A House in Bloomsbury

“Then,” said Dora, pursuing her argument, “mamma’s relations were not friends to him?”

The lady withdrew her arm from Dora’s waist. She clasped her tremulous hands together, as if in supplication. “Nothing was done against him—oh, nothing, nothing!” she cried. “There was no one to blame, everybody said so. It was a dreadful fatality; it was a thing no one could have foreseen or guarded against. Oh, my Dora, couldn’t you give a little love, a little kindness, to a poor woman, even though she was not what you call a friend to your father? She never was his enemy—never, never!—never had an evil thought of him!—never wished to harm him—oh, never, never, never!” she cried.

She swayed against Dora’s breast, rocking herself in uncontrolled distress, and Dora’s heart was touched by that involuntary contact, and by the sight of an anguish which was painfully real, though she did not understand what it meant. With a certain protecting impulse, she put her own arm round the weeping woman to support her. “Don’t cry,” she said, as she might have said to a child.

“I will not cry. I will be very glad, and very happy, if you will only give me a little of your love, Dora,” the lady sobbed in a broken voice. “A little of your love,—not to take it from your father,—a little, just a little! Oh, my child, my child!”

“Are you my mother’s sister?” the girl asked solemnly.

The stranger raised her head again, with a look which Dora did not understand. Her eyes were full of tears, and of a wistful appeal which said nothing to the creature to whom it was addressed. After a moment, with a pathetic cry of pain and self-abandonment, she breathed forth a scarcely intelligible “Yes".

“Then now I know,” said Dora, in a more satisfied tone. She was not without emotion herself. It was impossible to see so much feeling and not to be more or less affected by it, even when one did not understand, or even felt it to be extreme. “Then I will call you aunt, and we shall know where we are,” she added. “I am very glad to have relations, as everybody has them. May I mention you to father? It must be long since you quarrelled, whatever it was about. I shall say to him: ‘You need not take any notice, but I am glad, very glad, to have an aunt like other girls’.”

“No, no, no, no—not to him! You must not say a word.”

“I don’t know how I can keep a secret from father,” Dora said.

“Oh, child,” cried the lady, “do not be too hard on us! It would be hard for him, too, and he has been ill. Don’t say a word to him—for his own sake!”

“It will be very strange to keep a secret from father,” Dora said reflectively. Then she added: “To be sure, there have been other things—about the nurses, and all that. And he is still very weak. I will not mention it, since you say it is for his own sake.”

“For we could never meet—never, never!” cried the lady, with her head on Dora’s breast—“never, unless perhaps one of us were dying. I could never look him in the face, though perhaps if I were dying– Dora, kiss your poor—your poor, poor—relation. Oh, my child! oh, my darling! kiss me as that!”

“Dear aunt,” said Dora quietly. She spoke in a very subdued tone, in order to keep down the quite uncalled-for excitement and almost passion in the other’s voice. She could not but feel that her new relation was a person with very little self-control, expressing herself far too strongly, with repetitions and outcries quite uncalled for in ordinary conversation, and that it was her, Dora’s, business to exercise a mollifying influence. “This is for you,” she said, touching the sallow, thin cheek with her young rosy lips. “And this is for poor mamma—poor young mamma, whom I never saw.”

The lady gave a quick cry, and clutched the girl in her trembling arms.

CHAPTER X

The meeting with her new relation had a great effect upon Dora’s mind. It troubled her, though there was no reason in the world why the discovery that her mother had a sister, and she herself an aunt, should be painful. An aunt is not a very interesting relation generally, not enough to make a girl’s heart beat; but it added a complication to the web of altogether new difficulties in which Dora found herself entangled. Everything had been so simple in the old days—those dear old days now nearly three months off, before Mr. Mannering fell ill, to which now Dora felt herself go back with such a sense of happiness and ease, perhaps never to be known again. Then everything had been above board: there had been no payments to make that were not made naturally by her father, the fountainhead of everything, who gave his simple orders, and had them fulfilled, and provided for every necessity. Now Dora feared a knock at the door of his room lest it should be some indiscreet messenger bringing direct a luxury or novelty which it had been intended to smuggle in so that he might not observe it, or introduce with some one’s compliments as an accidental offering to the sick man. To hurry off Janie or Molly downstairs with these good things intended to tempt the invalid’s appetite, to stamp a secret foot at the indiscretions of Jane, who would bring in the bill for these dainties, or announce their arrival loud out, rousing Mr. Mannering to inquiries, and give a stern order that such extravagances should be no more, were now common experiences to Dora. She had to deceive him, which was, Miss Bethune assured her, for his good, but which Dora felt with a sinking heart was not at all for her own good, and made her shrink from her father’s eye. To account for the presence of some rare wine which was good for him by a little story which, though it had been carefully taught her by Dr. Roland or Miss Bethune, was not true—to make out that it was the most natural thing in the world that patés de fois gras, and the strongest soups and essence should be no more expensive than common beef tea, the manufacture of Bloomsbury, because the doctor knew some place where they were to be had at wholesale rates for almost nothing—these were devices now quite familiar to her.

