Маргарет Олифант
The Two Marys

Dr Brewer still did not meet Grace’s anxious gaze, which would have read his face in a moment. “You are very young,” he said, “to have had such a – responsibility upon you. You have been very brave hitherto, and you will not break down now. I am afraid, indeed, that I shall have to telegraph to your mother – very soon now.”

It was his tone more than what he said which disturbed Milly in her happy confidence. She turned round suddenly and looked with an awful inquiry, not at him but at Grace. Grace for her part, trembling, had grasped Dr Brewer by the arm. “Doctor!” she said in a strange, stifled voice. She could not say any more.

He covered her soft little thin hand with his and patted it gently. “My poor dear children,” he said, “my poor children! how can I tell you – ” His voice was broken. It told all he had to say without the aid of any words. How could he put it into words? For a moment it seemed to the doctor as if the man’s death must be his fault, and that they would have a right to upbraid him for letting their father die. He sat there with his head drooped and with his heart full of sympathetic anguish, not knowing what might happen next.

Milly gave a great cry. She had not feared all this time, and just now she had been happy and triumphant in the thought that danger was over. She cried out and threw herself suddenly on the ground at the doctor’s feet. “Oh, no, no!” she cried. “Oh, don’t let it be. Don’t let it be! Doctor, think of us poor girls; think of mamma and all the children; doctor, doctor!” said Milly, her voice rising louder and louder in her despair.

Grace had not said anything. She stood, her face all quivering with anguish, her eyes fixed upon him. She seemed to take up the last quivering note of Milly’s cry – “Is there no hope?” she said.

The doctor shook his head. He laid his hand tenderly upon poor Milly’s hair – every line of his face was working. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice trembling. “You have been very courageous, very good hitherto – and now there is one last effort before you. You at least will stand by him to the end. You will not make it worse, but better for him, Grace.”

The girl tried to speak two or three times before the words would come. When she found utterance at last what she said was scarcely intelligible. It was, “And Milly too.”

“It would be better, far better, that she should lie down and try to rest. I will give her something; but you – you must come with me, Grace.”

“And Milly too,” the girl said again, as if these were the only words she was capable of. She gathered up her sister from where she lay at the doctor’s feet, and whispered to her, smoothing away her disordered hair. Milly was not able to stand. She leaned her weight upon her sister; her pretty hair fell about her face, all wild and distorted with crying. She wanted to get down again to the floor to kneel at the doctor’s feet. “He could do something still if he were to try. Oh, Gracie, Gracie! think of us two miserable girls, and mamma, and all the children. He could do something if he were to try.”

“Milly! we have got to stand by him – to keep up his heart – ”

“I cannot stand – I cannot stand, I think I will die. Oh, doctor, doctor! do something, find out something! Couldn’t you do something if you were to try?”

“Milly, am I to go alone – the last time – to papa?”

“Put our blood into him,” cried Milly, holding up her small white wrists. “They do that sometimes. Take mine – oh, every drop! – and Grace’s too. Doctor, doctor! you could do something if you were to try.”

For weeks after, this cry rang in the good doctor’s ears. They both caught at the idea; even Grace, who had command of herself. How easy it seemed! – to take the young blood out of their veins and pour it, like new life, into his. Sometimes it is done in stories – why not, why not, in actual life? Their voices ran into a kind of clamour, imploring him. It was long before the impression made by this scene left the doctor’s mind and recollection. Nevertheless, that night both the girls stood by their father’s bedside quietly enough, making no scene, watching eagerly for any last word he might have to say to them. But how few of the dying have any last words to say! He opened his eyes, and smiled vaguely twice or thrice, as though all had been quite happy and simple around him – he had gone out of the region in which anxieties dwell. Perhaps he did not remember that he was leaving them helpless among strangers – or if he knew, the ebb of the wave had caught him and he could feel nothing but the last floating out to sea, the sound of the waters, the tide of the new life.

Left to themselves in such circumstances, the poor girls had no alternative but to be crushed altogether, or to rise into heroic fortitude; and happily Grace had strength enough for that better part. She dressed herself, when the dreadful morning came, in the only black frock her wardrobe contained, with the composure of a creature braced by the worst that could happen, and knowing now that whatever might come, nothing so terrible could fall on her again. The shock, instead of prostrating her as it did her sister, seemed to rally all her forces, and clear and strengthen every faculty. She had scarcely slept, notwithstanding the calming dose which the doctor in his pity had insisted upon administering to both. It procured for poor little Milly some hours of feverish unconsciousness, but with Grace it acted on the mind, not the body, numbing the pain but giving an unnatural and vivid force to all her faculties. Her brain seemed to be beset by thoughts; and first among them was a yearning sympathy and pity for her mother. The sudden shock of a curtly worded telegram would be so novel, so terrible, to that happy woman, who never all her life had known what great sorrow was, that her young daughter shuddered at the thought.

