartment, had long since been removed from their hinges; they
were now rotting in the strip of garden behind the house.

The appearance of Brandenburg College belied its pretentious name.
Once upon a time, its name-plate had decorated the gates of a
stately old mansion in the Fulham of many years ago; here it was
that Mrs Devitt, then Miss Hilda Spraggs, had been educated. Since
those fat days, the name-plate of Brandenburg College had suffered
many migrations, always in a materially downward direction, till now
it was screwed on the railings of a stuffy little road in Shepherd's
Bush, which, as Mavis was in the habit of declaring, was called West
Kensington Park for "short."

The brass plate, much the worse for wear, told the neighbourhood
that Brandenburg College educated the daughters of gentlemen;
perhaps it was as well that this definition, like the plate, was
fallen on hard times, inasmuch as it was capable of such an elastic
interpretation that it enabled the Misses Mee to accept pupils whom,
in their prosperous days, they would have refused. Mavis looked
round the familiar, shabby schoolroom, with its atmosphere of ink
and slate pencil, to which she was so soon to say "good-bye."

It looked desolate this morning, perhaps because there leapt to her
fancy the animated picture it had presented the day before, when it
had been filled by a crowd of pupils (dressed in their best), their
admiring parents and friends.

Yesterday's programme had followed that of all other girls' school
breaking-up celebrations, with the difference that the passages
selected for recital had been wholly culled from the writings of Mr
Ruskin. Reference to the same personage had occurred in the speech
to the prize-winners (every girl in the school had won a prize of
sorts) made by Mr Smiley, the curate, who performed this office;
also, the Misses Mee, when opportunity served, had not been backward
in making copious references to the occasion on which they had drunk
tea with the deceased author. Indeed, the parents and friends had
breathed such an atmosphere of Ruskin that there were eight requests
for his works at the local free library during the following week.

"Good old Ruskin!" laughed Mavis, as she ran downstairs to the
breakfast room, which was situated in the basement. Here, the only
preparation made for the meal was a not too clean table-cloth spread
upon the table. Mavis went into the kitchen, where she found Amelia,
the general servant, doing battle with a smoky kitchen-fire.

"How long before breakfast is ready?" asked Mavis.

"Is that you, miss? Oi can't see you properly," said Amelia, as she
turned her head. "This 'ere smoke had got into my best oye."

Amelia spoke truly; there was a great difference between the seeing
capacity of her two eyes, one of these being what is known as
"walled." Amelia was an orphan; she had been dragged up by the
"Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants," known to
its familiars as the "Mabys," such designation being formed by the
first letter of each word of the title. Every week, dozens of these
young women issued from the doors of the many branches of this
institution, who became, to their respective mistresses, a source of
endless complaint; in times of domestic stress, one or two of these
"generals" had been known to keep their situations for three months.
Amelia was a prodigy of success, a record in the annals of the
society, inasmuch as she had been at Brandenburg College for two
years and a half. She kept her situation because she was cheap;
also, because she did her best to give satisfaction, as she
appreciated the intellectual atmosphere of the place, which made her
hope that she, too, might pick up a few educational crumbs;
moreover, she was able to boast to her intimates, on the occasions
when she visited her parent home, how her two mistresses could speak
four languages, which was certainly true.

"Wasn't it all beautiful, miss?" asked Amelia, who had listened to
yesterday's entertainment halfway down the stairs leading to the
basement.

"Wonderful," replied Mavis, as she tied on a kitchen apron, a
preliminary to giving Amelia a helping hand with the breakfast.

"And the 'reverend'! He did make me laugh when he gave four prizes
to fat Miss Robson, and said she was a good all round girl."

This joke had not been intentional on Mr Smiley's part; he had been
puzzled by the roar of laughter which had greeted his remark; when
he divined its purport, he was quite willing to take credit for
having deliberately made the sally.

"You managed to hear that?" asked Mavis.

"Yes, miss; an' what the 'reverend' said about dear Mr Fuskin. I
'eard that too."

"Ruskin," corrected Mavis, as she set about making coffee.

Amelia, with a hurt expression on her face, turned to look at Miss
Keeves, who, noticing the girl's dejection, said:

"Call him what you like, Amelia. It's only the Miss Mees who're so
particular."

"Dear gentleman," continued Amelia. "Next to being always with you,
miss, I should like to have been with 'im."

"I'm afraid you can't even be with me. I have to earn my own
living."

"Yes, miss; but when you marry a rich gentleman, I should like to
come with you as 'general.'"

"Don't talk nonsense, Amelia."

"But it ain't, miss; didn't the music master, 'im with the lovely,
long, shiny 'air, promise me a shillin' to give you a note?"

"Did he?" laughed Mavis. "It's nearly eight: you'd better take in
the breakfast things."

"Oh, well, if I can't be here, or with you, I'd sooner be with that
dear Mr--"

"Ruskin, Amelia," interrupted Mavis. "Try and get it right, if only
for once."

Amelia took no notice of the interruption, but went on, as she
dusted the cups, before putting them on the tray:

"Dear Mr Fuskin! 'Ow I would have looked after 'im, and 'ow
carefully I'd 'ave counted 'is washing!"

Punctually, as the clock struck eight, the two Miss Mees entered the
breakfast room; they kissed Mavis on the cheek before sitting down
to the meal. They asked each other and Mavis how they had slept, as
was their invariable custom; but the sensitive, observant girl could
not help noticing that the greetings of her employers were a trifle
less cordial than was their wont. Mavis put down this comparative
coldness to their pride at the success of yesterday's festival.

To the indifferent observer, the Miss Mees were exactly alike, being
meagre, dilapidated, white-haired old ladies, with the same beaked
noses and receding chins; both wore rusty black frocks, each of
which was decorated with a white cameo brooch; both walked with the
same propitiatory shuffle. They were like a couple of elderly,
moulting, decorous hens who, in spite of their physical
disabilities, had something of a presence. This was obtained from
the authority they had wielded over the many pupils who had passed
through their hands.

Nearer inspection showed that Miss Annie Mee was a trifle stouter
than her sister, if this be not too robust a word to apply to such a
wisp of a woman; that her eyes were kinder and less watery than
Helen's; also, that her face was less insistently marked with lines
of care.

The Miss Mees' dispositions were much more dissimilar than their
appearance. Miss Helen, the elder, loved her home and, in her heart
of hearts, preferred the kitchen to any other part of the house. It
was she who attended to the ordering of the few wants of the humble
household; she arranged the meals, paid the bills, and generally
looked after the domestic economy of the college; she took much
pride in the orderliness of her housekeeper's cupboard, into which
Amelia never dared to pry. In the schoolroom, she received the
parents, arranged the fees and extras, and inflicted the trifling
punishment she awarded to delinquents, which latter, it must be
admitted, gave her a faint pleasure.

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