“Oh, Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I am going to my room for a bit. Will you come and wake me, without fail, at twenty past twelve?”
“Yes, certainly, madam,” Bessie tonelessly replied. Mrs. Bradley’s jaw did not drop, but her mental reaction was the same as if it had done so. She made no comment, however, thanked Bessie, smiled at Maggie, and went up the stairs.
“Won’t be the same without her,” said Bessie, gazing at the door which had closed behind Mrs. Bradley’s small figure. “Not ’arf a corf-drop, she ain’t.”
This tribute was received with an emotional sniff by Maggie, who always cried very easily, and was forgiven her faults as easily in consequence, since tears were regarded as a sign of penitence, leading to grace, by Mother Ambrose.
“But you don’t really know she’s leaving,” she affirmed for the fourteenth time since Bessie had first announced the imminence of Mrs. Bradley’s departure. Bessie, who had already made thirteen replies to this gambit, disdained another, flung the last potato into the bowl so that the water leapt up and splashed Maggie from head to foot, rinsed her hands under the tap, and dried them, in austere silence, upon the roller towel.
“Perhaps she’ll come back and see us,” volunteered Maggie, unresentful of the spattering, and wiping off the water with apparent unconsciousness. She went to the cupboard, took out a cake-tin which was burnished to spotless brilliance, held it up in a good light and re-set her curls. “She might give us all an outing after Easter.”
“Outing!” said Bessie, spewing out the word as though it were something loathsome. “All you think about, and having a goggle at boys when Mother Saint Ambrose takes her optics off you!”
As this was the exact truth, with no exaggeration whatever as a basis for argument, and as Bessie herself despised boys except in the capacity of gun-men and other law-breakers, there was nothing for Maggie to say. She giggled amiably, put the potatoes on to boil, then went and peeped at the clock in the parlour and set the kitchen clock right. The kitchen clock was supposed to be sacred to the ministrations of Mother Jude, but in her absence the orphans kept it going, for she, unlike Mother Ambrose, was happy-go-lucky as regarded her special privileges, and farmed them out to the deserving and (in Mother Ambrose’s tight-lipped, militant opinion) to the undeserving also, in an irresponsible manner for which, later on, she would certainly be called to account.
At twenty minutes past twelve, to the tick, therefore, Bessie was able to go up and wake Mrs. Bradley.
“You wasn’t very deep off,” she announced with disapproval. “Woke up at a touch, you did. Guilty conscience, or something, I should call it.”
Mrs. Bradley got up and tidied her hair, and grinned kindly at Bessie, whose crude manifestations of affection touched and pleased her.
“I’ve a job for you, Bessie,” she said.
“Oh, ’elp,” said Bessie tartly. “I’m up to me eyes for Mother Saint Jude and Mother Saint Ambrose and Sister Geneviève and Sister Lucia already. The Bishop don’t come very often, but when he do—visitation, they calls it. More like the Last Day, I reckon!”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that you do not betray those racy opinions to Mother Saint Ambrose and Mother Saint Jude.”
“Oh, Mother Saint Jude wouldn’t mind, although she’s as flighty as any of ’em when it comes to the Bishop,” said Bessie. “And Mother Saint Ambrose don’t really like nothing that upsets what she calls the routine. Well, what you want me to do?”
“Retire from the guest-house when I do, and take up a job I’ve found for you with a friend of mine,” Mrs. Bradley answered concisely. She described to Bessie the work which she had in mind. Bessie’s face became transfigured.
“Blimy, if I couldn’t give you a smacker,” she pronounced, in accents of awe. Mrs. Bradley, who had not kissed anyone for more than twenty years, recoiled in alarm, and Bessie, both diverted and restored by this sight, grinned devilishly and opened the door for Mrs. Bradley to go to the bathroom to wash.
She turned at the door and said:
“Who uses bath-salts here, Bessie?”
“Why, that there Mrs. Maslin,” Bessie promptly replied.
“Ah, yes. I might have deduced that,” Mrs. Bradley observed. She dried her hands, went downstairs to the dining-room and took the chair that was empty. All the other guests were assembled. The chair happened to be between Miss Bonnet and Mrs. Maslin.
“So you haven’t seen fit to take away Mary?” Mrs. Bradley observed to Mrs. Maslin. “May I say that I think you are unwise?”
“We shall go as soon as Ulrica is settled,” Mrs. Maslin responded, with her vacant, insincere smile. “I shall go to the docks, of course, to see her off, and shall probably take Mary along. Perhaps you didn’t know, but she and I and her father are going out by the next boat. We can’t afford to let Ulrica have it all her own way now that poor little Ursula is dead. After all, what’s a will, if not subject to alteration?”
“You won’t need to get this one altered,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I fancy it is altered already.”
chapter 24
conflagration
“But these all night,
Like candles, shed
Their beams, and light
Us into bed.
They are indeed our pillar-fües,
Seen as we go;
They are that City’s shining spires
We travel to.”
henry vaughan: Cheerfulness.
« ^ »
As soon as tea was over, George drove Mrs. Bradley and Ulrica Doyle towards Hiversand Bay to spend the night again at the hotel, but before they had gone very far it was fairly obvious that they were being followed. Acting on instructions, therefore, murmured by his employer down the speaking-tube, George accelerated, and drove on to the main road to Kelsorrow. He swung left just before they reached a bridge over the river, skirted the town, found a by-pass road, and then drove along it at fifty miles an hour. Mrs. Bradley looked back. About a hundred yards behind them on the straight, wide road, a red sports car was bursting along at a speed great enough to overtake them, at their present rate, before the wide road ended at the entrance to the next town.
“Better pull up, George. I don’t recognise the car,” said Mrs. Bradley. “They may not be following us, but if they are I think we’d better see what they want.”
George pulled in to the grassy edge of the road. The sports car drew up ten yards in front of them, and out of it got a man whom Mrs. Bradley had never seen before. Ulrica, however, recognised him, and leaving Mrs. Bradley and George, who were standing by the roadside, she walked to meet him.
“Why, Uncle Percival! Is anything wrong?” she said. Mr. Maslin took hold of her hand as though she had been a small child. He did not answer, but walked up to Mrs. Bradley and addressed her by name.
“Mrs. Bradley, my little girl! Will you please return at once to the convent? Mary has gone! I know it’s unreasonable to ask you to do any more. My wife has confessed that you urged her to take the child home, but—will you come back with me, please?”
“I am concerned with Ulrica’s safety. That is my first responsibility,” Mrs. Bradley told him. “But, of course, I will do what I can. George, take Miss Doyle as before, and I’ll telephone you, later on. Remain there until you hear from me.”
“Very good, madam.” He walked to the car, and returned with a small revolver. “I have a licence for this, madam. Please take it. I have another.”