Chapter XII: A Little Diplomat

'Alas to be as we have been,
And to be as we are to-day.'

For a few days life was a confused tangle; then to prevent themselves going mad, each assiduously tried to pick out the beginning of a new thread to follow.

Dot was up at the house, she had the little sitting-room and bedroom of her girlhood again, and she had sent to Sydney for a parcel of new music.

Strange wisdom came to the little anxious mother. That it was really a serious quarrel this time she could not help acknowledging, and at first could hardly restrain herself from flying down to the cottage and upbraiding Larrie vigorously. But then again she knew her child had been to blame as well, and felt that interference just at the present stage of things would work harm. A little time apart she told herself, would do them both good, so she remained strictly neutral, and though her heart ached sometimes at the sight of Dot's unhappy eyes and carefully smiling lips, she made no obvious attempt to bring about a reconciliation. She did not even throw cold water upon Dot's wild plans that embraced an instantaneous sale of the house and a voyage to Italy.

Dot had all the trunks and portmanteaus in the house carried into her bedroom, and began to pack her own and her mother's favourite possessions into them.

'This might be useful on board,' she would say, putting in a huge workbasket or writing desk, or 'You would miss this, even in Italy,' taking down an old print of the Madonna and Child that had hung in her mother's bedroom as long as she could remember.

The family solicitor was visited. Dot was to come in to about £3000 by the terms of her father's will when she was twenty-one. She arranged for a sufficient advance of it to take her mother and herself to Italy.

'You will like to go, of course,' she said to her mother, 'you are losing your spirits staying in this wretched place year after year. Travel is just what you need, isn't it now, small woman?'

The mother acquiesced; she would like the voyage very much, but she could not be ready quite as soon as Dot wished. She must have six weeks at least to settle about the house and different business matters.

Dot chafed at the delay, she had wanted to take passages in a boat that went the very next week, and to leave any arrangements to the solicitor, but the mother for once held her own.

The cottage was to be let, but until a tenant was found, Larrie was compelled to stay there with the baby and Peggie who had thrown in her fortunes with the child, and regarded her master and mistress as being for the time of unsound mind. She treated Larrie with cold severity, and no words could express the scorn she felt for the absent Dot. But on the baby, she lavished all the tenderness of her nature, and told it half-a-dozen times a day that it was a poor deserted lamb, and if she was the law she would handcuff 'them two' so fast together they could not move apart the rest of their lives.

The third day of Dot's residence at the house, Mr Wooster came. He had called at the cottage, but Peggie had informed him her mistress was up at the house. So he turned his steps uphill. Dot talked a great deal and seemed in an excited mood, but he had no suspicion of the real state of affairs, and merely thought she was spending the afternoon at her mother's.

But he was staying in the district again for his health, and when he came the next evening with a promised book for the little mother, she was there again.

She was sitting at a table with a quantity of paper books and maps spread out before her.

'I am deciding which way to go home,' she said, in answer to his questioning glance, 'you have often said I ought to study in Italy.'

He thought she was doing it for a pleasant mental recreation and only smiled.

'We go in about a month. Did not mother tell you?' she said, and followed up a dotted line through the Red Sea with a careful pen.

He looked the surprise he felt. So friendly had he become with Dot and the little mother, that he felt quite hurt to be so tardily informed.

'Mr Armitage is fortunate to be able to get away,' was all he said and there was a little stiffness in his voice.

Dot went slowly overland from Brindisi to Calais, then she looked up.

'No, he is not fortunate,' she said, 'for he cannot get away at all. I am going alone--at least, mother and I are going.'

'And your little boy of course?'

Dot yawned with discernible difficulty.

'Oh,' she said lightly, 'children block the road to success, besides I must leave him as compensation to my husband while I hunt for fame.'

He was too amazed to speak. Larrie had struck him as certainly the one other man in the world capable of fully appreciating the worshipfulness of this dear little girl. And to hear he was content to part with her like this after only eighteen months!

He felt a sudden contempt for Larrie and an overwhelming sorrow for himself; what a very sweet little child she was with those soft flushed cheeks and wide darkening eyes! And to think there was a lifetime of hunger for one man because he could never touch one of those soft, boyish curls, and the other who had all of her, held her so lightly.

'I suppose you think it is a mad quest after my failure,' she said, finding him silent.

But he disclaimed that. He was as assured of her ultimate success as ever, and knew that it was only through nervousness that she had failed to win immediate recognition. As it was, several of the best critics had spoken of her hopefully.

'No, you will succeed of course,' he said, quietly. He did not look at her, he was thinking, wondering whether he should be able to do without travelling too when Australia no longer held her.

Then he wished hair shirts were sold by modern mercers, and thanked God she was going. He talked cheerfully of the route, advised the best places for study, the best masters, offered letters of introduction, and all manner of things.

The talk stimulated Dot, her eyes and cheeks grew bright; two hours ago the ache at her heart had been intolerable, but the thought of Italy and music was easing it greatly.

From her corner, her needle in a wee muslin pinafore, the little mother looked at them with troubled brows. This kind of thing was inimical to the baby, to Larrie, to all of them, she almost wished her little girl had been born without music in her soul. Then something made her catch her breath and pale suddenly under the brown of her skin. She had seen and interpreted the look of strange wistfulness in Sullivan Wooster's eyes, and it made her heart grow cold. Dot looking up from her plans met his earnest gaze, and for some inexplicable reason blushed; the little mother in the corner said 'God' below her breath--she was not a woman of strong expressions, but her thoughts had leapt to terrible possibilities.

When Wooster rose to go, she went downstairs with him; they had been all the evening in Dot's little sitting room.

'You want me?' he said half way down the hall, for her large eyes were speaking. They went into the drawing-room and he waited for her to speak, hat in hand.

'I do not think this place is good for you,' she said gently.

He looked down at the little fragile woman, her worn, lined face and great sad eyes were infinitely beautiful to him.

'No place ever agreed with me better,' he said, puzzled.

Her lips grew severe.

'It does not agree with you,' she said very quietly.

Then he understood what the anxious eyes were saying, and was inexpressibly shocked that she should have guessed what he hardly allowed himself to know. For a moment he could find no words, he stood before her with bent head and paling face, then he looked up and saw grief and tenderness were in her face as well as anxiety. Terrible though the thing was, the little brown faced woman whom the waves of life had so buffeted, was sorry for him, her eyes grew humid, she put out her thin, tiny hand.

'It is not good for you,' she repeated very softly.

He lifted the hand to his lips and kissed it reverently.

'No,' he said, 'it is not good for me. I will go.'