Маргарет Олифант
A House in Bloomsbury
“No,” said the young man, setting his lips firmly together.
“Drink!” cried Dr. Roland, fully roused. “Come, I’ll have no childish, wry faces. Why, you’re a man—with a wife—and not a naughty boy!”
“It’s not my doing coming here. She brought me, and I’ll see her far enough–”
“Hold your tongue you young ass, and take your physic! She’s a capital woman, and has done exactly as she ought to have done. No nonsense, I tell you! Sleep to-night, and then to-morrow you’ll go and set yourself right with the shop.”
“Sir!” cried the young man, with a gasp. His pulse gave a jump under the strong cool grip in which Dr. Roland had again taken it, and he fixed a frightened imploring gaze upon the doctor’s face.
“Oh, doctor!” cried the poor wife, “there’s nothing to set right with the shop. They think all the world of Alfred there.”
“They’ll think all the more of him,” said Dr. Roland, “after he has had a good night’s sleep. There, take him off to bed; and at ten o’clock to-morrow morning I expect to see him here.”
“Oh, doctor, is it anything bad? Oh, sir, can’t you make him all right?” she cried, standing with clasped hands, listening to the hurried yet wavering step with which her husband went upstairs.
“I’ll tell you to-morrow morning,” Dr. Roland said.
When the door was closed he went and sat down again by his fire; but the calm of his mind, the pleasure of his cigar, the excitement of his newspaper, had gone. Truth to tell, the excitement of this new question pleased him more than all these things together. “Has he done it, or is he only going to do it?” he asked himself. Could the thing be set right, or could it never be set right? He sat there for perhaps an hour, working out the question in both directions, considering the case in every light. It was a long time since he had met with anything so interesting. He only came to himself when he became conscious that the fire was burning very low, and the chill of the night creeping into the air. Then Dr. Roland rose again, compounded a drink for himself of a different quality from that which he had given to his patient, and selected out of his bookcase a yellow novel. But after a while he pitched the book from him, and pushed away the glass, and resumed his meditations. What was grog, and what was Gaboriau, in comparison with a problem like this?
CHAPTER VI
The house in Bloomsbury was, however, much more deeply troubled and excited than it would have been by anything affecting Alfred Hesketh, when it was known next morning that Mr. Mannering had been taken ill in the night, and was now unable to leave his bed. The doctor had been sent for early—alas! it was not Dr. Roland—and the whole household was disturbed. Such a thing had not been known for nearly a dozen years past, as that Mr. Mannering should not walk downstairs exactly at a quarter before ten, and close the door behind him, forming a sort of fourth chime to the three-quarters as they sounded from the church clock. The house was put out for the day by this failure in the regularity of its life and movement; all the more that it was very soon known that this prop of the establishment was very ill, that “the fever” ran very high, and that even his life was in danger. Nobody made much remark in these circumstances upon the disappearance of the humble little people on the upper floor, who, after much coming and going between their habitation and that of Dr. Roland downstairs, made a hurried departure, providentially, Mrs. Simcox said—thus leaving a little available room for the nurse who by this time had taken possession of the Mannering establishment, reducing Dora to the position which she had never occupied, of a child, and taking the management of everything. Two of these persons, indeed, had been ordered in by the doctor—a nurse for the day, and a nurse for the night, who filled the house with that air of redundant health and cheerfulness which seem to belong to nurses, one or other of them being always met on the stairs going out for her constitutional, going down for her meals, taking care of herself in some methodical way or other, according to prescription, that she might be fit for her work. And no doubt they were very fit for their work, and amply responded to the confidence placed in them: which was only not shared by Dora, banished by them out of her father’s room—and Miss Bethune, a woman full of prejudices, and Gilchrist, whose soft heart could not resist the cheerful looks of the two fresh young women, though their light-heartedness shocked her a little, and the wrongs of Dora filled her heart with sympathy.
Alas! Dora was not yet sixteen—there was no possibility, however carefully you counted the months, and showed her birthday to be approaching, to get over that fact. And what were her love and anxious desire to be of service, and devotion to her father, in comparison with these few years and the superior training of the women, who knew almost as much as the doctor himself? “Not saying much, that!” Dr. Roland grumbled under his breath, as he joined the anxious circle of malcontents in Miss Bethune’s apartment, where Dora came, trying proudly to restrain her tears, and telling how she had been shut out of Mr. Mannering’s room—“my own father’s room!” the girl cried in her indignation, two big drops, like raindrops, falling, in spite of her, upon her dress.