It was no worse to conceal the appearance of this new and strange personage on the scene, the relation of whom she had never heard, and whose existence was to remain a secret; but still it was a bigger secret than any that concerned the things that were to eat or drink, or even Mrs. Simcox’s bills. Concealment is an art that has to be carefully learnt, like other arts, and it is extremely difficult to some minds, who will more easily acquire the most elaborate handicraft than the trick of selecting what is to be told and what is not to be told. It was beyond all description difficult to Dora. She was ready to betray herself at almost every moment, and had it not been that her own mind was much perturbed and troubled by her strange visitor, and by attempts to account for her to herself, she never could have succeeded in it. What could the offence be that made it impossible for her father ever to meet the sister of his wife again? Dora had learned from novels a great deal about the mysteries of life, some which her natural mind rejected as absurd, some which she contemplated with awe as tragic possibilities entirely out of the range of common life. She had read about implacable persons who once offended could never forgive, and of those who revenged themselves and pursued a feud to the death. But the idea of her father in either of these characters was too ridiculous to be dwelt upon for a moment. And there had been no evil intended, no harm,—only a fatality. What is a fatality? To have such dreadful issues, a thing must be serious, very terrible. Dora was bewildered and overawed. She put this question to Miss Bethune, but received no light on the subject. “A fatality is a thing that is not intentional—that happens by accident—that brings harm when you mean nothing but good,” that authority said.

“But how should that be? It says in the Bible that people must not do evil that good may come. But to do good that evil may come, I never heard of that.”

“There are many things in the world that you never heard of, Dora, my dear.”

“Oh yes, yes, I know,” cried the girl impatiently. “You are always saying that, because I am young—as if it were my fault that I am young; but that does not change anything. It is no matter, then, whether you have any meaning in what you do or not?”

“Sometimes it appears as if it was no matter. We walk blindly in this world, and often do things unawares that we would put our hands in the fire rather than do. You say an unguarded word, meaning nothing, and it falls to the ground, as you think, but afterwards springs up into a poisonous tree and blights your life; or you take a turn to the right hand instead of the left when you go out from your own door, and it means ruin and death—that’s fatality, and it’s everywhere,” said Miss Bethune, with a deep sigh.

“I do not believe in it,” said Dora, standing straight and strong, like a young tree, and holding her head high.

“Nor did I, my dear, when I was your age,” Miss Bethune said.

At this moment there was a light knock at the door, and there appeared suddenly the young man whom Miss Bethune had met in the Square, and who had come as the messenger of the lady who was Dora’s aunt.

“She is asking me what fatality is,” said Miss Bethune. “I wonder if you have any light to throw on the subject? You are nearer her age than I.”

The two young people looked at each other. Dora, though she was only sixteen, was more of a personage than the young Gordon whom she had not seen before. She looked at him with the condescension of a very young girl brought up among elder people, and apt to feel a boundless imaginative superiority over those of her own age. A young man was a slight person to Dora. She was scarcely old enough to feel any of the interest in him which exists naturally between the youth and the maiden. She looked at him from her pedestal, half scornful beforehand of anything he might say.

“Fatality?” he said. “I think it’s a name people invent for anything particularly foolish which they do, when it turns out badly: though they might have known it would turn out badly all the time.”

“That is exactly what I think,” cried Dora, clapping her hands.

“This is the young lady,” said young Gordon, “whom I used to help to pack the toys for. I hope she will let me call her Miss Dora, for I don’t know her by any other name.”

