# Delight (1926)/Chapter 5

Kirke was waiting in the hall for Bastien at closing time. The last straggler had gone. The place was quiet save for the sound of coins being emptied out of the cash register. Kirke wondered very much what had been taken in that day. His mind dwelt for a moment with scorn on the absent owner of The Duke of York who trusted his affairs to Bastien.
The manager came out with his cool, alert air and locked the bar behind him.
"Weel," observed Kirke, "it's a fine nicht."
"Yes," agreed Bastien, putting the key in his pocket. "It begins to feel like spring."
Kirke came close to him, his shrewd light eyes concentrated on Bastien's face. He said in a low tone:
"That's a fine geerl. The one they call Delight, eh?"
A roguish grin slid over Bastien's face and left it impassive as ever.
"You, too? You'll need to step lively."
"I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of the hotel. There's not a man in town but has his eye on her. They're discussing her points. In the little room behind the chemist's, in the tailor shop, the newspaper office, ay, the mayor's office. They can't keep their minds off her. She's come on the town like a blight."
​"Ha, ha, a blight! That's good."
"It's guid business if ye'll make it so. Take it from me, man, you could fill the two transients' tables every day of the week, if you'd have her wait on them."
Bastien frowned. "That's Annie's job. She'd kick like the devil. There'd be trouble."
"Weel," sneered Kirke, "if ye prefair Annie's prestige"—he bit off the French word with relish—"to the prestige of The Duke of York—" he swung up the two bottom steps of the stairs.
Bastien's frown deepened.
"Wait a minute, can't you? You know I don't care a darn about Annie's what-d'you-call-it, but I don't want rows. She's got a lot more experience than Delight—"
"Experience," sneered Kirke, leaning over the banister. "Experience with men counts more than being able to keep three orders in your head at once. D'ye think they'd mind if she muddled their orders a bit? I was over in the bar at The British American tonight and I haird Beemer say he'd like to steal her if he could."
"The dirty dog."
"No. He just has the guid sense to see that there's money in her for the business."
"The dining-room is a loss."
"It needn't be if you'll just put your young beauty in the foreground. Ah, man, don't tell me that you can't make that richt with Annie! She's daft about you." He grinned down at Bastien.
"What about old Jessop?"
"She'd be glad to see Annie come down a peg. They're all jealous for ye. It's an awful thing, Bastien, to be such a chairmer. Old and young—"
"I'll think about it," said the manager.
He followed Kirke slowly up the first flight of stairs and turned into his own bedroom near the top. He put on the light, and stood a short while with bent head in the middle of the room. He believed that what Kirke said was true. (Was that queer fish really gone on Delight?) But he hated to hurt Annie's feelings. Still he had had complaining letters from Mr. Hodgins, the owner; if anything could be done to bring in more revenue, the feelings of a waitress should not stand in the way.
Suddenly an idea came to him. He left his room and went quietly down the hall to the passage that led to the servants' quarters. He could hear Charley Bye's regular snore, unctuous as the beat of waves on a boggy shore. He stopped before Annie's door and listened. With his nail he scratched gently on the panel.
"You there, Annie?" he breathed.
There was a scuffle of stockinged feet on the floor, the door opened a crack, and Annie whispered:
"Is that you, Bill?"
"Yes, can you step out here a minute? Nobody about."
She came out, fully dressed but with her hair down, sticking out in short dark clumps about her tilted head. She looked so childlike, he put his hand in the mass of her hair and gave it a tug.
"Oh, you kid," he said, smiling down at her.
She jerked her head away.
"Don't get fresh, Bill."
"You call that fresh?"
"I certainly do."
"Annie."
"What d'you want?"
"Annie." He put his arm around her.
​"Oh, for goodness sake, Bill. What if Mrs. Jessop came along? She's always snooping along this passage."
"Let her snoop. I'll soon show her who's boss here."
He pressed her to him roughly and kissed away the protest her lips were forming.
"Pearl in there?" he asked, glancing towards the bedroom door.
Annie nodded.
"Well, look here," he said, suddenly business-like, releasing her. "I've just been wondering now May's gone if we couldn't get along without hiring another girl."
Annie glared at him.
"My gosh, how hard do you think we can work? My soles are blistered now with being on my feet."
"I don't believe it."
Annie flushed. "Well, do the other thing, then. But they are."
"Show me, then."
"What do you take me for?"
"Oh, you girls! You make me tired. You don't know what real work is. I'm never off my feet."