As soon as she got up she began to write to her, while Milly still tossed and moaned in her unquiet sleep. Grace’s letter was such as no poet, save one of the highest genius, could have written. It was love and not she that composed it. It was a history of all the last days, tender and distinct as a picture. Every word that she said led up to the terrible news at the end, imperceptibly, gradually, as it is the art of tragedy to do, so that the reader should perceive the inevitable and feel it coming without the horror of a sudden shock. When her sister woke she read this letter to her, and they wept over it together. It was almost as new to Milly as it would be to her mother, for she had not realised the slow constant progress of the days to this event, nor had Grace herself done so, till she had begun to put it down upon paper. When the doctor came in the morning the letter was all ready, put up and addressed; and then it was that Grace insisted no telegram should be sent.

“Mamma has never had any trouble all her life. He always did everything. Nothing dreadful has ever happened to us. The children have been ill, but they always got better. We never were afraid of anything. If this were flung at mamma like a shot – like a blow – it might kill her too.”

“Yes, it might kill her too,” Milly murmured, turning to the doctor her large strained eyes.

“But, my dear children, somebody must come to you at once; you can’t be left here alone. Your mother will be strengthened to bear it as you are, and for your sake. Somebody must come to you at once.”

“O Gracie!” murmured Milly, looking at her sister with beseeching eyes.

“Why?” said Grace steadily. “That is just what I cannot see. Nobody could wish mamma to come now. What good would it do? It would be dreadful for her; – and to him – to him! – ”

Here, brave as she was, she had to stop, and could not say any more.

“Of course,” said the doctor softly, “your father is beyond all need. He is safe now, whatever happens; but you – what can you do? Somebody must come at once to take care of you, to take you home.”

Once more Milly’s eyes travelled from Grace to the doctor, and back again. To have some one to take care of them sounded to Milly the only thing that was left on earth to desire.

“No one,” said Grace, wondering at her own calm, “could be here for a fortnight; and the first days will be the worst. After that things will be easier. Don’t you see, everything that can happen will have happened then; and why should some one – for it could not be mamma now, Milly; it would not be mamma: why should some one be disturbed and made uncomfortable, and forced to start at a moment’s notice, only to take care of us? I can take care of Milly, and we can go home.” Another pause till the tears were swallowed somehow. “It will be less hard, on the whole, to go home by ourselves, than with any one else.”

The doctor was struck by this argument. He looked at them anxiously, fragile as they were, looking like shadows of girls after the long anxiety and strain of these ten days.

“Do you think,” he said, doubtful, “that you are able for it?”

“Able!” said Grace with the petulance of grief. “What is there to be able for now? We have borne the worst. If it had been a week ago, and I had known what was coming, I should have said, No, we were not able. But now!” the girl cried with a kind of disdain, “now we have suffered all that can be suffered, doctor. We can never lose our father again.”

Here Milly broke out into hysterical cries.

“Oh, papa, papa! Oh, Grace! What shall we do? What shall we do?”

Grace took her sister into her arms standing by the bedside, while the other sat up, her hair hanging about her, her face distraught with a passion of grief over which she had no control. The tears rained from Grace’s eyes, but she stood firm as a rock.

“We must bear it,” she said; “we must bear it, Milly. We cannot have that to bear again. We will not make it harder for mamma.”

This scene upset the kind doctor for the day; he could not give his attention to the other cases which awaited him for thinking of this heartrending picture. And as for the nurse, whose services were imperatively demanded for another “case” – she could not bear to take leave of them at all, but stole away as if she had done them a wrong.

“How could any woman with a heart in her bosom leave them in their trouble?” she said, sobbing, to the doctor; “but I am not a woman, I am only a nurse – ”

“And there is a life to be preserved,” the doctor said. The woman, after all, was only a woman, petulant and unreasonable.

“We are all fools and know nothing. We could not save this life,” she said, “though there were no complications.”

Dr Brewer, too, felt a little ashamed. What was the good of him? He had done everything that his science was capable of, but that had been nothing. Old Death, the oldest of practitioners and the most experienced, had laughed at him, and out of his very hands had taken the prey.

