The History of David Grieve

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

And, totally regardless of the presence of Dora and Ancrum, and of the efforts made to silence her by Dora or by the flushed and unhappy Reuben, she descended on her foe. She flung charge after charge in Hannah's face, showing the minutest and most vindictive memory for all the sordid miseries of her childhood; and then when her passion had spent itself on her aunt, she returned to Lucy, exulting in the sobs and the excitement she had produced. In vain did David try either to silence her or to take Lucy away. Nothing but violence could have stopped the sister's tongue; his wife, under a sort of fascination of terror and rage, would not move. Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David—of the money she had come to ask—of her leave-taking on the morrow—to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring that no one would ever take her for anything else than what she was, the daughter of a vulgar cheese-paring old hypocrite; and, finally, she attacked Sandy as a nasty, greedy, abominable little monkey, not fit to associate with her child, and badly in want of the stick.

Then slowly she retreated to the door out of breath, the wild lightnings of her eyes flashing on them still. David was holding the hysterical Lucy, while Dora was trying to quiet Sandy. Otherwise a profound silence had fallen on them all, a silence which seemed but to kindle Louie's fury the more.

'Ah, you think you've got him in your power, him and his money, you little white-livered cat!' she cried, standing in the doorway, and fixing Lucy with a look beneath which her sister-in-law quailed, and hid her face on David's arm. 'You think you'll stop him giving it to them that have a right to look to him? Perhaps you'd better look out; perhaps there are people who know more about him than you. Do you think he would ever have looked at you, you little powsement, if he hadn't been taken on the rebound?'

She gave a mad laugh as she flung out the old Derbyshire word of abuse, and stood defying them, David and all. David strode forward and shut the door upon her. Then he went tenderly up to his wife, and took her and Sandy into the library.

The sound of Cecile's wails could be heard in the distance. The frightened Reuben turned and looked at his wife. She had grown paler even than before, but her eyes were all alive.

'A racklesome, natterin' creetur as ivir I seed,' she said calmly; 'I allus telt tha, Reuben Grieve, what hoo'd coom to. It's bred in her—that's yan thing to be hodden i' mind. But I'll shift her in double quick-sticks if she ever cooms meddlin' i' my house, Reuben Grieve—soa yo know.'

'She oughtn't to stay here,' said Ancrum in a quick undertone to Dora; 'she might do that mother and child a mischief.'

Dora sat absorbed in her pity for David, in her passionate sympathy for this home that was as her own.

'She is going to-morrow, thank God!' she said with a long breath; 'oh, what an awful woman!'

Ancrum looked at her with a little sad smile.