A House in Bloomsbury

“I beg your pardon,” said the young man, making a step back, and taking off his hat. This was clearly an afterthought, and due to her appearance, which was not that of the mistress of a lodging-house. “I wanted to ask after a –”

“I am not the person of the house,” said Miss Bethune quickly.

“Might I ask you all the same? I would so much rather hear from some one who knows him.”

Miss Bethune’s eyes had been fixed upon him with the closest attention, but her interest suddenly changed and dropped at the last word. “Him?” she said involuntarily, with a flash out of her eyes, and a look almost of disappointment, almost of surprise. What had she expected? She recovered in a moment the composure which had been disturbed by this stranger’s appearance, for what reason she only knew.

“I came,” he said, hesitating a little, and giving her another look, in which there was also some surprise and much curiosity, “to inquire about Mr. Mannering, who, I am told, lives here.”

“Yes, he lives here.”

“And has been ill?”

“And has been ill,” she repeated after him.

The young man smiled, and paused again. He seemed to be amused by these repetitions. He had a very pleasant face, not intellectual, not remarkable, but full of life and good-humour. He said: “Perhaps I ought not to trouble you; but if you know him, and his child–”

“I know him very well, and his child,—who is a child no longer, but almost grown up. He is slowly recovering out of a very long dangerous illness.”

“That is what we heard. I came, not for myself, but for a lady who takes a great interest. I think that she is a relation of—of Mr. Mannering’s late wife.”

“Is that woman dead, then?” Miss Bethune said. “I too take a great interest in the family. I shall be glad to tell you anything I know: but come with me into the Square, where we can talk at our ease.” She led him to a favourite seat under the shadow of a tree. Though it was in Bloomsbury, and the sounds of town were in the air, that quiet green place might have been far in the country, in the midst of pastoral acres. The Squares of Bloomsbury are too respectable to produce many children. There were scarcely even any perambulators to vulgarise this retreat. She turned to him as she sat down, and said again: “So that woman is dead?”

The young stranger looked surprised. “You mean Mrs. Mannering?” he said. “I suppose so, though I know nothing of her. May I say who I am first? My name is Gordon. I have just come from South America with Mrs. Bristow, the wife of my guardian, who died there a year ago. And it is she who has sent me to inquire.”

“Gordon?” said Miss Bethune. She had closed her eyes, and her head was going round; but she signed to him with her hand to sit down, and made a great effort to recover herself. “You will be of one of the Scotch families?” she said.

“I don’t know. I have never been in this country till now.”

“Born abroad?” she said, suddenly opening her eyes.

“I think so—at least—but, indeed, I can tell you very little about myself. It was Mrs. Bristow–”

“Yes, I know. I am very indiscreet, putting so many questions, but you reminded me of—of some one I once knew. Mrs. Bristow, you were saying?”

“She was very anxious to know something of Mr. Mannering and his child. I think she must be a relation of his late wife.”

“God be thanked if there is a relation that may be of use to Dora. She wants to know—what? If you were going to question the landlady, it would not be much–”

“I was to try to do exactly what I seem to have been so fortunate as to have done—to find some friend whom I could ask about them. I am sure you must be a friend to them?”

“How can you be sure of that, you that know neither them nor me?”

He smiled, with a very attractive, ingenuous smile. “Because you have the face of a friend.”

“Have I that? There’s many, many, then, that would have been the better for knowing it that have never found it out. And you are a friend to Mrs. Bristow on the other side?”

“A friend to her?—no, I am more like her son, yet not her son, for my own mother is living—at least, I believe so. I am her servant, and a little her ward, and—devoted to her,” he added, with a bright flush of animation and sincerity. Miss Bethune took no notice of these last words.

“Your mother is living, you believe? and don’t you know her, then? And why should you be ward or son to this other woman, and your mother alive?”

“Pardon me,” said the young man, “that is my story, and it is not worth a thought. The question is about Mrs. Bristow and the Mannerings. She is anxious about them, and she is very broken in health. And I think there is some family trouble there too, so that she can’t come in a natural straightforward way and make herself known to them. These family quarrels are dreadful things.”

“Dreadful things,” Miss Bethune said.