“It’s better for you, my bonnie dear,—oh, it’s better for you,” Gilchrist whispered, standing behind her, and drying her own flowing eyes with her apron.
“Dora, my darling,” said Miss Bethune, moved to a warmth of spirit quite unusual to her, “it is quite true what Gilchrist says. I am not fond of these women myself. They shall never nurse me. If I cannot have a hand that cares for me to smooth my pillow, it shall be left unsmoothed, and none of these good-looking hussies shall smile over me when I’m dying—no, no! But it is different; you’re far too young to have that on your head. I would not permit it. Gilchrist and me would have taken it and done every justice to your poor papa, I make no doubt, and been all the better for the work, two idle women as we are—but not you. You should have come and gone, and sat by his bedside and cheered him with the sight of you; but to nurse him was beyond your power. Ask the doctor, and he will tell you that as well as me.”
“I have always taken care of my father before,” said Dora. “When he has had his colds, and when he had rheumatism, and when–that time, Dr. Roland, you know.”
“That was the time,” said the doctor, “when you ran down to me in the middle of the night and burst into my room, like a wise little girl. We had him in our own hands then, and we knew what to do with him, Dora. But here’s Vereker, he’s a great swell, and neither you nor I can interfere.”
It comforted Dora a little to have Dr. Roland placed with herself among the outsiders who could not interfere, especially when Miss Bethune added: “That is just the grievance. We would all like to have a finger in the pie. Why should a man be taken out of the care of his natural friends and given into the charge of these women, that never saw him in their lives before, nor care whether he lives or dies?”
“Oh, they care—for their own reputation. There is nothing to be said against the women, they’ll do their duty,” said the doctor. “But there’s Vereker, that has never studied his constitution—that sees just the present symptoms, and no more. Take the child out for a walk, Miss Bethune, and let’s have her fresh and fair for him, at least, if"—the doctor pulled himself up hastily, and coughed to swallow the last alarming syllable,—“fresh and fair,” he added hastily, “when he gets better, which is a period with which no nurses can interfere.”
A colloquy, which was silent yet full of eager interest and feeling, sprang up between two pairs of eyes at the moment that if—most alarming of conjectures—was uttered. Miss Bethune questioned; the doctor replied. Then he said in an undertone: “A constitution never very strong,—exhausting work, exhausting emotions, unnatural peace in the latter life.”
Dora was being led away by Gilchrist to get her hat for the proposed walk; and Dr. Roland ended in his ordinary voice.
“Do you call that unnatural peace, with all the right circumstances of his life round him, and—and full possession of his bonnie girl, that has never been parted from him? I don’t call that unnatural.”
“You would if you were aware of the other side of it lopped off—one half of him, as it were, paralysed.”
“Doctor,” said Miss Bethune, with a curious smile, “I ought to take that as a compliment to my sex, as the fools say—if I cared a button for my sex or any such nonsense! But there is yourself, now, gets on very well, so far as I can see, with that side, as you call it, just as much lopped off.”
“How do you know?” said the doctor. “I may be letting concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on my damask cheek. But I allow,” he said, with a laugh, “I do get on very well: and so, if you will permit me to say it, do you, Miss Bethune. But then, you see, we have never known anything else.”
Something leaped up in Miss Bethune’s eye—a strange light, which the doctor could not interpret, though it did not escape his observation. “To be sure,” she said, nodding her head, “we have never known anything else. And that changes the case altogether.”
“That changes the case. I say nothing against a celibate life. I have always preferred it—it suits me better. I never cared,” he added, again with a laugh, “to have too much baggage to move about.”
“Do not be uncivil, doctor, after being more civil than was necessary.”
“But it’s altogether a different case with poor Mannering. It is not even as if his wife had betrayed him—in the ordinary way. The poor thing meant no harm.”
“Oh, do not speak to me!” cried Miss Bethune, throwing up her hands.
