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A House in Bloomsbury
“I—I—forgive? Oh, never, never had I anything to forgive—never! I—oh if you only knew!”
“I wouldn’t say anything to excite her, Mr. Harry,” said the maid. “She isn’t so well, really; she’s very bad, as true as can be. I’ve sent for the doctor.”
“Yes, tell him!” cried the poor lady eagerly; “tell him that you have never seen me so ill. Tell him, Miller, that I’m very bad, and going to die!”
“We’ll wait and hear what the doctor says, ma’am,” said the maid cautiously.
“But Dora, Harry—oh, bring her, bring her! How am I to die without my Dora? Oh, bring her! Ask this lady—I don’t mind her being strong-minded or anything, if she will bring my child. Harry, you must steal her away, if he will not let her come. I have a right to her. It is—it is her duty to come to me when I am going to die!”
“Don’t excite her, sir, for goodness’ sake; promise anything,” whispered the maid.
“I will, aunt. I’ll run away with her. I’ll have a carriage with a couple of ruffians to wait round the corner, and I’ll throw something over her head to stifle her cries, and then we’ll carry her away.”
“It isn’t any laughing matter,” she said, recovering her composure a little. “If you only knew, Harry! But I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell you—or any one. Oh, Harry, my poor boy, you’ll find out a great many things afterwards, and perhaps you’ll blame me. I know you’ll blame me. But remember I was always fond of you, and always kind to you all the same. You won’t forget that, however badly you may think of me. Oh, Harry, my dear, my dear!”
“Dear aunt, as if there could ever be any question of blame from me to you!” he said, kissing her hand.
“But there will be a question. Everybody will blame me, and you will be obliged to do it too, though it goes against your kind heart. I seem to see everything, and feel what’s wrong, and yet not be able to help it. I’ve always been like that,” she said, sobbing. “Whatever I did, I’ve always known it would come to harm; but I’ve never been able to stop it, to do different. I’ve done so many, many things! Oh, if I could go back and begin different from the very first! But I shouldn’t. I am just as helpless now as then. And I know just how you will look, Harry, and try not to believe, and try not to say anything against me–”
“If you don’t keep quiet, ma’am, I’ll have to go and leave you! and a nurse is what you will get—a nurse out of the hospital, as will stand no nonsense.”
“Oh, Miller, just one word! Harry, promise me you’ll think of what I said, and that you will not blame–”
“Never,” he said, rising from her side. “I acquit you from this moment, aunt. You can never do anything that will be evil in my eyes. But is not the room too dark, and don’t you mean to have any lunch? A little light and a little cutlet, don’t you think, Miller? No? Well, I suppose you know best, but you’ll see that is what the doctor will order. I’m going to get mine, anyhow, for I’m as hungry as a hunter. Blame you? Is it likely?” he said, stooping to kiss her.
