The Blythes Are Quoted (52 page)

But she had her own keen sweetness in life which no one knew or suspected. So she did not mind any longer when the men ignored her. A distant cousin, in need of an assistant, offered to teach her dressmaking and, to everyone’s surprise, Ursula developed an unsuspected talent for the art.

She went out sewing by the day and she often went to the Burnley home. Mrs. Burnley said there was nobody could fit a dress like Ursula Anderson. Ursula saw little Isabel often ... Mrs. Burnley had named the baby after herself. She saw her grow up through dimpled childhood and adorable girlhood.

At times she looked so like Larry that Ursula’s heart gave a bound. She had little tricks of manner and voice like his. Ursula could never see anything of herself in her except her eyes. She was as beautiful and charming as Larry’s daughter should be. The Burnleys adored her and showered everything on her. Ursula made most of her dresses. When she fitted them on her fingers sometimes touched the girl’s flesh with rapture. It was almost like touching Larry himself.

Isabel liked her.

“I believe that queer, quiet little dressmaker really loves me,” she used to say. “She never says so, of course ... but sometimes I’ve seen her looking at me in the queerest way ... almost as if I belonged to her, you know.”

“The poor thing has so little in life,” said Mrs. Burnley. “Her own people never made anything of her. Always be as kind to her as you can, Isabel.”

There was one thing that Ursula could hardly bear ... to hear Isabel call Mrs. Burnley “mother.” It seemed to tear her soul in pieces. At such times she hated Isabel Burnley ... and reproached herself bitterly for hating her when she was so good to Isabel. But she gave no sign. Mrs. Burnley never dreamed of it. She never thought of Ursula Anderson as feeling any particular emotion.

Finally Isabel married. The Burnleys were quite delighted over the match, much as they hated to lose Isabel. He was a handsome fellow, of good family and rich. Everybody thought Isabel was a lucky girl. Of course ... there were some stories ... but stories were always told about rich young men who enjoyed themselves. Mrs. Burnley said they had to sow their wild oats. Once married to Isabel Geoffrey Boyd would settle down and make a good husband. She hadn’t a doubt of it. Her own husband had been wild enough in his youth. And what a husband he had made!

Ursula made most of the trousseau, even to the dainty underthings. Yet she was not happy or easy. She did not like Geoffrey Boyd. Of course Isabel was wildly in love with him ... and Ursula knew quite well that most young men were no saints ... even Larry could not be called a model. But it was not that. It was something about Geoffrey Boyd himself. Isabel was radiantly happy and Ursula tried to stifle her uneasiness and rejoice in that happiness.

She was allowed to help dress Isabel for her marriage and Isabel was a little amused to see how old Miss Anderson’s hands trembled. She was always “old Miss Anderson” to Isabel ... always had been, although she was barely forty. Isabel was very fond of her and made up her mind that she would give her all the work possible. Ready-made dresses were coming in and home dressmaking was not so plentiful as it had been.

So Ursula was much in Isabel’s home during the next four years. They were years of torture for her. She had to watch the change in Isabel’s love from passionate adoration to fear and horror and ... worst of all ... hatred.

Geoffrey Boyd was tired of his wife within a year and he never made any pretence of hiding it. He was blatantly unfaithful to her, as everybody knew ... and he was hellishly cruel. Sometimes it seemed that his only pleasure was in inflicting pain on her. And he always laughed so horribly when saying and doing cruel things ... though he always took good care that nobody except that little half-witted Anderson creature heard him. The Burnleys knew that the marriage had been a failure but they would not admit it. Such things in those years were best covered up. And riches made up for a great many things.

Ursula hated him so bitterly that it seemed to her that her hate walked beside her, a tangible thing. In spite of her insignificance he must have felt her hatred, for he never passed her without some bland, suave sneer.

She was always being “pumped” about the Boyd menage but never a word could be got out of her. That was probably the reason Geoffrey Boyd allowed Isabel to have her in the house. He was not afraid of what she might tell. The Anderson gang were notorious gossips and although this Ursula creature was no more than half there, still, there were things she could say if she wanted to. And the Burnleys were still rich ... or supposed to be. Geoffrey Boyd had his own reasons for keeping on good terms with them. He was always so nice to Isabel in their presence that they did not believe half the stories they heard.