"Well, you better get to bed, then, and rest."
"Now don't start getting at me, Annie. Listen. I'm wondering if you and Pearl could do May's work between you if I give you something extra. Suppose I gave her three dollars a month more, and you seven. She needn't know there's any difference in the amount."
The prospect of earning more money was alluring. Annie had a widowed mother and six young brothers and sisters. Still, she did not see how she could.
"It'd be awfully hard—"
"Now wait. Look here. Let that big lump Delight do more work. She doesn't do half what she should. Give her the travellers and town tables, and you can look ​after some of the boarders. It's easy to wait on them. Just slap the food down before them any old way. Why, on quiet days she ought to be able to do the whole thing."
She drew back. "Oh, Billie, I shouldn't like to give up my best tables." Her voice choked. Her pride was cut.
"Now don't be a little fool. What good is it going to do you to wait at those blasted tables? None. But seven a month extra is going to do you a lot of good. Lord, think what it will buy! Then, it will save me a bit each month on another girl's wages. . . . I'm worried. I tell you, Annie. Things are not going as they should. I'd hate to lose my job."
"Oh, Bill, I didn't know." Her voice was full of compassion now. "How awful it'd be here without you. But there's no real danger, is there?"
He was pensive. "I guess we can worry through, but there's no knowing. Mr. Hodgins is certainly coming to look into things, and it'll look well if he sees I'm cutting down expenses."
Annie moved closer to him and beseechingly scanned his face.
"Bill, you aren't getting struck on Delight, are you?"
"Have a heart, Annie. Spare one poor devil in the town to be struck on your own little self."
"Ah, Bill, if I only thought you was!" Her lip trembled. . . .
A step sounded down the passage and Pearl appeared.
"Oh, hullo," she said, "I thought you'd be in bed, Annie."
Bastien's brows lowered.
"Funny, isn't it?" he said. "Annie thought you were in bed. Honest. Early-to-bed ladies you are, aren't you? Well, see that you're early to rise."
He turned away.
​"Beast," said Pearl calmly. "Thinks he's lord of the manor here. You ought to hear Edwin's opinion of him. . . . Have a toffee drop, Annie, and let's reely get to bed."
Delight and Jimmy were sitting on the sagging seat of the old sofa in the third-floor hallway. It was May but a gale was shaking the windows and a flurry of snow dimmed the panes. The deep roar of the lake made the indoors seem cozier. A good fire burned in the Quebec heater. One of the hands of the dye works had fallen in a vat that day, and his clothes hung by the stove on two chairs, giving off vapour and a strange pungent odour.
The two were happy.
Delight's body ached from a hard Saturday's work, but now it was relaxed in Jimmy's gentle embrace, her hands lay, resigned and warm in his, every now and again his lips just touched her hair.
"Darling girl," he murmured, "dearest girl in the world."
"Oo—Jimmy, isn't that a funny smell off them clothes?"
"It is queer. Poor Patterson was an awful colour when he was fished out. . . . Isn't it nice here, just you and me? So quiet like?"
"H'm. I can hear your heart, Jimmy."
"It doesn't beat for anyone but you, Delight."
"Then, it's saying—Delight—isn't it? De-light. De-light—De-light."
"You're not fretting for May now, are you?"
"Not so much. I'm getting used, and I like my new job waiting on the swells' tables."
Jimmy was hurt. "Ah, but it takes you away from me. ​I've never the same relish for my food any more. It makes me boil to see all those fool town fellows coming here to meals just for the sake of staring at you. You're too good for this place. . . . There's too much danger here for you." He turned his face to hers and whispered against her cheek: "Darling, we could have a little cottage, you and me, if you only would—I'd be so kind, Delight. You'd not need to work half so hard as you do here. When I was a boy I used to keep pigeons—I'd keep you just as safe and gentle as a pigeon."
"I know, Jimmy, and I will. But not yet. I want to be free for a while. I love you but—"
"But what?"
"I want to be just my own."
He saw that her full, curving lips could be stubborn. Once more he resigned himself to be patient.
Charley Bye had had too much to drink though it was only ten in the morning. It did not take much to make the brain behind his white classical forehead flounder like a captive balloon, now soaring in little spurts, now feebly joggling against the earth. He was seated by the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a plate of bread and cheese before him, looking large and solemn while his wife flew hither and thither from bake board to stove, her thin arms white with flour, her lips puckered with anxiety about her projecting tooth.
"Pearl, are you getting them brains ready for the sauce for the calves head?" she asked.
"Ye-es," answered Pearl, her nose curled. "I hate the sight of them."
​"Speaking of brains," said Charley oracularly, "there's nothing like 'em for getting on in the world."
"Well, they haven't done much for this calf," said Pearl.
"Ah, but he hasn't got 'em, that's the p'int. He's now a brainless calf wherever he is."
"And you're a brainless fool," interrupted his wife. "Drink your tea, for goodness sake, and give us your room. We need it more than your company."
Charley took a swig of his tea and then proceeded with dignity:
"Talk of brains. I had a buck rabbit that had brains to fit him to be on the town council. Anyone who knew him would co-operate this statement. I vallied him at five guineas. Not a penny less. Him and me was like brothers though I was summat older, being more what you might call Early Victorian in my idears."
Old Davy came into the kitchen and sat down heavily on a bench in a corner.
"What's up, Davy?" inquired Pearl.
"Someone has played me a dirty trick," said the old man. "You know the three geraniums I keep in my room. They set on the window-sill and I keep them soaked all winter. They looked kinder sickly but I liked them. Now some dirty skunk has emptied the pots on to the middle of my bed. You never seen such a litter—mud and slop and roots and broken plants. Annie's mad as a hornet because she's got to clean it. If I only knew who it was—"
"Speakin' of litters," observed Charley, "the finest litter my buck rabbit ever got—"
"Darn your rabbits!" shouted Davy. "What do I care for your rabbits? I'm tellin' about my geraniums!"
With a sudden weak and yet fierce gesture Mrs. Bye ​threw her floury apron over her head, and began loudly to weep.
"Oh, oh, I can't bear it!" she wailed, and she sat down on the bottom step of the backstairs.
Pearl ran to her and tried to draw the apron from her head.
"Oh, cook, whatever is the matter?" she cried.
Mrs. Bye's head could be seen rolling from side to side under the apron. Her two hands, with little worms of dough clinging to them, were wrung together.
"I can't bear it—" she repeated.
"Don't you go worryin' yourself," consoled Davy. "I'd ha' never told you if I'd thought you'd take on so."
Charley, too, spoke soothingly: "There's other rabbits where he come from, woife. Not but what I grant ye that there's none equal to him in edication."
"I can't bear it," came from under the apron, and a scream followed.
"For pity's sake get the doctor," said Pearl.
The two men merely stared stupidly, but Bastien who had been passing the door threw it open and strode over to Mrs. Bye.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"She's been took badly," explained Pearl, white and trembling. "Davy told her of a mean trick someone did and she flew right off the handle."
Bastien resolutely uncovered Mrs. Bye's head and looked down into her face. It was dusted with flour from the apron, and little runnels of tears through the flour made a strange, patchwork effect. She seemed to have no pride left, but sat with her poor face exposed to the gaze of all, her mouth sagging, her eyes staring disconsolately before her. She was quiet now.
​"I think it's hysterics," said Bastien, and he asked—"Are you in pain?"
"Not now," she answered wearily, "but it'll come back again. . . . If I could only get upstairs."
"Make an effort," advised Charley pompously. "Make an effort same as I do. Say to yourself—'I will conquer this here weakness.'"
"Shut up!" ordered Bastien.
He bent over Mrs. Bye. "Put your arms around my neck," he said, and heaved her up against his shoulder. He was of athletic build, and strong. In a moment he had carried Mrs. Bye up the stairs and laid her on her own bed. Charley regarded the feat with mild interest.
It was certain that Mrs. Bye was a very sick woman. When she and Pearl were left alone in the bedroom she raised herself on her elbow and, pointing with a shaking finger at a small box on the dresser, said:
"Hand me those powders, Pearl. I don't want the doctor to see them."
Pearl obeyed, and Mrs. Bye, sitting up now, took two folded papers from the box, emptied them into the basin beside the bed, tore the papers and box into small fragments, and ordered the girl to throw them out of the window.
She dropped back on the pillow then and passed before Pearl's eyes into terrible convulsions. Mrs. Jessop came, her large mouth set in a grim line.
"Go back to your work, Pearl," she said. "This is no place for you."
The doctor came and stayed for hours. The girls cried in the kitchen. Charley had been sobered by the ​excitement, and, feeling himself the centre of interest as an afflicted husband, passed from bar to kitchen, and kitchen to bar, recounting details of other "spells," staged by both this and the first Mrs. Bye. It was a serious business being a husband, and a man had need for a steady head and a sound edication. In fact, it was an edication in itself.