Notwithstanding his affectionate fidelity, he was glad to be free of the darkened room and oppressive atmosphere and troubled colloquy. To return to ordinary daylight and life was a relief to him. But he had no very serious thoughts, either about the appeal she had made to him or her condition. He had known her as ill and as hysterical before. When she was ill she was often emotional, miserable, fond of referring to mysterious errors in her past. Harry thought he knew very well what these errors were. He knew her like the palm of his hand, as the French say. He knew the sort of things she would be likely to do, foolish things, inconsiderate, done in a hurry—done, very likely, as she said, with a full knowledge that they ought not to be done, yet that she could not help it. Poor little aunt! he could well believe in any sort of silly thing, heedless, and yet not altogether heedless either, disapproved of in her mind even while she did it. Our children know us better than any other spectators know us. They know the very moods in which we are likely to do wrong. What a good thing it is that with that they love us all the same, more or less, as the case may be! And that their eyes, though so terribly clear-sighted, are indulgent too; or, if not indulgent, yet are ruled by the use and wont, the habit of us, and of accepting us, whatever we may be. Young Gordon knew exactly, or thought he knew, what sort of foolish things she might have done, or even yet might be going to do. Her conscience was evidently very keen about this Mr. Mannering, this sister’s husband, as he appeared to be; perhaps she had made mischief, not meaning it and yet half meaning it, between him and his wife, and could not forgive herself, or hope to be forgiven. Her own husband had been a grave man, very loving to her, yet very serious with her, and he knew that there had never been mention of Dora between these two. Once, he remembered, his guardian had seen the box ready to be despatched, and had asked no questions, but looked for a moment as if he would have pushed it out of the way with his foot. Perhaps he had disapproved of these feeble attempts to make up to the sister’s child for harm done to her mother. Perhaps he had felt that the wrong was unforgiveable, whatever it was. He had taken it for granted that after his death his wife would go home; and Harry remembered a wistful strange look which he cast upon her when he was dying. But the young man gave himself a little shake to throw off these indications of a secret which he did not know. His nature, as had been said, was averse to secrets; he refused to have anything to do with a mystery. Everything in which he was concerned was honest and open as the day. He did not dwell on the fact that he had a mystery connected with himself, and was in the curious circumstance of having a mother whom he did not know. It was very odd, he admitted, when he thought of it; but as he spent his life by the side of a woman who was in all respects exactly like his mother to him, perhaps it is not so wonderful that his mind strayed seldom to that thought. He shook everything off as he went downstairs, and sat down to luncheon with the most hearty and healthy appetite in the world.
CHAPTER XIII
“Dora,” said Mr. Mannering, half raising his head from the large folio which had come from the old book dealer during his illness, and which, in these days of his slow convalescence, had occupied much of his time. After he had spoken that word he remained silent for some time, his head slightly raised, his shoulders bent over the big book. Then he repeated “Dora” again. “Do you think,” he said, “you could carry one of these volumes as far as Fiddler’s, and ask if he would take it back?”
“Take it back!” Dora cried in surprise.
“You can tell him that I do not find it as interesting as I expected—but no; for that might do it harm, and it is very interesting. You might say our shelves are all filled up with big books, and that I have really no room for it at present, which,” he added, looking anxiously up into her face, “is quite true; for, you remember, when I was so foolish as to order it, we asked ourselves how it would be possible to find a place for it? But no, no,” he said, “these are inventions, and I see your surprise in your face that I should send you with a message that is not genuine. It is true enough, you know, that I am much slackened in the work I wanted this book for. I am slackened in everything. I doubt if I can take up any piece of work again to do any good. I’m old, you see, to have such a long illness,” he said, looking at her almost apologetically; “and, unless it had been with an idea of work, I never could have had any justification in ordering such an expensive book as this.”
“You never used to think of that, father,” Dora said.
“No, I never used to think of that; but I ought to have done so. I’m afraid I’ve been very extravagant. I could always have got it, and consulted it as much as I pleased at the Museum. It is a ridiculous craze I have had for having the books in my own possession. Many men cannot understand it. Williamson, for instance. He says: ‘In your place I would never buy a book. Why, you have the finest library in the world at your disposal.’ And it’s quite true. There could not be a more ridiculous extravagance on my part, and pride, I suppose to be able to say I had it.”
“I don’t think that’s the case at all,” cried Dora. “What do you care for, father, except your library? You never go anywhere, you have no amusements like other people. You don’t go into society, or go abroad, or—anything that the other people do.”
“That is true enough,” he said, with a little gleam of pleasure. Then, suddenly taking her hand as she stood beside him: “My poor child, you say that quite simply, without thinking what a terrible accusation it would be if it went on,—a sacrifice of your young life to my old one, and forgetfulness of all a girl’s tastes and wishes. We’ll try to put that right at least, Dora,” he said, with a slight quiver in his lip, “in the future—if there is any future for me.”
“Father!” she said indignantly, “as if I didn’t like the books, and was not more proud of your work that you are doing–”
“And which never comes to anything,” he interjected, sadly shaking his head.