“I know; it is well known you ladies are always more severe—but, anyhow, that side was wrenched away in a moment, and then there followed long years of unnatural calm.”
“I do not agree with you, doctor,” she said, shaking her head. “The wrench was defeenitive.” Miss Bethune’s nationality betrayed itself in a great breadth of vowels, as well as in here and there a word or two. “It was a cut like death: and you do not call calm unnatural that comes after death, after long years?”
“It’s different—it’s different,” the doctor said.
“Ay, so it is,” she said, answering as it were her own question.
And there was a pause. When two persons of middle age discuss such questions, there is a world lying behind each full of experiences, which they recognise instinctively, however completely unaware they may be of each other’s case.
“But here is Dora ready for her walk, and me doing nothing but haver,” cried Miss Bethune, disappearing into the next room.
They might have been mother and daughter going out together in the gentle tranquillity of use and wont,—so common a thing!—and yet if the two had been mother and daughter, what a revolution in how many lives would have been made!—how different would the world have been for an entire circle of human souls! They were, in fact, nothing to each other—brought together, as we say, by chance, and as likely to be whirled apart again by those giddy combinations and dissolutions which the head goes round only to think of. For the present they walked closely together side by side, and talked of one subject which engrossed all their thoughts.
“What does the doctor think? Oh, tell me, please, what the doctor thinks!”
“How can he think anything, Dora, my dear? He has never seen your father since he was taken ill.”
“Oh, Miss Bethune, but he knew him so well before. And I don’t ask you what he knows. He must think something. He must have an opinion. He always has an opinion, whatever case it may be.”
“He thinks, my dear, that the fever must run its course. Now another week’s begun, we must just wait for the next critical moment. That is all, Dora, my darling, that is all that any man can say.”
“Oh, that it would only come!” cried Dora passionately. “There is nothing so dreadful as waiting—nothing! However bad a thing is, if you only know it, not hanging always in suspense.”
“Suspense means hope; it means possibility and life, and all that makes life sweet. Be patient, be patient, my bonnie dear.”
Dora looked up into her friend’s face. “Were you ever as miserable as I am?” she said. Miss Bethune was thought grim by her acquaintances and there was a hardness in her, as those who knew her best were well aware; but at this question something ineffable came into her face. Her eyes filled with tears, her lips quivered with a smile. “My little child!” she said.
Dora did not ask any more. Her soul was silenced in spite of herself: and just then there arose a new interest, which is always so good a thing for everybody, especially at sixteen. “There,” she cried, in spite of herself, though she had thought she was incapable of any other thought, “is poor Mrs. Hesketh hurrying along on the other side of the street.”
They had got into a side street, along one end of which was a little row of trees.
“Oh, run and speak to her, Dora.”
Mrs. Hesketh seemed to feel that she was pursued. She quickened her step almost into a run, but she was breathless and agitated and laden with a bundle, and in no way capable of outstripping Dora. She paused with a gasp, when the girl laid a hand on her arm.
“Didn’t you hear me call you? You surely could never, never mean to run away from me?”
“Miss Dora, you were always so kind, but I didn’t know who it might be.”
“Oh, Mrs. Hesketh, you can’t know how ill my father is, or you would have wanted to ask for him. He has been ill a month, and I am not allowed to nurse him. I am only allowed to go in and peep at him twice a day. I am not allowed to speak to him, or to do anything for him, or to know–”
Dora paused, choked by the quick-coming tears.
“I am so sorry, miss. I thought as you were happy at least: but there’s nothing, nothing but trouble in this world,” cried Mrs. Hesketh, breaking into a fitful kind of crying. Her face was flushed and heated, the bundle impeding all her movements. She looked round in alarm at every step, and when she saw Miss Bethune’s tall figure approaching, uttered a faint cry. “Oh, Miss Dora, I can’t stay, and I can’t do you any good even if I could; I’m wanted so bad at home.”
“Where are you going with that big bundle? You are not fit to be carrying it about the streets,” said Miss Bethune, suddenly standing like a lion in the way.
The poor little woman leant against a tree, supporting her bundle. “Oh, please,” she said, imploring; and then, with some attempt at self-defence, “I am going nowhere but about my own business. I have got nothing but what belongs to me. Let me go.”