The marriage was six years old when it became known that the Burnleys had lost most of their money. Then Isabel knew that her husband meant to divorce her on some trumped-up charge, naming as co-respondent a certain man about town.

Divorce in those days, in the Maritimes, was a naked tragedy. And everybody knew she was an adopted child.

“Blood will tell,” they would say significantly. Everybody would believe the charges against her ... except old Ursula Anderson. Somehow, Isabel felt that
she
would never believe a word against her.

Geoffrey told Isabel that if she contested the suit he would take her son away from her. Ursula knew he meant to take the child anyway, just to torture Isabel, although he had no affection for the boy. He had never pretended to have. Little Patrick was a delicate child and Geoffrey Boyd had no use for sickly brats. Once he asked Isabel if Patrick inherited his constitution from her father or her mother. He knew that Isabel always had felt some secret shame that she was only an adopted child and it delighted him to flick it on the raw. He had once told her, in their courtship days, that it made her dearer to him.

“Suppose,” thought Ursula, “I told him her father was the great artist, Sir Lawrence Ainsley.”

But she knew she would only be laughed at.
Her
character, at least, was without reproach. Nobody, not even her own kith and kin, would put any faith in such a tale. Nor would it make any difference to Geoffrey. Even if he believed it.

“Fancy the sly old thing,” she could hear him saying. And the Burnleys would be furious. Aunt Nan was dead and she had no evidence whatever to prove that she had been a great artist’s light-o-love. But she made up her mind that there would be no divorce for all that. Some way she would prevent it ... she made up her mind firmly on that.

She was sewing in one of the upstairs rooms of the house the day Geoffrey Boyd came home drunk and whipped Patrick mercilessly in the library, while Isabel crouched on the floor outside the door and moaned in her helpless anguish. The last time Geoffrey had come home drunk he had hung his fox terrier up in the stable and whipped it to death. Would he kill Patrick, too?

When he came out and the sobbing boy ran to his mother he said to her,

“When I have Patrick all to myself ... as I shall have sooner or later, my darling ... he shall have a good dose of the whip every day. You have made a baby of him with your coddling.
I
shall make a man of him. Was your father a minister, do you think?”

Ursula had sewed quietly and steadily through it all. Not a stitch was misplaced. Even Isabel thought her very unfeeling. But when Geoffrey came reeling up the stairs she was standing at the head, waiting for him. Isabel had taken Patrick to his room. There was nobody about. Her eyes were blazing and her gaunt little form in its plain black gown was quivering.

“Get out of my way, damn you,” snarled Geoffrey. “You have always backed her up.”

“I am her mother,” said Ursula, “and her father was Sir Lawrence Ainsley.”

Geoffrey laughed drunkenly.

“Why not the King of England and be done with it?” he said. “
You
the mother of anybody!”

He added something too foul to repeat.

Ursula put out both hands, still beautiful in spite of every-thing ... the hands Larry had kissed and painted ... the hands that had been so much admired in his portrait of an Italian princess.

Geoffrey had shown an engraving of it to Isabel.

“If you had hands like that you might hold a man,” he had jeered.

Ursula gave the unsteady Geoffrey a hard push. She did it quite deliberately ... knowing what she meant to do ... knowing the probable consequences. She did not care in the least if they hanged her for it. Nothing mattered except saving Isabel and Patrick.

Geoffrey Boyd went backwards down the long staircase and fell on the marble floor at its foot. Ursula looked down at him for a few moments, with a feeling of triumph such as she had never experienced since the day Larry had first told her he loved her.

Geoffrey Boyd was lying in a rather dreadful limp heap beneath her. Somehow, she felt quite sure his neck was broken. There was no noise or disturbance anywhere. After a few moments she went back to the sewing room quietly, began another piece of work and went calmly on with her sewing. Isabel was safe.

