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For months, Mabel had been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers. She had kept house for ten years. But previously, it was with unstinted means. Then, however brutal and coarse everything was, the sense of money had kept her proud, confident. The men might be foul-mouthed, the women in the kitchen might have bad reputations, her brothers might have illegitimate children. But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved.
No company came to the house, save dealers and coarse men. Mabel had no associates of her own sex, after her sister went away. But she did not mind. She went regularly to church, she attended to her father. And she lived in the memory of her mother, who had died when she was fourteen, and whom she had loved. She had loved her father, too, in a different way, depending upon him, and feeling secure in him, until at the age of fifty-four he married again. And then she had set hard against him. Now he had died and left them all hopelessly in debt.
Note: the death of Mabel's mother is mentioned in the second paragraph. she was fourteen at the time - a hard age for a girl to lose her mother...adolescence. Also, it states quite clearly that she loved her mother, but although she loved her father in a different way - more one of 'security'. Strange because usually woman will tend to be closer to their fathers at that age and rebelling against their mothers. But this family is comprised of mostly "coarse" type men and apparently Mabel had finer sensitivity - therefore retreating to a kind of emotional shell to protect her delicate feelings.
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'Here's Jack Fergusson!' exclaimed Malcolm, who was looking aimlessly out of the window.
'Where?' exclaimed Joe, loudly.
'Just gone past.'
'Coming in?'
Malcolm craned his neck to see the gate.
'Yes,' he said.
There was a silence. Mabel sat on like one condemned, at the head of the table. Then a whistle was heard from the kitchen. The dog got up and barked sharply. Joe opened the door and shouted:
'Come on.'
After a moment a young man entered. He was muffled up in overcoat and a purple woollen scarf, and his tweed cap, which he did not remove, was pulled down on his head. He was of medium height, his face was rather long and pale, his eyes looked tired.
'Hello, Jack! Well, Jack!' exclaimed Malcolm and Joe. Fred Henry merely said, 'Jack.'
'What's doing?' asked the newcomer, evidently addressing Fred Henry.
'Same. We've got to be out by Wednesday.--Got a cold?'
'I have--got it bad, too.'
'Why don't you stop in?'
'Me stop in? When I can't stand on my legs, perhaps I shall have a chance.' The young man spoke huskily. He had a slight Scotch accent.
'It's a knock-out, isn't it,' said Joe, boisterously, 'if a doctor goes round croaking with a cold. Looks bad for the patients, doesn't it?'
The young doctor looked at him slowly.
'Anything the matter with you, then?' he asked sarcastically.
'Not as I know of. Damn your eyes, I hope not. Why?'
'I thought you were very concerned about the patients, wondered if you might be one yourself.'
'Damn it, no, I've never been patient to no flaming doctor, and hope I never shall be,' returned Joe.
At this point Mabel rose from the table, and they all seemed to become aware of her existence. She began putting the dishes together. The young doctor looked at her, but did not address her. He had not greeted her. She went out of the room with the tray, her face impassive and unchanged.
'When are you off then, all of you?' asked the doctor.
'I'm catching the eleven-forty,' replied Malcolm. 'Are you goin' down wi' th' trap, Joe?'
'Yes, I've told you I'm going down wi' th' trap, haven't I?'
'We'd better be getting her in then.--So long, Jack, if I don't see you before I go,' said Malcolm, shaking hands.
He went out, followed by Joe, who seemed to have his tail between his legs.
'Well, this is the devil's own,' exclaimed the doctor, when he was left alone with Fred Henry. 'Going before Wednesday, are you?'
'That's the orders,' replied the other.
'Where, to Northampton?'
'That's it.'
'The devil!' exclaimed Fergusson, with quiet chagrin.
And there was silence between the two.
'All settled up, are you?' asked Fergusson.
'About.'
There was another pause.
'Well, I shall miss yer, Freddy, boy,' said the young doctor.
'And I shall miss thee, Jack,' returned the other.
'Miss you like hell,' mused the doctor.
Fred Henry turned aside. There was nothing to say. Mabel came in again, to finish clearing the table.
'What are you going to do, then, Miss Pervin?' asked Fergusson. 'Going to your sister's, are you?'
Mabel looked at him with her steady, dangerous eyes, that always made him uncomfortable, unsettling his superficial ease.
'No,' she said.
'Well, what in the name of fortune are you going to do? Say what you mean to do,' cried Fred Henry, with futile intensity.
But she only averted her head, and continued her work. She folded the white table-cloth, and put on the chenille cloth.
'The sulkiest ***** that ever trod!' muttered her brother.
But she finished her task with perfectly impassive face, the young doctor watching her interestedly all the while. Then she went out.
Fred Henry stared after her, clenching his lips, his blue eyes fixing in sharp antagonism, as he made a grimace of sour exasperation.
'You could bray her into bits, and that's all you'd get out of her,' he said, in a small, narrowed tone.
The doctor smiled faintly.
'What's she going to do, then?' he asked.
'Strike me if I know!' returned the other.
There was a pause. Then the doctor stirred.
'I'll be seeing you tonight, shall I?' he said to his friend.
'Ay--where's it to be? Are we going over to Jessdale?'
'I don't know. I've got such a cold on me. I'll come round to the Moon and Stars, anyway.'
'Let Lizzie and May miss their night for once, eh?'
'That's it--if I feel as I do now.'
'All's one--'
The two young men went through the passage and down to the back door together. The house was large, but it was servantless now, and desolate. At the back was a small bricked house-yard, and beyond that a big square, gravelled fine and red, and having stables on two sides. Sloping, dank, winter-dark fields stretched away on the open sides.
Then
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The doctor's house was just by the church. Fergusson, being a mere hired assistant, was slave to the countryside. As he hurried now to attend to the outpatients in the surgery, glancing across the graveyard with his quick eye, he saw the girl at her task at the grave. She seemed so intent and remote, it was like looking into another world. Some mystical element was touched in him. He slowed down as he walked, watching her as if spell-bound.
She lifted her eyes, feeling him looking. Their eyes met. And each looked again at once, each feeling, in some way, found out by the other. He lifted his cap and passed on down the road. There remained distinct in his consciousness, like a vision, the memory of her face, lifted from the tombstone in the churchyard, and looking at him with slow, large, portentous eyes. It was portentous, her face. It seemed to mesmerize him. There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak and done before. Now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from his own fretted, daily self.
He finished his duties at the surgery as quickly as might be, hastily filling up the bottles of the waiting people with cheap drugs. Then, in perpetual haste, he set off again to visit several cases in another part of his round, before teatime. At all times he preferred to walk, if he could, but particularly when he was not well. He fancied the motion restored him.
