But it was not cheaper, nor was the arrangement satisfactory in any way after the first fortnight. Miss Keene, spoiled at Redford as they had been, was as unfit for crude housework, and she aggravated her incompetence by weeping over it. She had not gathered from Deb's letters that the change in the family fortunes was as great as it now proved to be; and Deb had not anticipated the effect of adversity upon one so easily depressed. She had no 'heart', poor thing. She struggled and muddled, sighing for flowers for the vases while the beds were unmade; and when she saw a certain look on Deb's face, wept and mourned and gave up hope. So they "pigged" still, although they did not defile the furniture with unwashed hands, and the plate and crockery with greasy dish-cloths. With no knowledge of cookery, they lived too much on tinned provisions—a diet as wasteful as it was unwholesome—feeding their wash-and-scrub-women with the same; and their efforts to support the burden of their domestic responsibilities deprived them of outdoor exercise and mental rest and recreation—kept them at too close quarters with one another, each rubbing her quivering prickles upon the irritable skins of the other two. Frances bore the strain with least good-nature and self-control, and since she had to vent her ill-humour on someone, naturally made Miss Keene her victim when it was a choice between her and Deb. The poor lady grew more and more disappointed, discouraged and tearful. She became subject to indigestion, headaches, disordered nerves; finally fell ill and had to have the doctor. The doctor said she was completely run down, and that rest and change of air were indispensable. She went away to her relatives, weeping still, wrapped in Deb's cloak, and with all Deb's ready money in her pocket; and she did not come back.
Then Deb tried to carry on alone. Any sort of registry office drudge would have been welcome now, but had become an expense that she dared not continue. Moreover, the spectre of poverty, looming so distinct and unmistakable in the house, was a thing to hide, if possible, from anybody who could go outside and talk about it. The thing had become a living terror to herself—its claws Jew money-lenders, so velvety and innocent when her wilful ignorance made first acquaintance with them; but nobody—not even Mr Thornycroft, not even Jim, CERTAINLY not Rose—could be allowed to play Perseus to this proud Andromeda. Until she could free herself, they were not even to know that she was bound. Of course, she need not have been bound; it was her own fault. She should have managed better with the resources at her disposal than to bring herself to such a pass, and that so soon; either Mary or Rose would certainly have done so in her place. But Nature had not made her or Frances—whose rapacities had been one cause of the financial breakdown—for the role of domestic economists; they had been dowered with their lovely faces for other purposes.
That the fine plumage is for the sun was a fact well understood by Frances, at any rate. And she was wild at the wrongs wrought by sordid circumstances—her father's and sister's heedlessness—upon herself. She thought only of herself. Deb was getting old, and she deserved to suffer anyway; but what had Frances done to be deprived of her birth-right, of all her chances of success in life? Eighteen, and no coming out—beautiful, and nobody to see it—marriageable, and out of the track of all the eligible men, amongst whom she might have had her pick and choice. She had reason for her passionate rebelliousness against this state of things; for, while a pretty face is theoretically its own fortune anywhere, we all see for ourselves how many are passed over simply for want of an attractive setting. It was quite on the cards that she might share the fate of those beauties in humble life to whom romantic accidents do not occur, for all her golden hair and aristocratic profile, her figure of a sylph and complexion of a wild rose.
The fear of this future combined with the acute discomfort of the present to make her desperate. She cast about for a way of escape, a pathway to the sun. One only offered—the landlord.
He was an elderly landlord, who had lately buried a frumpy old wife, and he was as deeply tainted with trade as Peter Breen; but he had retired long since from personal connection with breweries and public-houses—and a brewer, in the social scale, was only just below a wholesale importer, if that—and he was manifestly rolling in money, after the manner of his kind. Half the streets around belonged to him, and his house towered up in the midst of his other houses, a great white block, with a pillared portico—a young palace by comparison. Above all, he had no known children.
From the first he had taken an interest in his pretty girl-tenants. He had liked to call in person to inquire if the cellar kept dry and the chimney had ceased smoking; and he had been most generous in offering improvements and repairs before they were even asked for. Deb had blighted these unbusiness-like overtures on her own account, and Frances herself had said the rudest things about them and him—but not lately. In the utter dullness and barrenness of her life, she had been glad to accept the civilities of anything in the shape of a man—to try her 'prentice hand on any material. All the armoury of the born beauty was hers, and she knew as well how to use each weapon effectively as a blind kitten knows how to suck milk. They were easily successful with the old fool, who is ever more of a fool than the young fool; and when she found that, she found something to entertain her. She not only received Mr Ewing when he called, but talked to him at the gate when he went past—and he went past several times a day. Now, when the situation at home had grown desperate, and she was looking all ways for means to save herself, his amusing infatuation became a matter for serious thought. COULD she? She was a hard case, but even she wavered. He was probably sixty, and she was eighteen. Oh, she couldn't! But when, after Miss Keene's departure, Deb told her they could no longer afford hired help, and that she (Frances) must give up her lazy ways and take her share of that intolerable housework, then Frances changed her mind. Beggars could not be choosers.
Deb felt like the camel under the last straw when the announcement of the proposed marriage was made to her. It was worse than Mary's—worse than Rose's—worse than any other misfortune that had befallen the family. She sat down and wept at the thought of what the Pennycuicks had come to. She rated Frances furiously; she reasoned with her; she pleaded with her; she tried to bribe her; but Frances was getting boxes of diamonds, and sets of furs and lace, and what not, and it was useless for Deb to attempt to outbid the giver of these things, or to part her sister from them. She loved the old man, Frances said—he certainly was a decently-mannered, good-natured, rather fine-looking, and most generous old man—and he was going to take her everywhere and give her a good time—and she would never have to go shabby again as long as she lived; and if Deb refused her a proper wedding, law or no law, she would run away with him, as Mary had run away with Bennet Goldsworthy, and Rose with Peter Breen.
Whether this dire threat prevailed, or the temptation of the money, or whether she could not any longer fight against fate, Deb gave in. After all, Frances was not to be judged as an ordinary girl—she was a hard-hearted, tough-fibred, prosaic little minx, for which reason Deb pitied the prospective husband more than she did her; and if she did not do this bad thing now, the chances were that she would do a worse thing later on. She was made to disport herself in the sunshine of the world; she was of the type of woman that must have men about her; she would get her "rights", as she called them, somehow, by fair means or foul. Deb was sufficiently a woman of the world herself to recognise this, and the uselessness of thinking she could alter it. Well, money is a consolatory thing—she knew its value now; and there was that additional comfort, which, of course, she did not own to—the thought of where Mr Ewing would be when Mrs Ewing was in her prime.
"You dear old thing!" the bride-elect patronised her elder sister. "James is so pleased to have your consent, and he says he won't ask you to give me my share of what father left us—it would be but a drop in the bucket anyway; you are to keep it all yourself."
Deb had had whole control of the fragments of his once large fortune left by Mr Pennycuick to his four daughters, on behalf of any of them unmarried or under age; but Mary and Rose—although Peter had also protested against it—had been paid the value of their shares (whence the Jew element in the present difficulties); and the unforeseen marriage of Frances at eighteen threatened total bankruptcy to the remaining sister. Yet Deb said, with fierce determination: