"Yes, that's just what Bellamy says. He says I always go on with
anything that comes into my head; but then it has nothing to do with
anything he is saying, and maybe that's true, for one thing seems always
to draw me on to another, and so I go round like, and I don't know myself
where I am when I've finished. A little more tea, my dear, if you
please. And yet," continued Mrs. Bellamy, when she had finished half of
her third cup, "what I meant to say really has to do with you. It's all
the same. You wouldn't hate the Terrace so much if you knew that nobody
meant to spite you, as Jacob says. Suppose your father was driven to the
Terrace and couldn't help it, and there wasn't another house for him, you
wouldn't hate it so much then. It isn't the Terrace altogether. Now,
Miss Catharine, you won't mind my speaking out to you. You know you are
my girl," and Mrs. Bellamy turned and kissed her; "you mustn't, you
really mustn't. I've seen what was coming for a long time. Your mother
and you ain't alike, but you mustn't rebel. I'm a silly old fool, and I
know I haven't got a head, and what is in it is all mixed up somehow, but
you'll be ever so much better if you leave your mother out of it, and
don't, as I've told you before, go on dreaming she came here because you
didn't want to come, or that she set herself up on purpose against you.
And then you can always run over to Chapel Farm just whenever you like,
my pet, and there's your own room always waiting for you."
An hour afterwards, when Mrs. Bellamy had left, Mr. Furze came home. Mrs.
Furze was still upstairs, but consented to be coaxed down to supper. She
passed the drawing-room; the door was wide open, and she reflected
bitterly upon the new carpet, the oleographs, and the schemes erected
thereon. To think on what she had spent and what she had done, and then
that Mrs. Colston should be received by a charwoman with a pail, should
be shown into the room downstairs, and find it like a public-house bar!
If Mr. Furze had been there alone it would not so much have mattered, but
the presence of wife and daughter sanctioned the vulgarity, not to say
indecency. Mrs. Colston would naturally conclude they were accustomed to
that sort of thing--that the pipe, Mrs. Bellamy and the sausages, the
absence of Mr. Furze's coat and waistcoat, were the "atmosphere," as Mrs.
Furze put it, in which they lived.
"That's right; glad to see you are able to come down," said Mr. Furze.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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