There was no trouble, as it happened. The maid found Geoffrey and screamed. The usual formalities were gone through. Ursula, examined, said she had heard nothing. Neither had anybody else, apparently. It was known Geoffrey Boyd had come home drunk ...
that
was almost a daily occurrence, it appeared. Almost the only bit of scandal that came out at a very dull inquest. It was supposed he had missed his footing on the stairs and fallen. People said they had often wondered it hadn’t happened long ago. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Only they rather regretted there would be no divorce trial after all. A good many spicy things might have come out of that. They guessed the Burnleys would be relieved. Though it would have served them right for adopting a child of whom they knew nothing ... or pretended to know nothing. Though she
did
look amazingly like James Burnley’s mother!

As for Ursula Anderson nobody talked of her at all, except to say she would miss the Boyd sewing.

The worst of Isabel’s troubles were over. But it was found she was left quite poor. Both the Burnleys died within a week of each other ... oh, no, no question of suicide or anything dreadful like that. She took pneumonia and he had had some long-standing trouble for years, it seemed ... and they left nothing but debts. Well, that was so often the case with those high-flyers.

Isabel and Patrick lived in a tiny cottage in Charlottetown. Some come down for Isabel Burnley, eh? Geoffrey Boyd had squandered his fortune almost to the last penny. But she was happier than she had been for years in spite of the lean times she and Patrick experienced.

Ursula sent Isabel some money every month. Isabel never knew where it came from but she thought an old aunt of Geoffrey’s, who had always seemed to like her, must be sending it. She never saw old Ursula Anderson now ... at least, not to notice her. But Ursula saw her very often.

When Ursula was fifty and Isabel thirty Isabel married a rich man and went to the States to live. Ursula followed her career in the papers and made exquisite dresses for her children ... Larry’s grandchildren, whom he did not know existed. Isabel always wrote and thanked her sweetly. She was really rather attached to the poor old thing. She wanted to pay her, too, but Ursula would not take a cent.

Ursula did not get much sewing to do after Isabel went away. She had done so much for her that she had lost most of her clientele. But she managed to make a living till she was seventy and then her nephew, John Anderson, took her in ... much, it was said, against the wishes of his family. Isabel was dead by that time ... and so was Sir Lawrence. Ursula read of their deaths in the paper. It did not affect her very much. It was all so long ago and they seemed like strangers to her. They were not the Larry she had known nor the Isabel she had loved.

She knew Isabel’s second marriage had been a happy one and that contented her. It was well to die before the shadows began to fall.

As for Sir Lawrence, his fame was international. One of the finest things he had done, so she had read somewhere, had been the mural decoration of a great memorial church. The beauty of the Virgin’s hands in the murals was much commented on.

“Yes, life has been worth living,” thought old Ursula, as Maggie McLean snored resoundingly and the old dog stirred uneasily as if he felt some Great Presence nigh. “I am not sorry for anything ... not even for killing Geoff Boyd. One should repent at the last, according to all accounts, but I don’t. It was just a natural thing to kill him ... as one might kill a snake. How the wind blows! Larry always loved the wind ... I wonder if he hears it in his grave. And I suppose those fools in the parlour down there are pitying me. Fools! Fools! Life has been good. I have had my hours. Have they ever had one? Nobody ever loved Kathie as Larry loved me ... nobody ever loved her at all. And nobody loved poor John. Yes, they have despised me ... the whole Anderson clan have always despised me. But I have lived ... oh, I have lived ... and they have never lived ... at least none of my generation. I ... I ... I have been the one who has lived. I have sinned ... so the world would say ... I have been a murderess ... so the world would say ... but I have lived!”

She spoke the last words aloud with such force and emphasis that old Maggie McLean wakened and started up in alarm.

She was just in time to see poor old Ursula Anderson die. Her eyes lived on for a moment or two after the rest of her body died. They were triumphant and young. The old dog lifted his head and gave a melancholy howl.

“Thank heaven I was awake,” thought Maggie. “The Andersons would never have forgiven me if I had been asleep. Shut up, you old brute! You give me the creeps. Somehow, she looks different from what she did in life. Well, we all have to die sooner or later. But I don’t think there’ll be much mourning for poor Ursula. There never was anything in her! Strange, too. Most of the Andersons had lots of pep, whatever else they didn’t have.”

Maggie went downstairs, arranging her features properly as she did so.