The girls never knew what happened till the funeral was over; and yet it troubled them in the midst of their distress that there was nobody to ask to it, no train of mourners to do honour to their father. They went themselves, following the lonely coffin, and the doctor, half ashamed, half astonished at his own emotion, went with them, to see the stranger buried. He had sent the introductory letter to the Colonial office, accompanied by a statement of the circumstances; but the Minister was up to his eyes in parliamentary work, and his aides knew nothing about Mr Robert Yorke of Quebec. The landlord, out of respect for what had happened in his own house – though at first he had been very angry that any one should have taken such a liberty as to die in his house at the beginning of the season – followed at a little distance. He came by himself in the second mourning coach which the undertakers felt to be necessary, and in which it was well there should be some one for the sake of respectability. Notwithstanding all that had been said and done, it did not seem to the girls that they had ever realised what had happened till they came back that dreary afternoon, and sat down hand in hand in their sitting-room, the door closed upon all things, the murk evening closing in, and nothing to look forward to now – nothing to think of but their own desolation. They “broke down;” what could they do else? But when there are two to break down, it is inevitable that one of the two must see the vanity of tears and make an effort to check them.

“We cannot go on like this,” Grace said. “We will only kill ourselves too; that will not be any comfort for mamma. In the first place, we must find out whether there was anything that – papa wanted done while he was in England. Yes! I mean to talk of him,” she said, “just as if he were in Canada, as if he were next door; he must not be banished from his own because he is dead. Mamma will never let him be forgotten and put aside. We must accustom ourselves to talk about him. Perhaps there was something he wanted done. Do you recollect, Milly? he went away by himself that night?”

“Oh, Grace,” cried her sister, “whoever they are, I hate those people. They were the cause of it. He would never have caught cold but for – ”

“Hush,” said Grace, “we must not hate anybody. I should like to go and ask about them; they must have been old – friends.”

It was at this moment that the waiter came in – the waiter who had always been so kind to them. He came in with a countenance regulated to the occasion.

“Young ladies,” he said, “here’s a gentleman below inquiring for a party as has come from Canada. It’s not a name as ever I heard before. Mr Crosthwaite, he’s asking for. I said as I did not like to disturb you such a day; but if so be as you might have heard speak of the name – from Canada.”

Grief is irritable, and Grace turned upon the questioner with quick resentment. “Oh, how can you come and ask us?” she cried. “Is there nobody in your house to be disturbed but my sister and me?”

“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said the waiter, “I hope I’m not unfeeling. Nobody could have felt more – if it ain’t disrespectful to say so – according to their station in life. If it hadn’t a been that the manageress is that cantankerous about a death in the house I’d have followed the poor gentleman willingly to his last ’ome, and never grudged no trouble; but when a gentleman comes to me and asks for a party as arrived from Canada a fortnight ago – ”

The two girls looked at each other. Was this, perhaps, the clue for which they were looking? They felt that it was wrong and a breach of the decorum of their sorrow that they should see any one on this day: but if, perhaps, this might be the clue they sought. “Arrived from Canada – a fortnight ago?” it seemed years – but they gulped down that thought. “We did so, you know,” said Grace, “but that is not our name. I know no one of that name. Did you say – ?”

“I told him all as had happened, miss,” said the sympathetic waiter who brought the message, “and the gentleman was very sorry. He’s a feeling gentleman, whoever he is. He said, ‘Poor young ladies!’ as feeling as I could have done it myself; but he’s very anxious about this name Crosthwaite, or whatever it is. I said you was very considerate, and that if you could help him I made sure I might ask you. He would have liked to speak to any one as was from Canada,” the waiter said.

Again the girls looked at each other. Any one from Canada! Perhaps, though they did not know any Crosthwaites, they might know the gentleman who was inquiring for them; and even the sight of some one from home would be a kind of consolation. Grace, with a look, consulted Milly, who had no counsel to give, but only appealed back again to Grace with her beautiful eyes. Then the elder sister said, tremblingly, “We are not fit to see any one; but if he thinks it will help him you may let him come up-stairs.” She said this with a sigh of what she felt to be extreme reluctance; but yet even the vaguest hope of an unknown friend and of some succour in their trouble gave a new turn to their thoughts.

In a few minutes the door opened again and the visitor came in. The girls were sitting together at one side of the table, two faint candles throwing a white light upon each white face. They looked small and young, almost childish, in their black dresses, and there was an anxious look upon the two little wan girlish countenances. The stranger came in with some diffidence. They could scarcely make out his face, but they saw at once that it was somebody unknown; and the look of expectation faded at once out of their eyes. They looked at each other with a piteous mutual disappointment.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I fear this is an intrusion for which there is no excuse. I am looking for a gentleman who has been long in Canada – Robert Leonard Crosthwaite was his name: but I have some reason to suppose – ”

“We never heard the name,” said Grace. “We are very sorry. We came from Quebec. Canada is a large place. It might be in another part.”