“They are bad enough for those with whom they originate; but for those who come after, worse still. To be deprived of a natural friend all your life because of some row that took place before you were born!”

“You are a Daniel come to judgment,” said Miss Bethune, pale to her very lips.

“I hope,” he said kindly, “I am not saying anything I ought not to say? I hope you are not ill?”

“Go on,” she said, waving her hand. “About this Mrs. Bristow, that is what we were talking of. The Mannerings could not be more in need of a friend than they are now. He has been very ill. I hear it is very doubtful if he’ll ever be himself again, or able to go back to his occupation. And she is very young, nearly grown up, but still a child. If there was a friend, a relation, to stand up for them, now would be the very time.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I have been very fortunate in finding you, but I don’t think Mrs. Bristow can take any open step. My idea is that she must be a sister of Mrs. Mannering, and thus involved in the dissension, whatever it was.”

“It was more than a dissension, so far as I have heard,” Miss Bethune said.

“That is what makes it so hard. What she wishes is to see Dora.”

“Dora?”

“Indeed, I mean no disrespect. I have never known her by any other name. I have helped to pack boxes for her, and choose playthings.”

Miss Bethune uttered a sudden exclamation.

“Then it was from Mrs. Bristow the boxes came?”

“Have I let out something that was a secret? I am not very good at secrets,” he said with a laugh.

“She might be an aunt as you say:—an aunt would be a good thing for her, poor child:—or she might be– But is it Dora only she wants to see?”

“Dora only; and only Dora if it is certain that she would entertain no prejudices against a relation of her mother.”

“How could there be prejudices of such a kind?”

“That is too much to say: but I know from my own case that there are,” the young man said.

“I would like to hear your own case.”

He laughed again. “You are very kind to be so much interested in a stranger: but I must settle matters for my kind guardian. She has not been a happy woman, I don’t know why,—though he was as good a man as ever lived:—and now she is in very poor health—oh, really ill. I scarcely thought I could have got her to England alive. To see Dora is all she seems to wish for. Help me, oh, help me to get her that gratification!” he cried.

Miss Bethune smiled upon him in reply, with an involuntary movement of her hands towards him. She was pale, and a strange light was on her face.

“I will do that if I can,” she said. “I will do it if it is possible. If I help you what will you give me in return?”

The youth looked at her in mild surprise. He did not understand what she could mean. “Give you in return?” he asked, with astonishment.

“Ay, my young man, for my hire; everybody has a price, as I daresay you have heard said—which is a great lie, and yet true enough. Mine is not just a common price, as you will believe. I’m full of fancies, a—whimsical kind of a being. You will have to pay me for my goodwill.”

He rose up from the seat under the tree, and, taking off his hat again, made her a solemn bow. “Anything that is within my power I will gladly give to secure my good guardian what she wishes. I owe everything to her.”

Miss Bethune sat looking up at him with that light on her face which made it unlike everything that had been seen before. She was scarcely recognisable, or would have been to those who already knew her. To the stranger standing somewhat stiffly before her, surprised and somewhat shocked by the strange demand, it seemed that this, as he had thought, plain middle-aged woman had suddenly become beautiful.

He had liked her face at the first. It had seemed to him a friend’s face, as he had said. But now it was something more. The surprise, the involuntary start of repugnance from a woman, a lady, who boldly asked something in return for the help she promised, mingled with a strange attraction towards her, and extraordinary curiosity as to what she could mean. To pay for her goodwill! Such a thing is, perhaps, implied in every prayer for help; gratitude at the least, if nothing more, is the pay which all the world is supposed to give for good offices: but one does not ask even for gratitude in words. And she was in no hurry to explain. She sat in the warm shade, with all the greenness behind, and looked at him as if she found somehow a supreme satisfaction in the sight—as if she desired to prolong the moment, and even his curiosity and surprise. He on his part was stiff, disturbed, not happy at all. He did not like a woman to let herself down, to show any wrong side of her, any acquisitiveness, or equivocal sentiment. What did she want of him? What had he to give? The thought seemed to lessen himself by reason of lessening her in his eyes.

