It had made her ill since, after her father's death, the clergyman had permitted himself, in her hearing, to vent his personal disappointment at the unexpected smallness of his wife's inheritance. The man had presumed to take the air of one reasonably aggrieved; he had even dropped angry words about "deception" in the first heat of his chagrin. "As if," said haughty Deb, "it was not enough for him to have married one of us!" When he was understood to say that he had "arranged his life" in accordance with the expectations he had been given the right to entertain, Deb's withering comment was: "As if HIS life matters!"
But she was intolerant in her dislikes.
Poor Mr Goldsworthy, incurable cadger that he was, was bound to feel the family reverses acutely. When he had married Miss Pennycuick for her good, in that risky manner, he had naturally expected to be rewarded for the deed. If ever it be safe to trust to appearances, it had seemed safe then, so far as the solidity of the Pennycuicks' position was concerned. They had imposed upon him with their careless splendour; they had misled him by their condonation of the marriage, which restored Mary to her privileges as a daughter of the house; most thoroughly had they taken him in by that voluntary wedding gift of five hundred pounds. With his habit—which he took to be the general habit—of getting all he could and giving nothing that he was not obliged to give, he could not understand the airy flinging away of all that money, when there was no "call" for it, only as a proof that Mr Pennycuick had more than he needed for all the legitimate claims on him. And the old man had said, again and again, that his daughters would share and share alike in whatever he had to leave.
When Mr Bentley, the new parson, came—young, sincere, self-sacrificing, devoted, a poor preacher and a hard worker, who refused to batten on Redford bounty—all the old furniture of the parsonage was made over to him (on time payment), and the Goldsworthys began life in Melbourne on the basis of a rich wife. It was surprising how the legend grew amongst his set that Mr Goldsworthy had a rich wife. That she might dress the part on all occasions, so that there would be no mistake about it, the family-provided trousseau was added to; it was also subtracted from, for the simplicity that was her taste and distinction was hateful in his sight. When she looked "common" in a cotton gown, she lowered his dignity in the world and amongst his professional fellows—supposed to be so envious of it, in spite of her red face. Deb had had to suffer the shock of seeing her sister in silk of a morning more than once, and it had been reported to her—though she did not believe it—that Mary wore a jewelled necklace to church on Sundays. Deb did not go to Bennet's church, which was, fortunately, a long way from her suburban-villa home.
And she had been to his Melbourne house but twice. On her first visit she had penetrated to Mary's room, and been horrified to find the husband's clothes hung up in it from her door-pegs, and his razors and brushes mixed up with her things on her dressing-table. The arrangement in the country parsonage was to be accounted for; to find it here, made deliberately and of MALICE PREPENSE, was to see what gulfs now yawned between Mary's old life and the new one. Deb reached forth for a comb, and drew back her hand as if she had inadvertently touched a snake. Mary's red face went purple as she explained that there was not space in that house for a dressing-room. There was space enough going to waste in the drawing-room, where Deb had her feelings hurt on her second visit. It was a very large room, sharing the front of the house with a large study; and behind them all the other rooms huddled as of no account, none of them bigger than Keziah's Redford storeroom. The study was sacred to the master of the house; the drawing-room to "company". One look showed Deb that Mary never sat there, and that it was not she who had chosen and arranged the furniture. The foundation of the scheme was a costly "suite", upholstered in palish silk brocade, the separate pieces standing at fixed intervals apart on a gorgeous Axminster carpet. When Deb entered the room, Mr Goldsworthy was bending over the central sofa, excited and talking loudly. Miss Goldsworthy and Mary stood by, mute and drooping; Ruby looked on irresponsibly, with joy in her eye.
"What's the matter?" inquired Deb, advancing.
As she was not a great lady then, but quite the contrary, Mr Goldsworthy explained what was the matter, with scarcely any modification of his minatory air. A caller had called yesterday, bringing with her a little boy. Mary had thoughtlessly fed the little boy with soft cake, and the little boy had first made his hands sticky with it, and then pawed the sofa, which had cost him (B.G.) nearly twenty pounds (part of Mary's 500 pounds). Greasy marks had been left on that lovely brocade, for which he (not she) had given thirty-five shillings a yard, and which he had forbidden children to be allowed to sit on. As if that were not bad enough, "they"—i.e., those two poor women—had, without telling him, tried to take the marks out with some wretched chemist's stuff, which had not taken them out, but only spread them more. Now the sofa was completely spoiled, and what to do he did not know, unless he could match the brocade, which was scarcely likely. And ill could he afford to be buying brocade—and so on. Finally he went out to consult with a furniture repairer of his acquaintance, banging doors behind him. Deb cast a scornful glance upon the smudged brocade.
"What a fuss about nothing!" she brushed the subject by.
"My brother is very particular about this room," Miss Goldsworthy apologised for him.
"So I see."