FullReads

Daisy stepped up to him.

‘I’m a damned bad lot,’ she said, ‘but I swear I’m not half as bad as you are…. You know what you’re driving me to.’

‘You don’t think I care what you do,’ he answered, as he flung himself out of the door. He slammed it behind him, and he also slammed the front door to show that he was a man of high principles. And even George Washington when he said, ‘I cannot tell a lie; I did it with my little hatchet,’ did not feel so righteous as George Griffith at that moment.

Daisy went to the window to see him go, and then, throwing up her arms, she fell on her knees, weeping, weeping, and she cried,–

‘My God, have pity on me!’

VIII

‘I wouldn’t go through it again for a hundred pounds,’ said George, when he recounted his experience to his mother. ‘And she wasn’t a bit humble, as you’d expect.’

‘Oh! that’s Daisy all over. Whatever happens to her, she’ll be as bold as brass.’

‘And she didn’t choose her language,’ he said, with mingled grief and horror.

* * * * *

They heard nothing more of Daisy for over a year, when George went up to London for the choir treat. He did not come back till three o’clock in the morning, but he went at once to his mother’s room.

He woke her very carefully, so as not to disturb his father. She started up, about to speak, but he prevented her with his hand.

‘Come outside; I’ve got something to tell you.’

Mrs Griffith was about to tell him rather crossly to wait till the morrow, but he interrupted her,–

‘I’ve seen Daisy.’

She quickly got out of bed, and they went together into the parlour.

‘I couldn’t keep it till the morning,’ he said…. ‘What d’you think she’s doing now? Well, after we came out of the Empire, I went down Piccadilly, and–well, I saw Daisy standing there…. It did give me a turn, I can tell you; I thought some of the chaps would see her. I simply went cold all over. But they were on ahead and hadn’t noticed her.’

‘Thank God for that!’ said Mrs Griffith, piously.

‘Well, what d’you think I did? I went straight up to her and looked her full in the face. But d’you think she moved a muscle? She simply looked at me as if she’d never set eyes on me before. Well, I was taken aback, I can tell you. I thought she’d faint. Not a bit of it.’

‘No, I know Daisy,’ said Mrs Griffith; ‘you think she’s this and that, because she looks at you with those blue eyes of hers, as if she couldn’t say bo to a goose, but she’s got the very devil inside her…. Well, I shall tell her father that, just so as to let him see what she has come to.’…

* * * * *

The existence of the Griffith household went on calmly. Husband and wife and son led their life in the dull little fishing town, the seasons passed insensibly into one another, one year slid gradually into the next; and the five years that went by seemed like one long, long day. Mrs Griffith did not alter an atom; she performed her housework, went to church regularly, and behaved like a Christian woman in that state of life in which a merciful Providence had been pleased to put her. George got married, and on Sunday afternoons could be seen wheeling an infant in a perambulator along the street. He was a good husband and an excellent father. He never drank too much, he worked well, he was careful of his earnings, and he also went to church regularly; his ambition was to become churchwarden after his father. And even in Mr Griffith there was not so very much change. He was more bowed, his hair and beard were greyer. His face was set in an expression of passive misery, and he was extremely silent. But as Mrs Griffith said,–