The next day Mrs. Bye was said to be out of danger, but she looked so ill that the girls were frightened when they crept in to see her. Her eyes were so large and blue, her face so ivory yellow, and her air so gentle and remote that she seemed to belong to another world.
Mrs. Jessop turned to and did the cooking, bringing an atmosphere of solid efficiency into the kitchen, very different from Mrs. Bye's nervous haste. There was no loitering when she was at the helm, though she took time to be coy when Bastien came into the kitchen. Once he stole behind her and untied her apron-strings, and she, grinning widely, dabbed flour at his face.
In a week Mrs. Bye was able to sit up, propped by pillows, but Charley began to be anxious about the slowness of her recovery. Mr. Hodgins, the owner of The Duke of York, was expected almost any time and Charley was deeply perturbed lest Mrs. Jessop should intimate to him that a delicate cook was a doubtful asset. Suppose they should lose their situations! Behind his calm brow fearful thoughts, like slow-moving shellfish, circled about. As his wife had said, behind his seeming foolishness he had a deal of sound sense. Deep misgivings now hung over him like a cloud. He was offended that Mrs. Bye did not seem to share them. For the first time since their marriage her mind seemed to be turned inward on her own selfish comforts. While he discoursed at length upon the dangers of a too-prolonged convalescence ​greedily eat the toast and custard one of the girls had brought her, or play with Queenie's flaxen hair, or even curl up in a ball and shut her eyes. He felt fettered in the struggle to maintain his position.
At last definite word was received that Mr. Hodgins was to be expected on Monday at noon.
All through the quiet of Sunday Charley was in a state of portentous calm. As he was undressing that night he addressed almost the first words he had spoken that day to Mrs. Bye.
"Mr. Hodgins will be here to dinner tomorrow. Are you goin' to get up or are you goin' to lie there forever?"
"Oh," moaned Mrs. Bye, "I'm so weak. Do let me be."
"Do you want to lose us our job?"
Mrs. Bye rolled up in a ball and shut her eyes.
Charley, in his undershirt and trousers, stood looking down at her. He looked from her to Queenie, sprawled over her little mattress on the floor, her pink face in a halo of silvery hair. A deep resolve to be master in his own house was born in him. He was an Englishman. This shabby, tumbled room, littered with the belongings of three people, was his castle. These two recumbent, obstinate females were his clinging vines, and he the sturdy oak. They'd cling so hard they'd stifle him if they could. But he'd show them oak wasn't to be stifled. Oak had his rights, by gum!
He dropped his boots, truculently, one by his wife's bed, one by his daughter's. Neither flinched nor stirred. He finished his undressing, put out the light, and sank heavily into bed.
His weight caused the mattress to sink so that Mrs. Bye rolled from her eminence next the wall, down ​against him, all her weight on his chest, her hair tickling his nose and mouth.
Queenie spoke in her sleep:
"Dahy! Dahy!"
"Daddy, eh?" Clinging vines! He'd show them!
Towards noon of the next day Mrs. Bye was lying flat on her back, listening to the hum and rattle of the kitchen below, her hands, like two ivory claws, palms upward on the dingy counterpane. Queenie was cutting out paper dolls on a stool by the head of the bed. She had difficulty in keeping them quiet once they were cut out, for a playful spring breeze blew in at the window and invested them with a malicious liveliness, waving their arms and legs about and prompting them to scurry to the farthermost corner under the bed.
Mrs. Bye was dreaming of her girlhood on a Surrey farm and of a certain young Thomas Clark who used to be sweet on her. She hadn't thought of him for years, but now he stood before her, real as life, smiling shyly as he helped her over a stile. She was smiling, too, when Charley opened the door and looked in at her. . . . Nothing to do but lie there and smile. It made him almost ill himself to think of such selfishness. He came in and slammed the door behind him.
Mrs. Bye awoke with a start to see him towering with his back against the door.
"Oh," she said weakly, "what time is it?" She did not want to know the time and only asked because she was afraid he was going to say something unpleasant.
"Time to get up," he answered majestically. "Time for you to get up and hold down your job, missus." He ​came towards her, creaking the boards beneath him.
"But I'm not able!" she cried, apprehensively clutching the quilt. "Nobody has said nothing against me resting a bit longer, have they?"
