Joan Smith: Delsie

“Modest! Oh, too modest. You must know I have been admiring you from afar.”

“Indeed, Mr. Grayshott!” She looked at him in alarm, eyeing the door in case of requiring a hasty exit.

“Forgive me! My emotions overpower me, seeing you like this for the first time. So lovely, lovelier even than I had supposed. Since the death of your poor mother, I have begun to hope-only hope, Miss Sommers-I do not by any means take it for granted…” He stopped, weaving on his feet, and a foolish smile settled on his hagged features as he sank into observing her.

She arose and edged towards the door. “What is it you want of me?” she asked, deciding on the spot she would refuse the position he had come to offer.

“I want you to be my wife.”

“Oh!” She stared in blank astonishment. “You cannot be serious!”

“I am totally serious. Marry me, Miss Sommers, and I will do all in my power to make you happy. I have loved you ever since your return to Questnow. I could not believe, when I heard in the village, that you were the little girl who left some years ago to go to school. Do not fear this is only a passing fancy.”

“It is quite impossible!” she replied, becoming angry at his impertinence.

“Make it possible! Say yes,” he implored, his voice becoming maudlin.

“I’m sorry. No, I could not possibly.” She reached the door and fled upstairs to her room, without even saying good-bye. She was trembling from head to foot when she sat on the edge of her bed, as if she had just escaped a horrible fate. She marveled at the strange interview for days, but it was just at this time that she received the offer from the Johnsons, and her life was busy arranging the move, so that she did not dwell on it as she might otherwise have done. It became, in time, a bizarre experience she could consider with amusement-the day poor Mr. Grayshott had come to her, drunk, and offered marriage.

When she returned to Questnow again after leaving the Johnsons, to take up her post at St. Mary’s School, she rather wondered if Mr. Grayshott would repeat his solicitation. Meeting him on the street one day a week after her return, she observed that he had gone rapidly downhill. His drunkenness was apparent now at a glance. His clothing had become disheveled, his hair not well groomed, and his face not lately shaved. He presented an altogether displeasing appearance. She crossed the street to avoid meeting him head on. But her tactic was in vain. Again he came to her at Miss Frisk’s, to which apartment she had returned, and again he made his preposterous offer, in more exaggerated phrases than formerly. And again he received very short shrift.

“Please go away and don’t bother me again,” she said coldly. She was older now, more sure of herself, and he was no longer a character of any importance. She gave it very little thought this time.

He had not bothered her again. He cast soulful eyes at her when they passed occasionally on the streets of the village, but he did not approach her, and after a few months she ceased to see him. Then her life settled into a dull routine, teaching at the school, reading in the evening, or playing piquet with Miss Frisk, who was making a bosom bow of her, going occasionally to a villager’s home for an evening of entertainment, as she would not have been allowed to do had Mama been alive. But a young girl needed some company after all, and so she went.

On that dreary morning in early November, she plodded along the road to the school, with no thought that before she had returned to her room a whole new horizon would have opened before her. There would be a crack in the magic door that would lead eventually to the hill.

Baron deVigne sat in the morning parlor at the Hall in a deep concentration, staring with unseeing eyes through the French doors to the autumnal remains of a rose garden, with an occasional glance beyond to see if Lady Jane was approaching yet. He had a fair idea why she wanted to see him. After a little while he saw her tall, gaunt figure, wrapped up in a huge cape of gentian violet, trundling along the footpath from the Dower House, her head bent. Poor old girl, she’s getting on, he thought. It was with solicitude that he welcomed her, took her shawl, and ordered her a glass of sherry.

Her sagging cheeks waggled in pleasure as she took the glass. She had gray hair, a beaklike nose that always turned red in the cold, and a pair of mischievous blue eyes that lent an air of youth to her lined face. “Just what I need,” she told him in her deep voice, and knocked the sherry off at a gulp, holding out her glass for a refill. “Good stuff. Now, down to business. Tell me, Max, what is to be done about it?”

This cryptic question was apparently clear to deVigne. “Something must be done at once. He was foxed again last night. That Miss Milne you hired to look after Roberta came dashing over here at nine o’clock close to hysterics, and the silly chit hadn’t even the sense to bring Robbie with her. She left the child there, in the house with a drunken father. I went over and got her, of course. They are here now in the schoolroom, the pair of them. I don’t mean to let Roberta go back to that house. With Grayshott drunk three-quarters of the time, it is no place for his daughter. God only knows what he might do-set the place ablaze one night and have them all burned to a crisp. Miss Milne, too, has begun dropping hints she means to leave, and who shall blame her?”

“Dear me, what a fix. It begins to look as though we must have him put away at last, He has become a confirmed alcoholic. The courts surely will support our claim.”

“They will agree to remove her from his charge, but it is his uncle, you know, who will be her guardian. I cannot like to see my sister’s daughter remove to Clancy Grayshott’s establishment, where she will be exposed to horse dealers, smugglers, and worse. That is no place for a deVigne to be raised, when there are our two houses eager to have her.”

“It would be no worse than staying with her father, at least.”

“It would be better, but not good enough. A dirty set of dishes we have got connected with through Louise’s marriage. When I helped Samson put Grayshott to bed last night, I was appalled at his condition. A room full of medication. I spoke to Samson about him, and he feels, from what the doctor says, that Grayshott hasn’t long to live. In his will, you know, he puts Roberta in Clancy’s charge. Spite. All spite because of the way Louise’s marriage portion was tied up in the child. He wants to get his hands on it and squander it as he did his own money. Ran through a handsome fortune in the space of three years. And because I refuse to comply, he has made Clancy the guardian in spite. Clancy has hated us forever. We’ll never be allowed to even see Roberta. I am at my wits’ end trying to sort this muddle out.”

“Poor Louise. If only she had lived, things would have been fine. Grayshott only became a loony after her death. He was crazy about her. He has those uncontrollable emotions. The right woman could have done anything with him. It’s a great pity that young schoolteacher could not have seen her way clear to accepting him.”

“Do you think he actually offered for her? I remember he used to run on about her soulful eyes.”

“According to local gossip, he offered more than once and was roundly snubbed both times. I was sorry to hear at the time that he was interested in her, but I have often regretted since that time that she refused. One cannot but wonder why she did. Scratching for a living. You’d think even Grayshott would be better than teaching at the parish school. And she is the soul of propriety-would have kept him in line, or I miss my bet.”