The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance. He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace, and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous. Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.
Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way were the occasion to come over again—were it to come over again a hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father’s alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for Clytie and—one other consideration.
Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round, declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then Delia had rounded on her.
“Don’t talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I’m not going to play any cards at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us—us, mind,” she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly wrangling and swearing—the former, as usual, half drunk.
“Pooh! that wouldn’t count,” was the equable reply. “You don’t suppose you’d have that hamper lumbering around once you’d won the game, do you? I’d take care of that.”
“Well, I shall go; he’s always telling me to.”
“No, you won’t. Let him tell—and go on telling. I can do some telling too, if it comes to that—telling him that if you go I go too, and we know well enough how he’d take that. No; you stop and face it out. You’ll be jolly glad you did one of these days.”
Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Bassingham and its neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.
“I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to pieces,” she sobbed. “I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that day.”
“But you should not wish that, my dear child,” mocked Bob, who, passing the door, had overheard. “You should not wish that. It’s very wicked, as your Papist friends would say.” Then he took himself off with a yahooing laugh.