"Am I nobody? Have I said nothing?" Suddenly his voice swelled out, bursting from his barrel-like chest and filling the room. "I say now as you've lain long enough. Do you want us to be sacked along o' your laziness? Mrs. Jessop's given me a nasty look already this morning. . . . Come, now," he turned the bed-clothes back off her, "up you gets, and no nonsense."
Queenie tried to cover her mother up again.
"Don'h hurh her, Dahy!" she pleaded.
Charley swept her aside as though she had been one of her own paper dolls. He put his hands under his wife's arms and set her up, another doll, as white as paper. But something in his masterful touch brought the answer of her heart. She raised her eyes to him and smiled.
"Hold me a bit," she said, "I'm dizzy."
He supported her, and, mollified by her submission, said more kindly:
"You don't have to do nothing but sit still. I'll dress you and carry you down. Where's your clothes?"
The underthings were lying handy on the top of the trunk. He bent over her and breathing hard drew the black cotton stockings over the long thin legs. Between them they got her nightdress off; he, breathing still harder, clasped her corsets about her. . . . Encased in her poor armour of the day, Mrs. Bye felt more able to cope with the affairs of life.
She had Charley get a clean print dress for her from the bottom drawer. While he laced her shoes Queenie passed the stubby hair-brush over her hair, peeking round in her face to ask:
​"Be'er naow?"
Yes, she was better. She felt quite courageous as she clung to Charley's great barrel of a body, descending the backstairs. What ages since Bill had run up with her! Charley went cautiously, feeling for every step. Queenie shuffled after, carrying a pillow.
She created a sensation in the kitchen.
"Here's a sight for sore eyes," said old Davy who felt that in some way he was responsible for Mrs. Bye's sudden attack.
"Well, you do look like two sheets and a shadow," Mrs. Jessop declared.
Delight came running with the rocking-chair from the scullery; Annie with a bowl of broth; Pearl with a branch of pussy-willow to which downy grey catkins were clinging. Queenie was convulsed with joy to see her mother propped up in the kitchen. She snatched the willow wand and holding it erect began to march up and down, singing:
, "We aw mar'h toge'her, We aw mar'h toge'her, We aw mar'h toge'her, Nih'ly in a waow."
Mr. Hodgins was a nervous little man who knew nothing whatever about the hotel business. He had taken a mortgage on The Duke of York to help a friend in difficulties and the hotel had eventually come into his hands. He had already lost money by it and he was afraid he would lose more. He dreaded his occasional visits to Brancepeth to look into things, for Bastien and Mrs. Jessop intimidated him by their complete knowledge of ​what he so little understood and by their airs of aggressive competence.
However today he felt rather more hopeful. Bastien's accounts were more satisfactory. He was trying to economize. The dining-room trade was looking up wonderfully. A good dinner, tables well filled, and what a waitress! She made a man blink, positively. He doubted whether Mrs. Jessop should have taken on so beautiful a creature. It disturbed him to think of her in a hotel among a lot of rough fellows.
He stood blinking in the kitchen now, near the fiery range, the women and Charley in a deferential semi-circle about him, Bastien at his back.
Bastien said: "This is Mrs. Bye, the cook. She's had a little sick spell but she'll be all right in a day or so. Mrs. Jessop's been helping her out with the cooking."
Mrs. Jessop grinned. Mrs. Bye had risen. Some superhuman force seemed to have given power to those shaking legs of hers. Red patches flared in her cheeks. But there was something in her eyes that held Mr. Hodgins. He looked into them and thought: "Poor woman. A nice woman."
Queenie, pressing forward, put the wand of pussy-willow into his hand.
"Po woo," she said.
"What's that?" he asked. "What does she say?"
"She says it's for you," Mrs. Bye answered, shaking all over.
"Po woo," shouted Queenie, joggling his watch-chain.
"Good little girl," he replied. "Here's ten cents for you."
He kissed the child, chatted pleasantly to the women for a moment, and then retreated, carrying the willow wand.
A pleasant man, the women agreed. Everything had ​gone off well. He had praised the dinner, especially the rhubarb pie with custard sauce.
"I really believe I could try a bit of the pie and custard, with a cup of tea," said Mrs. Bye faintly.
Delight observed: "I don't think Mr. Hodgins likes me very well. He gave me a stern kind of look as he went out."
"I hope you didn't put yourself forward too much in the dining-room," said Mrs. Jessop, cutting the pie.
"Men are always giving her queer looks," said Annie sarcastically.
Delight smiled her lazy smile, and shrugged her goddess-like shoulders.
"Well I think they're comical and I don't care who hears me say it. Comical to the very marrow.