“– than of anything else in the world! I am very happy as I am. I have no tastes or pleasures but what are yours. I never have wanted anything that you did not get for me. You should see,” cried Dora, with a laugh, “what Janie and Molly think downstairs. They think me a princess at the least, with nothing to do, and all my fine clothes!”
“Janie and Molly!” he said,—“Janie and Molly! And these are all that my girl has to compare herself with—the landlady’s orphan granddaughters! You children make your arrows very sharp without knowing it. But it shall be so no more. Dora, more than ever I want you to go to Fiddler’s; but you shall tell him what is the simple truth—that I have had a long illness, which has been very expensive, and that I cannot afford any more expensive books. He might even, indeed, be disposed to buy back some that we have. That is one thing,” he added, with more animation, “all the books are really worth their price. I have always thought they would be something for you, whether you sold them or kept them, when I am gone. Do you think you could carry one of them as far as Fiddler’s, Dora? They are in such excellent condition, and it would show him no harm had come to them. One may carry a book anywhere, even a young lady may. And it is not so very heavy.”
“It is no weight at all,” cried Dora, who never did anything by halves. “A little too big for my pocket, father; but I could carry it anywhere. As if I minded carrying a book, or even a parcel! I like it—it looks as if one had really something to do.”
She went out a few minutes after, lightly with great energy and animation, carrying under one arm the big book as if it had been a feather-weight. It was a fine afternoon, and the big trees in the Square were full of the rustle and breath of life—life as vigorous as if their foliage waved in the heart of the country and not in Bloomsbury. There had been showers in the morning; but now the sun shone warm, and as it edged towards the west sent long rays down the cross streets, making them into openings of pure light, and dazzling the eyes of the passers-by. Dora was caught in this illumination at every street corner, and turned her face to it as she crossed the opening, not afraid, for either eyes or complexion, of that glow “angry and brave". The great folio, with its worn corners and its tarnished gilding, rather added to the effect of her tall, slim, young figure, strong as health and youth could make it, with limbs a little too long, and joints a little too pronounced, as belonged to her age. She carried her head lightly as a flower, her step was free and light; she looked, as she said, “as if she had something to do,” and was wholly capable of doing it, which is a grace the more added, not unusually in these days, to the other graces of early life in the feminine subject. But it is not an easy thing to carry a large folio under your arm. After even a limited stretch of road, the lamb is apt to become a sheep: and to shift such a cumbrous volume from one arm to another is not an easy matter either, especially while walking along the streets. Dora held on her way as long as she could, till her wrist was like to break, and her shoulder to come out of its socket. Neither she nor her father had in the least realised what the burden was. Then she turned it over with difficulty in both arms, and transferred it to the other side, speedily reducing the second arm to a similar condition, while the first had as yet barely recovered.
It is not a very long way from the corner of the Square to those delightful old passages full of old book-shops, which had been the favourite pasturage of Mr. Mannering, and where Dora had so often accompanied her father. On ordinary occasions she thought the distance to Fiddler’s no more than a few steps, but to-day it seemed miles long. And she was too proud to give in, or to go into a shop to rest, while it did not seem safe to trust a precious book, and one that she was going to give back to the dealer, to a passing boy. She toiled on accordingly, making but slow progress, and very much subdued by her task, her cheeks flushed, and the tears in her eyes only kept back by pride, when she suddenly met walking quickly along, skimming the pavement with his light tread, the young man who had so wounded and paralysed her in Miss Bethune’s room, whom she had seen then only for the first time, but who had claimed her so cheerfully by her Christian name as an old friend.
She saw him before he saw her, and her first thought was the quick involuntary one, that here was succour coming towards her; but the second was not so cheerful. The second was, that this stranger would think it his duty to help her; that he would conceive criticisms, even if he did not utter them, as to the mistake of entrusting her with a burden she was not equal to; that he would assume more and more familiarity, perhaps treat her altogether as a little girl—talk again of the toys he had helped to choose, and all those injurious revolting particulars which had filled her with so much indignation on their previous meeting. The sudden rush and encounter of these thoughts distracting her mind when her body had need of all its support, made Dora’s limbs so tremble, and the light so go out of her eyes, that she found herself all at once unable to carry on her straight course, and awoke to the humiliating fact that she had stumbled to the support of the nearest area railing, that the book had slipped from under her tired arm, and that she was standing there, very near crying, holding it up between the rail and her knee.