“You must not go any further than this spot,” said Miss Bethune. “Dora, go to the end of the road and get a cab. Whatever you would have got for that where you were going, I will give it you, and you can keep your poor bits of things. What has happened to you? Quick, tell me, while the child’s away.”
The poor young woman let her bundle fall at her feet. “My husband’s ill, and he’s lost his situation,” she said, with piteous brevity, and sobbed, leaning against the tree.
“And therefore you thought that was a fine time to run away and hide yourself among strangers, out of the reach of them that knew you? There was the doctor, and there was me. Did you think we would let harm happen to you? You poor feckless little thing!”
“The doctor! It was the doctor that lost Alfred his place,” cried the young woman angrily, drying her eyes. “Let me go—oh, let me go! I don’t want no charity,” she said.
“And what would you have got for all that?”
“Perhaps ten shillings—perhaps only six. Oh, lady, you don’t know us except just to see us on the stairs. I’m in great trouble, and he’s heartbroken, and waiting for me at ’ome. Leave me alone and let me go.”
“If you had put them away for ten shillings they would have been of no further use to you. Now, here’s ten shillings, and you’ll take these things back; but you’ll mind that they’re mine, though I give you the use of them, and you’ll promise to come to me, or to send for me, and to take no other way. What is the matter with your husband? Let him come to the doctor, and you to me.”
“Oh, never, never, to that doctor!” Mrs. Hesketh cried.
“The doctor’s a good man, and everybody’s friend, but he may have a rough tongue, I would not say. But come you to me. We’ll get him another place, and all will go well. You silly little thing, the first time trouble comes in your way, to fall into despair! Oh, this is you, Dora, with the cab. Put in the bundle. And now, here’s the money, and if you do not come to me, mind you will have broken your word.”
“Oh, ma’am! Oh, Miss Dora!” was all the poor little woman could say.
“Now, Dora,” said Miss Bethune cheerfully, “there’s something for you to do—Gilchrist and you. You’ll give an account to me of that poor thing, and if you let her slip through your fingers I’ll never forgive you. There’s something wrong. Perhaps he drinks, or perhaps he does something worse—if there’s anything worse: but whatever it is, it is your responsibility. I’m an idle, idle person; I’m good for nothing. But you’re young, and Gilchrist’s a tower of strength, and you’ll just give an account of that poor bit creature, soul and body, to me.”
CHAPTER VII
Mr. Mannering’s illness ran on and on. Week after week the anxious watchers waited for the crisis which did not come. It was evident now that the patient, who had no violence in his illness any more than in his life, was yet not to be spared a day of its furthest length. But it was allowed that he had no bad symptoms, and that the whole matter turned on the question whether his strength could be sustained. Dr. Roland, not allowed to do anything else for his friend, regulated furtively the quality and quantity of the milk, enough to sustain a large nursery, which was sent upstairs. He tested it in every scientific way, and went himself from dairy to dairy to get what was best; and Mrs. Simcox complained bitterly that he was constantly making inroads into “my kitchen” to interfere in the manufacture of the beef tea. He even did, which was against every rule of medical etiquette, stop the great Dr. Vereker on the stairs and almost insist upon a medical consultation, and to give his own opinion about the patient to this great authority, who looked him over from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot with undisguised yet bewildered contempt. Who was this man who discoursed to the great physician about the tendencies and the idiosyncrasies of the sick man, whom it was a matter of something like condescension on Dr. Vereker’s part to attend at all, and whom this little person evidently believed himself to understand better?
“If Mr. Mannering’s friends wish me to meet you in consultation, I can have, of course, no objection to satisfy them, or even to leave the further conduct of the case in your hands,” he said stiffly.
“Nothing of the kind—nothing of the kind!” cried poor Dr. Roland. “It’s only that I’ve watched the man for years. You perhaps don’t know–”
“I think,” said Dr. Vereker, “you will allow that after nearly six weeks’ attendance I ought, unless I am an ignoramus, to know all there is to know.”
“I don’t deny it for a moment. There is no practitioner in London certainly who would doubt Dr. Vereker’s knowledge. I mean his past—what he has had to bear—the things that have led up–”
“Moral causes?” said the great physician blandly, raising his eyebrows. “My dear sir, depend upon it, a bad drain is more to be reckoned with than all the tragedies of the world.”
