The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
of any betrayal of sentiment. To her such betrayal betokened “foolishness,” and so all she said was, “There’s no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a little queer. I never was right off, Daisy.”
Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly poured a little brandy. “I wouldn’t touch such stuff—no, not if I was dying!” she exclaimed.
Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of the table, on to her feet. “Go down again to the kitchen, child”; but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
“You haven’t been eating properly, Ellen—that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Bunting suddenly. “Now I come to think of it, you haven’t eat half enough these last two days. I always did say—in old days many a time I telled you—that a woman couldn’t live on air. But there, you never believed me!”
Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright, pretty face. “I’d no idea you’d had such a bad time, father,” she said feelingly. “Why didn’t you let me know about it? I might have got something out of Old Aunt.”
“We didn’t want anything of that sort,” said her stepmother hastily. “But of course—well, I expect I’m still feeling the worry now. I don’t seem able to forget it. Those days of waiting, of—of—” she restrained herself; another moment and the word “starving” would have left her lips.
“But everything’s all right now,” said Bunting eagerly, “all right, thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is.”
“Yes,” repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice. “Yes, we’re all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it’s all along of Mr. Sleuth.”
She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. “I’m just a little tottery still,” she muttered.
And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, “Don’t you think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give her something that would pull her round.”
“I won’t see no doctor!” said Mrs. Bunting with sudden emphasis. “I saw enough of doctors in my last place. Thirty-eight doctors in ten months did my poor missis have. Just determined on having ’em she was! Did they save her? No! She died just the same! Maybe a bit sooner.”
“She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen,” began Bunting aggressively.
Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till her poor mistress died. They might have been married some months before they were married but for that fact. Bunting had always resented it.
His wife smile wanly. “We won’t have no words about that,” she said, and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone than usual. “Daisy? If you won’t go down to the kitchen again, then I must”—she turned to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of the room.
“I think the child grows prettier every minute,” said Bunting fondly.
“Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin deep,” said his wife. She was beginning to feel better. “But still, I do agree, Bunting, that Daisy’s well enough. And she seems more willing, too.”
“I say, we mustn’t forget the lodger’s dinner,” Bunting spoke uneasily. “It’s a bit of fish today, isn’t it? Hadn’t I better just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take it up to him, as you’re not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?”
“I’m quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth’s luncheon,” she said quickly. It irritated her to hear her husband speak of the lodger’s dinner. They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr. Sleuth had luncheon. However odd he might be, Mrs. Bunting never forgot her lodger was a gentleman.
“After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn’t he? I can manage all right. Don’t you worry,” she added after a long pause.
Chapter 8
Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice slice of roast pork downstairs.
“I hope you’re feeling a little better, sir,” Mrs. Bunting had forced herself to say when she first took in his tray.
And he had answered plaintively, querulously, “No, I can’t say I feel well today, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired—very tired. And as I lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds—so much crying and shouting. I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?”
“Oh, no, sir, I don’t think that. We’re generally reckoned very quiet indeed, sir.”
She waited a moment—try as she would, she could not allude to what those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened. “I expect you’ve got a chill, sir,” she said suddenly. “If I was you, I shouldn’t go out this afternoon; I’d just stay quietly indoors. There’s a lot of rough people about—” Perhaps there was an undercurrent of warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting. But I think I’ll take your advice. That is, I will stay quietly at home, I am never at a loss to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of Books.”
“Then you’re not afraid about your eyes, sir?” said Mrs. Bunting curiously. Somehow she was beginning to feel better. It comforted her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about him downstairs. It seemed to banish the terror which filled her soul—aye, and her body, too—at other times. When she was with him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so—so grateful.
Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth! This kind of gentleman surely wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a human being. Eccentric—so much must be admitted. But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career as useful maid.
Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human nature is capable—even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human nature—as exemplified in some of the households where she had served. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid or—or hysterical.
So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth’s stay in her house, that she exclaimed, “Well, sir, I’ll be up again to clear away in about half an hour. And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I hope you will stay in and have a rest today. Nasty, muggy weather —that’s what it is! If there’s any little thing you want, me or Bunting can go out and get it.”
It must have been about four o’clock when there came a ring at the front door.
The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy had washed up —she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of trouble—and the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny account of Old Aunt’s pernickety ways.
“Whoever can that be?” said Bunting, looking up. “It’s too early for Joe Chandler, surely.”
“I’ll go,” said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her chair. “I’ll go! We don’t want no strangers in here.”
And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself, “A clue? What clue?”
But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of relief broke from her. “Why, Joe? We never thought ’twas you! But you’re very welcome, I’m sure. Come in.”
And