“I tell you I am a very whimsical woman,” she said at length; “above all things I am fond of hearing every man’s story, and tracing out the different threads of life. It is my amusement, like any other. If I bring this lady to speech of Dora, and show her how she could be of real advantage to both the girl and her father, will you promise me to come to me another time, and tell me, as far as you know, everything that has happened to you since the day you were born?”

Young Gordon’s stiffness melted away. The surprise on his face, which had been mingled with annoyance, turned into mirth and pleasure. “You don’t know what you are bringing on yourself,” he said, “nothing very amusing. I have little in my own record. I never had any adventures. But if that is your fancy, surely I will, whenever you like, tell you everything that I know about myself.”

She rose up, with the light fading a little, but yet leaving behind it a sweetness which was not generally in Miss Bethune’s face. “Let your friend come in the afternoon at three any day—it is then her father takes his sleep—and ask for Miss Bethune. I will see that it is made all right. And as for you, you will leave me your address?” she said, going with him towards the gate. “You said you believed your mother was living—is your father living too?”

“He died a long time ago,” said the young man, and then added: “May I not know who it is that is standing our friend?”

Perhaps Miss Bethune did not hear him; certainly she let him out; and turned to lock the gate, without making any reply.

CHAPTER IX

Dora had now a great deal to do in her father’s room. The two nurses had at last been got rid of, to the great relief of all in the house except Mrs. Simcox, whose bills shrank back at once to their original level, very different from what they had been, and who felt herself, besides, to be reduced to quite a lower level in point of society, her thoughts and imaginations having been filled, as well as those of Janie and Molly, by tales of the hospitals and sick-rooms, which made them feel as if translated into a world where the gaiety of perfect health and constant exercise triumphed over every distress. Janie and Molly had both determined to be nurses in the enthusiasm created by these recitals. They turned their little nightcaps, the only things they had which could be so converted, into imitation nurses’ caps, and masqueraded in them in the spare moments when they could shut themselves into their little rooms and play at hospital. And the sitting-room downstairs returned for these young persons to its original dulness when the nurses went away. Dora was in her father’s room all day, and required a great deal of help from Jane, the maid-of-all-work, in bringing up and taking away the things that were wanted: and Gilchrist watched over him by night. There was a great deal of beef tea and chicken broth to be prepared—no longer the time and trouble saving luxuries of Brand’s Essence and turtle soup. He would have none of these luxuries now. He inquired into every expense, and rejected presents, and was angry rather than grateful when anything was done for him. What he would have liked would have been to have eaten nothing at all, to have passed over meal-times, and lived upon a glass of water or milk and a biscuit. But this could not be allowed; and Mrs. Simcox had now a great deal of trouble in cooking for him, whereas before she had scarcely any at all. Mr. Mannering, indeed, was not an amiable convalescent. The breaking up of all the habits of his life was dreadful to him. The coming back to new habits was more dreadful still. He thought with horror of the debts that must have accumulated while he was ill; and when he spoke of them, looked and talked as if the whole world had been in a conspiracy against him, instead of doing everything, and contriving everything, as was the real state of the case, for his good.

“Let me have my bills, let me have my bills; let me know how I stand,” he cried continually to Dr. Roland, who had the hardest ado to quiet him, to persuade him that for everything there is a reason. “I know these women ought to be paid at once,” he would say. “I know a man like Vereker ought to have his fee every time he comes. You intend it very kindly, Roland, I know; but you are keeping me back, instead of helping me to recover.” What was poor Dr. Roland to say? He was afraid to tell this proud man that everything was paid. That Vereker had taken but half fees, declaring that from a professional man of such distinction as Mr. Mannering, he ought, had the illness not been so long and troublesome, to have taken nothing at all,—was a possible thing to say; but not that Miss Bethune’s purse had supplied these half fees. Even that they should merely be half was a kind of grievance to the patient. “I hope you told him that as soon as I was well enough I should see to it,” he cried. “I have no claim to be let off so. Distinction! the distinction of a half man who never accomplished anything!”

“Come, Mannering, come, that will not do. You are the first and only man in England in your own way.”

“In my own way? And what a miserable petty way, a way that leads to nothing and nowhere!” he cried.