“I shall not depend on anything of the kind!” cried Dr. Roland, almost dancing with impatience.
“Then you will permit me to say good-morning, for my time is precious,” answered his distinguished brother—“unless,” he added sarcastically, pausing to look round upon the poor doctor’s sitting-room, then arrayed in its morning guise as waiting-room, with all the old Graphics, and picture books laid out upon the table—“Mr. Mannering’s friends are dissatisfied and wish to put the case in your hands?”
“Do you know who Mr. Mannering’s friends are?” cried Dr. Roland. “Little Dora, his only child! I know no others. Just about as little influential as are those moral causes you scorn, but I don’t.”
“Indeed!” said Dr. Vereker, with more consideration of this last statement. Little Dora was not much of a person to look to for the rapidly accumulating fees of a celebrated doctor during a long illness. But though he was a prudent man, he was not mercenary; perhaps he would have hesitated about taking up the case had he known at first, but he was not the man to retire now out of any fear of being paid. “Mr. Mannering is a person of distinction,” he said, in a self-reassuring tone; “he has been my patient at long intervals for many years. I don’t think we require to go into the question further at this moment.” He withdrew with great dignity to the carriage that awaited him, crossing one or two of Dr. Roland’s patients, whose appearance somewhat changed his idea of the little practitioner who had thus ventured to assail him; while, on the other hand, Roland for his part was mollified by the other’s magnanimous reception of a statement which seemed to make his fees uncertain. Dr. Vereker was not in the least a mercenary man, he would never have overwhelmed an orphan girl with a great bill: at the same time, it did float across his mind that if the crisis were once over which professional spirit and honour compelled him to conduct to a good end if possible, a little carelessness about his visits after could have no bad result, considering the constant vicinity of that very keen-eyed practitioner downstairs.
A great doctor and two nurses, unlimited supplies of fresh milk, strong soup, and every appliance that could be thought of to alleviate and console the patient, by these professional persons of the highest class, accustomed to spare no expense, are, however, things that do not agree with limited means; and Dora, the only authority on the subject, knew nothing about her father’s money, or how to get command of it. Mrs. Simcox’s bills were very large in the present position of affairs, the rooms that had been occupied by the Heskeths being now appropriated to the nurses, for whom the landlady furnished a table more plentiful than that to which Mr. Mannering and his daughter had been accustomed. And when the crisis at last arrived, in the middle of a tardy and backward June, the affairs of the little household, even had there been any competent person to understand them, were in a very unsatisfactory state indeed—a state over which Dr. Roland and Miss Bethune consulted in the evenings with many troubled looks, and shakings of the head. She had taken all the necessary outgoings in hand, for the moment as she said; and Miss Bethune was known to be well off. But the prospect was rather serious, and neither of them knew how to interfere in the sick man’s money matters, or to claim what might be owing to him, though, indeed, there was probably nothing owing to him until quarter day: and there were a number of letters lying unopened which, to experienced eyes, looked painfully like bills, as if quarter day would not have enough to do to provide for its own things without responding to this unexpected strain. Dora knew nothing about these matters. She recognised the letters with the frankest acquaintance. They were from old book shops, from scientific workmen who mounted and prepared specimens, from dealers in microscopes and other delicate instruments. “Father says these are our dressmakers, and carriages, and parties,” said Dora, half, or indeed wholly, proud of such a distinction above her fellows.