“Why, Miss Dora!” cried that young man. He would have passed, had it not been for that deplorable exhibition of weakness. But when his eye caught the half-ridiculous, wholly overwhelming misery of the slipping book, the knee put forth to save it, the slim figure bending over it, he was beside her in a moment. “Give it to me,” he cried, suiting the action to the word, and taking it from her as if it had been a feather. Well, she had herself said it was a feather at first.
Dora, relieved, shook her tired arms, straightened her figure, and raised her head; with all her pride coming back.
“Oh, please never mind. I had only got it out of balance. I am quite, quite able to carry it,” she cried.
“Are you going far? And will you let me walk with you? It was indeed to see you I was going—not without a commission.”
“To see me?”
The drooping head was thrown back with a pride that was haughty and almost scornful. A princess could not have treated a rash intruder more completely de haut en bas. “To me! what could you have to say to me?” the girl seemed to say, in the tremendous superiority of her sixteen years.
The young man laughed a little—one is not very wise at five and twenty on the subject of girls, yet he had experience enough to be amused by these remnants of the child in this half-developed maiden. “You are going this way?” he said, turning in the direction in which she had been going. “Then let me tell you while we walk. Miss Dora, you must remember this is not all presumption or intrusion on my side. I come from a lady who has a right to send you a message.”
“I did not say you were intrusive,” cried Dora, blushing for shame.
“You only looked it,” said young Gordon; “but you know that lady is my aunt too—at least, I have always called her aunt, for many, many years.”
“Ought I to call her aunt?” Dora said. “I suppose so indeed, if she is my mother’s sister.”
“Certainly you should, and you have a right; but I only because she allows me, because they wished it, to make me feel no stranger in the house. My poor dear aunt is very ill—worse, they say, than she has ever been before.”
“Ill?” Dora seemed to find no words except these interjections that she could say.
“I hope perhaps they may be deceived. The doctors don’t know her constitution. I think I have seen her just as bad and come quite round again. But even Miller is frightened: she may be worse than I think, and she has the greatest, the most anxious desire to see you, as she says, before she dies.”
“Dies?” cried Dora. “But how can she die when she has only just come home?”
“That is what I feel, too,” cried the young man, with eagerness. “But perhaps,” he added, “it is no real reason; for doesn’t it often happen that people break down just at the moment when they come in sight of what they have wished for for years and years?”
“I don’t know,” said Dora, recovering her courage. “I have not heard of things so dreadful as that. I can’t imagine that it could be permitted to be; for things don’t happen just by chance, do they? They are,” she added quite inconclusively, “as father says, all in the day’s work.”
“I don’t know either,” said young Gordon; “but very cruel things do happen. However, there is nothing in the world she wishes for so much as you. Will you come to her? I am sure that you have never been out of her mind for years. She used to talk to me about you. It was our secret between us two. I think that was the chief thing that made her take to me as she did, that she might have some one to speak to about Dora. I used to wonder what you were at first,—an idol, or a prodigy, or a princess.”
“You must have been rather disgusted when you found I was only a girl,” Dora cried, in spite of herself.
He looked at her with a discriminative gaze, not uncritical, yet full of warm light that seemed to linger and brighten somehow upon her, and which, though Dora was looking straight before her, without a glance to the right or left, or any possibility of catching his eye, she perceived, though without knowing how.
“No,” he said, with a little embarrassed laugh, “quite the reverse, and always hoping that one day we might be friends.”