This mood did not contribute to recovery. After his laborious dressing, which occupied all the morning, he would sit in his chair doing nothing, saying nothing, turning with a sort of sickness of despair from books, not looking even at the paper, without a smile even for Dora. The only thing he would sometimes do was to note down figures with a pencil on a sheet of paper and add them up, and make attempts to balance them with the sum which quarter day brought him. Poor Mr. Mannering was refused all information about the sums he was owing; he put them down conjecturally, now adding something, now subtracting something. As a matter of fact his highest estimation was below the truth. And then, by some unhappy chance, the bills that were lying in the sitting-room were brought to him. Alas! the foolishest bills—bills which Dora’s father, knowing that she was unprovided for, should never have incurred—bills for old books, for fine editions, for delicate scientific instruments. A man with only his income from the Museum, and his child to provide for, should never have thought of such things.

“Father,” said Dora, thinking of nothing but to rouse him, “there is a large parcel which has never been opened, which came from Fiddler’s after you were taken ill. I had not any heart to open it to see what was in it; but perhaps it would amuse you to look at what is in it now.”

“Fiddler’s?” he said, with a sick look of dismay. “Another—another! What do I want with books, when I have not a penny to pay my expenses, nor a place to hide my head?”

“Oh, father, don’t talk so: only have patience, and everything will come right,” cried Dora, with the facile philosophy of youth. “They are great big books; I am sure they are something you wanted very much. It will amuse you to look at them, at least.”

He did not consent in words, but a half motion of his head made Dora bring in, after a little delay to undo the large parcel, two great books covered with old-fashioned gilding, in brown leather, frayed at the corners—books to make the heart of a connoisseur dance, books looked out for in catalogues, followed about from one sale to another. Mr. Mannering’s eyes, though they were dim and sunken, gave forth a momentary blaze. He put out his trembling hands for them, as Dora approached, almost tottering under the weight, carrying them in her arms.

“I will put them beside you on the table, father. Now you can look at them without tiring yourself, and I will run and fetch your beef tea. Oh, good news!” cried Dora, flinging into Miss Bethune’s room as she ran downstairs. “He is taking a little interest! I have just given him the books from Fiddler’s, and he is looking a little like his own self.”

She had interrupted what seemed a very serious conversation, perceiving this only now after she had delivered her tidings. She blushed, drew back, and begged Miss Bethune’s pardon, with a curious look at the unknown visitor who was seated on the sofa by that lady’s side. Dora knew all Miss Bethune’s visitors by heart. She knew most of those even who were pensioners, and came for money or help, and had been used to be called in to help to entertain the few callers for years past. But this was some one altogether new, not like anybody she had ever seen before, very much agitated, with a grey and worn face, which got cruelly red by moments, looking ill, tired, miserable. Poor lady! and in deep mourning, which was no doubt the cause of her trouble, and a heavy crape veil hanging over her face. She gave a little cry at the sight of Dora, and clasped her hands. The gesture caused her veil to descend like a cloud, completely concealing her face.

“I beg your pardon, indeed. I did not know there was anybody here.”

Miss Bethune made her a sign to be silent, and laid her hand upon her visitor’s arm, who was tremulously putting up her veil in the same dangerous overhanging position as before.

“This is Dora—as you must have guessed,” she said.

The lady began to cry, feebly sobbing, as if she could not restrain herself. “I saw it was—I saw it was,” she said.

“Dora, come here,” said Miss Bethune. “This lady is—a relation of yours—a relation of—your poor mamma.”

The lady sobbed, and held out her hands. Dora was not altogether pleased with her appearance. She might have cried at home, the girl thought. When you go out to pay a call, or even to make inquiries, you should make them and not cry: and there was something that was ridiculous in the position of the veil, ready to topple over in its heavy folds of crape. She watched it to see when the moment would come.

“Why ‘my poor mamma’?” said Dora. “Is it because mother is dead?”

“There are enough of reasons,” Miss Bethune said hastily.

Dora flung back her head with a sudden resistance and defiance. “I don’t know about mother. She has been dead ever since I remember; but she was my mother, and nobody has any right to be sorry for her, as though that were a misfortune.”