“He had been a very long time out of England. He came back only a few weeks ago. We were sure – we thought we were sure – that he came to this hotel.”

The girls both shook their heads. “If there had been any other Canadian person here we must have heard. They would have come to us,” said Grace, with a sob only half concealed.

“It is very important,” said the young man. “There is property concerned, and the comfort of several people. Everybody thought he was dead. It will upset the arrangements of a family – and make those poor who were well off,” he said in an undertone, to himself, rather than to them.

The girls looked at him with interest. There seemed a story involved, and that gave them a sensation that, if not pleasure, was, at least, relief from the pressure of their own continuously painful thoughts. Milly even ventured a little “Oh!” of wistful interest. Then he went on hastily —

“Pardon me: I ought not to disturb you. You can give me no clue? This gentleman must have arrived about the same time as I hear you did. I know – I know how painfully your time has been occupied. I am ashamed to trouble you: but do you not think you could give me a clue – ”

“We never heard the name,” said Grace. “We could write home and ask, but that would not be of much use. We are going back,” she added with an explanatoriness which perhaps was not necessary, “as soon as – ” But here her little strength broke down, and she could not say any more.

“I beg your pardon, I beg a thousand pardons,” the young man cried. “Forgive me for intruding upon you.” And he turned with a respectful bow; and opened the door; but when he had done this he turned again and looked at them once more. “You will excuse me,” he said in a voice which was full of emotion, “but I have a mother. If she could be of any use to you – ”

Here the girls, being so weeping-ripe, again lost their self-control altogether. Milly began to sob audibly, throwing herself upon her sister’s shoulder, and the tears dropped heavily one by one from Grace’s eyes. She put one arm round poor Milly, and turned, with a tremulous smile through her tears, to the stranger.

“Thank you for being so kind,” she said. “You are very kind; but we are not quite so miserable as perhaps you think. We have got our mother too. We are waiting till she tells us what to do.”

He said nothing but “Oh!” and stood for a moment uncertain, not knowing what to say. But what could a stranger say? He was obliged to turn again and go away, after a great many fumblings with the door.

Next morning they began, sadly, the necessary work of putting away their father’s papers and his little personal possessions. In his writing-book there was a letter half written to their mother, which they put aside carefully as a sacred thing, not looking, for love, at his last words. But on one of the pages of the blotting-book they found once more the address which had excited their curiosity before, “3 Grove Road, Hampstead,” written obliquely across the page. It was repeated on a scrap of paper which marked his place in the book which they remembered he had been reading, and on which, besides, there were some jottings of dates and names which they did not understand. These were – “Left July ’45 – U. A. died ’55 – due with interest for 20 years – .” The word “interest” discouraged the girls; it must be something about business, they thought. This perpetually recurring address, however, bewildered them. They went on with their sad occupation without saying much to each other, but when they sat down to rest and to take the food which their youthful appetites began to demand, notwithstanding their trouble, Grace suddenly broke the silence.

“It must be some old friend, who lives there,” she said.

Milly made no reply in words, but she looked up with instant response and comprehension.

“I think,” said Grace, “we ought to go and see who it is. It might be a relation. It might be some one who would stand by us: we are so very lonely here. It might be some – lady. I think we should go – directly – as soon as you are ready, Milly.”

“Oh, I am ready,” Milly said, starting up. The new idea gave them a little spring and energy. They almost ran to put on their little crape bonnets and their out-door jackets – which had been made for them at the pleasure of the dressmaker, hastily summoned and allowed to work her will – and which were heavy and laden with crape. They were like monuments of woe, from head to foot, in these garments; their two little pale faces, so white and so small, looking out with increased pallor from their heavy black. Milly had a good deal of gold and a good deal of curl in her light brown hair, which shone out with double force from these gloomy surroundings, like a protest of nature. Grace’s locks were darker and smoother. She was the least pretty of the two, but her eyes were larger and more expressive than those fawn eyes of Milly’s, which at present wore but one look, that of startled wistfulness and pleading – an entreaty to all the world to be pitiful. They went off upon their new mission, however, with a little consolation in the relief of the novelty, stealing quietly downstairs that nobody might come out upon them to ask questions or offer help.