Dora made no reply. For one thing they had now come (somehow the walk went much faster, much more easily, when there was no big book to carry) to the passage leading to Holborn, a narrow lane paved with big flags, and with dull shops, principally book-shops, on either side, where Fiddler, the eminent old bookseller and collector, lived. Her mind had begun to be occupied by the question how to shake this young man off and discharge her commission, which was not an easy one. She hardly heard what he last said. She said to him hastily, “Please give me back the book, this is where I am going,” holding out her hands for it. She added, “Thank you very much,” with formality, but yet not without warmth.
“Mayn’t I carry it in?” He saw by her face that this request was distasteful, and hastened to add, “I’ll wait for you outside; there are quantities of books to look at in the windows,” giving it back to her without a word.
Dora was scarcely old enough to appreciate the courtesy and good taste of his action altogether, but she was pleased and relieved, though she hardly knew why. She went into the shop, very glad to deposit it upon the counter, but rather troubled in mind as to how she was to accomplish her mission, as she waited till Mr. Fiddler was brought to her from the depths of the cavern of books. He began to turn over the book with mechanical interest, thinking it something brought to him to sell, then woke up, and said sharply: “Why, this is a book I sent to Mr. Mannering of the Museum a month ago".
“Yes,” said Dora, breathless, “and I am Mr. Mannering’s daughter. He has been very ill, and he wishes me to ask if you would be so good as to take it back. It is not likely to be of so much use to him as he thought. It is not quite what he expected it to be.”
“Not what he expected it to be? It is an extremely fine copy, in perfect condition, and I’ve been on the outlook for it to him for the past year.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dora, speaking like a bookman’s daughter, “even I can see it is a fine example, and my father would like to keep it. But—but—he has had a long illness, and it has been very expensive, and he might not be able to pay for it for a long time. He would be glad if you would be so very obliging as to take it back.”
Then Mr. Fiddler began to look blank. He told Dora that two or three people had been after the book, knowing what a chance it was to get a specimen of that edition in such a perfect state, and how he had shut his ears to all fascinations, and kept it for Mr. Mannering. Mr. Mannering had indeed ordered the book. It was not a book that could be picked up from any ordinary collection. It was one, as a matter of fact, which he himself would not have thought of buying on speculation, had it not been for a customer like Mr. Mannering. Probably it might lie for years on his hands, before he should have another opportunity of disposing of it. These arguments much intimidated Dora, who saw, but had not the courage to call his attention to, the discrepancy between the two or three people who had wanted it, and the unlikelihood of any one wanting it again.
The conclusion was, however, that Mr. Fiddler politely, but firmly, declined to take the book back. He had every confidence in Mr. Mannering of the Museum. He had not the slightest doubt of being paid. The smile, with which he assured her of this, compensated the girl, who was so little more than a child, for the refusal of her request. Of course Mr. Mannering of the Museum would pay, of course everybody had confidence in him. After her father’s own depressed looks and anxiety, it comforted Dora’s heart to make sure in this way that nobody outside shared these fears. She put out her arms, disappointed, yet relieved, to take back the big book again.
“Have you left it behind you?” cried young Gordon, who, lingering at the window outside, without the slightest sense of honour, had listened eagerly and heard a portion of the colloquy within.
“Mr. Fiddler will not take it back. He says papa will pay him sooner or later. He is going to send it. It is no matter,” Dora said, with a little wave of her hand.
“Oh, let me carry it back,” cried the young man, with a sudden dive into his pocket, and evident intention in some rude colonial way of solving the question of the payment there and then.
Dora drew herself up to the height of seven feet at least in her shoes. She waved him back from Mr. Fiddler’s door with a large gesture.
“You may have known me for a long time,” she said, “and you called me Dora, though I think it is a liberty; but I don’t know you, not even your name.”
“My name is Harry Gordon,” he said, with something between amusement and deference, yet a twinkle in his eye.
Dora looked at him very gravely from head to foot, making as it were a résumé of him and the situation. Then she gave forth her judgment reflectively, as of a thing which she had much studied. “It is not an ugly name,” she said, with a partially approving nod of her head.