Miss Bethune shook her head and said, “Such extravagance!” in Dr. Roland’s ear. He was more tolerant. “They are all the pleasures the poor man has,” he said. But they did not make the problem more easy as to how the present expenses were to be met when the quarter’s pay came in, even if it could be made available by Dora’s only friends, who were “no relations,” and had no right to act for her. Miss Bethune went through a great many abstruse calculations in the mornings which she spent alone. She was well off,—but that is a phrase which means little or much, according to circumstances; and she had a great many pensioners, and already carried a little world on her shoulders, to which she had lately added the unfortunate little Mrs. Hesketh, and the husband, who found it so difficult to get another place. Many cares of a similar kind were on this lady’s head. She never gave a single subscription to any of the societies: collectors for charities called on her in vain; but to see the little jottings of her expenses would have been a thing not without edification for those who could understand the cipher, or, rather, the combination of undecipherable initials, in which they were set down. She did not put M. for Mannering in her accounts; but there were a great many items under the initial W., which no one but herself could ever have identified, which made it quite sure that no stranger going over these accounts could make out who Miss Bethune’s friends were. She shook her head over that W. If Dora were left alone, what relics would there be for her out of the future quarter’s pay, so dreadfully forestalled, even if the pay did not come to a sudden stop at once? And, on the other hand, if the poor man got better, and had to face a long convalescence with that distracting prospect before him, no neighbour any longer daring to pay those expenses which would be quite as necessary for him in his weak state as they were now? Miss Bethune could do nothing but shake her head, and feel her heart contract with that pang of painful pity in which there is no comfort at all. And in the meantime everything went on as if poor Mannering were a millionaire, everything was ordered for him with a free hand which a prince could have had; and Mrs. Simcox excelled herself in making the nurses, poor things, comfortable. What could any one do to limit this full flowing tide of liberality? Of course, he must have everything that could possibly be wanted for him; if he did not use it, at least it must be there in case he might use it. What could people who were “no relations” do? What could Dora do, who was only a child? And indeed, for the matter of that, what could any one, even in the fullest authority, have done to hinder the sick man from having anything which by the remotest possibility might be of use to him? Thus affairs went on with a dreadful velocity, and accumulation of wrath against the day of wrath.
That was a dreadful day, the end of the sixth week, the moment when the crisis must come. It was in the June evening, still daylight, but getting late, when the doctor arrived. Mr. Mannering had been very ill all day, sleeping, or in a state of stupor nearly all the time, moving his head uneasily on his pillow, but never rousing to any consciousness of what was going on about him. The nurses, always cheerful, did not, however, conceal their apprehensions. He had taken his beef tea, he had taken the milk which they poured down his throat: but his strength was gone, and he lay with no longer any power to struggle, like a forsaken boat on the sea margin, to be drifted off or on the beach according to the pleasure of wind and tide.
Miss Bethune sat in her room holding Dora’s hand, who, however, did not realise that this was more important than any of the other days on which they had hoped that “the turn” might come, and a little impatient of the seriousness of the elder woman, who kept on saying tender words to her, caressing her hand,—so unnecessarily emotional, Dora thought, seeing that at all events it was not her father who was ill, and she had no reason to be so unhappy about it. This state of excitement was brought to a climax by the sound of the doctor’s steps going upstairs, followed close by the lighter step of Dr. Roland, whom no etiquette could now restrain, who followed into the very room, and if he did not give an opinion in words, gave it with his eyes, and saw, even more quickly than the great Dr. Vereker, everything that was to be seen. It was he who came down a few minutes later, while they were both listening for the more solemn movements of the greater authority, descending with a rush like that of a bird, scarcely touching the steps, and standing in the last sunset light which came from the long staircase window behind, like something glorified and half angelic, as if his house coat, glazed at the shoulders and elbows, had been some sort of shining mail.
Tears were in Dr. Roland’s eyes; he waved his hand over his head and broke forth into a broken hurrah. Miss Bethune sprang up to meet him, holding out her hands. And in the sight of stern youth utterly astonished by this exhibition, these two elderly people as good as rushed into each other’s arms.
Dora was so astounded, so disapproving, so little aware that this was her last chance for her father’s life, that she almost forgot her father in the consternation, shame, and horror with which she looked on. What did they mean? It could not have anything to do with her father, of whom they were “no relations". How dared they to bring in their own silly affairs when she was in such trouble? And then Miss Bethune caught herself, Dora, in her arms.
“What is the matter?” cried the girl. “Oh, let me alone! I can think of nothing but father and Dr. Vereker, who is upstairs.”
“It is all right—it is all right,” said Dr. Roland. “Vereker will take half an hour more to make up his mind. But I can tell you at once; the fever’s gone, and, please God, he’ll pull through.”
“Is it only you that says so, Dr. Roland?” cried Dora, hard as the nether millstone, and careless, indeed unconscious, what wound she might give.