“She is a little perverse thing,” said Miss Bethune, “but she has a great spirit. Dora, come here. I will go and see about your papa’s beef tea, while you come and speak to this lady.” She stooped over the girl for a moment as she passed her going out. “And be kind,” she whispered; “for she’s very ill, poor thing, and very broken. Be merciful in your strength and in your youth.”

Dora could not tell what this might mean. Merciful? She, who was still only a child, and, to her own consciousness, ordered about by everybody, and made nothing of. The stranger sat on the sofa, trembling and sobbing, her face of a sallow paleness, her eyes half extinguished in tears. The heavy folds of the crape hanging over her made the faded countenance appear as if looking out of a cave.

“I am afraid you are not well,” said Dora, drawing slowly near.

“No, I am not at all well. Come here and sit by me, will you? I am—dying, I think.”

“Oh, no,” said Dora, with a half horror, half pity. “Do not say that.”

The poor lady shook her head. “I should not mind, if perhaps it made people a little forgiving—a little indulgent. Oh, Dora, my child, is it you, really you, at last?”

Dora suffered her hand to be taken, suffered herself to be drawn close, and a tremulous kiss pressed upon her cheek. She did not know how to respond. She felt herself entangled in the great crape veil, and her face wet with the other’s tears. She herself was touched by pity, but by a little contrariety as well, and objection to this sudden and so intimate embrace.

“I am very, very sorry if you are ill,” she said, disengaging herself as gently as possible. “My father has been very ill, so I know about it now; but I don’t know you.”

“My darling,” the poor lady said. “My darling, my little child! my Dora, that I have thought and dreamed of night and day!”

Dora was more than ever confused. “But I don’t know you at all,” she said.

“No, that is what is most dreadful: not at all, not at all!—and I dying for the sight of you, and to hold you in my arms once before I die.”

She held the girl with her trembling arms, and the two faces, all entangled and overshadowed by the great black veil, looked into each other, so profoundly unlike, not a line in either which recalled or seemed to connect with the other. Dora was confounded and abashed by the close contact, and her absolute incapacity to respond to this enthusiasm. She put up her hands, which was the only thing that occurred to her, and threw quite back with a subdued yet energetic movement that confusing veil. She was conscious of performing this act very quietly, but to the stranger the quick soft movement was like energy and strength personified.

“Oh, Dora,” she said, “you are not like me. I never was so lively, so strong as you are. I think I must have been a poor creature, always depending upon somebody. You could never be like that.”

“I don’t know,” said Dora. “Ought I to have been like you? Are we such near relations as that?”

“Just as near as—almost as near as—oh, child, how I have longed for you, and thought of you! You have never, never been out of my mind—not a day, Dora, scarcely an hour. Oh, if you only knew!”

“You must then have been very fond of my mother,” Dora said a little stiffly. She might have been less cold had this enthusiasm been less great.

“Your mother!” the stranger said. She broke out into audible weeping again, after comparative composure. “Oh, yes, I suppose I was—oh, yes, I suppose I was,” she said.

“You only suppose you were, and yet you are so fond as this of me?—which can be only,” said Dora, severely logical, “for her sake.”

The poor lady trembled, and was still for a moment; she then said, faltering: “We were so close together, she and I. We were like one. But a child is different—you are her and yourself too. But you are so young, my dearest, my dearest! You will not understand that.”

“I understand it partly,” said Dora; “but it is so strange that I never heard of you. Were my mother’s relations against my father? You must forgive me,” the girl said, withdrawing herself a little, sitting very upright; “but father, you know, has been everything to me. Father and I are one. I should like very much to hear about mamma, who must have died so long ago: but my first thought must always be for father, who has been everything to me, and I to him.”

A long minute passed, during which the stranger said nothing. Her head was sunk upon her breast; her hand—which was on Dora’s waist—quivered, the nervous fingers beating unconsciously upon Dora’s firm smooth belt.

“I have nothing, nothing to say to you against your father. Oh, nothing!—not a word! I have no complaint—no complaint! He is a good man, your father. And to have you cling to him, stand up for him, is not that enough?—is not that enough,” she cried, with a shrill tone, “whatever failed?”