“To pack the toys?” said Dora. Her face grew blank, then flashed with a sudden light, then grew quite white and still again, with a gasp of astonishment and recognition. “Oh!” she cried, and something of disappointment was in her tone, “was it—was it she that sent them?” In the commotion of her feelings a sudden deep red followed the paleness. Dora was all fancy, changeableness, fastidiousness, imagination, as was natural to her age. Why was she disappointed to know that her yearly presents coming out of the unseen, the fairy gifts that testified to some love unknown, came from so legitimate a source, from her mother’s sister, her own nearest relation—the lady of the other day? I cannot tell how it was, nor could she, nor any one, but it was so; and she felt this visionary, absurd disappointment go to the bottom of her heart. “Oh,” she repeated, growing blank again, with a sort of opaque shadow closing over the brightness of her eyes and clouding her face, “so that was where my boxes came from? And you helped to pack the toys? I ought to have known,” said Dora, very sedately, feeling as if she had suddenly fallen from a great height.

“Yes,” said Miss Bethune, “we ought to have thought of that at once. Who else could have followed with such a faithful imagination, Dora? Who could have remembered your age, and the kind of things you want, and how you would grow, but a kind woman like that, with all the feelings of a mother? Oh, we should have thought of it before.”

Dora at first made no reply. Her face, generally so changeable and full of expression, settled down more and more into opaqueness and a blank rigidity. She was deeply disappointed, though why she could not have told—nor what dream of a fairy patroness, an exalted friend, entirely belonging to the realms of fancy, she had conceived in her childish imagination as the giver of these gifts. At all events, the fact was so. Mrs. Bristow, with her heavy crape veil, ready to fall at any moment over her face, with the worn lines of her countenance, the flush and heat of emotion, her tears and repetitions, was a disappointing image to come between her and the vision of a tender friend, too delicate, too ethereal a figure for any commonplace embodiment which had been a kind of tutelary genius in Dora’s dreams all her life. Any one in actual flesh and blood would have been a shock after that long-cherished, visionary dream. And young Gordon’s laughing talk of the preparation of the box, and of his own suggestions as to its contents, and the picture he conjured up of a mystery which was half mischievous, and in which there was not only a desire to please but to puzzle the distant recipient of all these treasures, both offended and shocked the girl in the fantastic delicacy of her thoughts.

Without being himself aware of it, the young man gave a glimpse into the distant Southern home, in which it would appear he had been brought up, which was in reality very touching and attractive, though it reduced Dora to a more and more strong state of revolt. On the other hand, Miss Bethune listened to him with a rapt air of happiness, which was more wonderful still—asking a hundred questions, never tiring of any detail. Dora bore it all as long as she could, feeling herself sink more and more from the position of a young princess, mysteriously loved and cherished by a distant friend, half angelic, half queenly, into that of a little girl, whom a fantastic kind relation wished to pet and to bewilder, half in love and half in fun, taking the boy into her confidence, who was still more to her and nearer to her than Dora. She could not understand how Miss Bethune could sit and listen with that rapt countenance; and she finally broke in, in the very midst of the narrative to which she had listened (had any one taken any notice) with growing impatience, to say suddenly, “In the meantime father is by himself, and I shall have to go to him,” with a tone of something like injury in her voice.

“But Gilchrist is there if he wants anything, Dora.”

“Gilchrist is very kind, but she is not quite the same as me,” said Dora, holding her head high.

She made Mr. Gordon a little gesture, something between farewell and dismissal, in a very lofty way, impressing upon the young man a sense of having somehow offended, which he could not understand. He himself was very much interested in Dora. He had known of her existence for years. She had been a sort of secret between him and the wife of his guardian, who, he was well aware, never discussed with her husband or mentioned in his presence the child who was so mysteriously dear to her; but bestowed all her confidence on this subject on the boy who had grown up in her house and filled to her the place of a son. He had liked the confidence and the secret and the mystery, without much inquiring what they meant. They meant, he supposed, a family quarrel, such as that which had affected all his own life. Such things are a bore and a nuisance; but, after all, don’t matter very much to any but those with whom they originate. And young Gordon was not disposed to trouble his mind with any sort of mystery now.

“Have I said anything I should not have said? Is she displeased?” he said.

“It matters very little if she is displeased or not, a fantastic little girl!” cried Miss Bethune. “Go on, go on with what you are saying. I take more interest in it than words can say.”

But it was not perhaps exactly the same thing to continue that story in the absence of the heroine whose name was its centre all through. She was too young to count with serious effect in the life of a man; and yet it would be difficult to draw any arbitrary line in respect to age with a tall girl full of that high flush of youth which adopts every semblance in turn, and can put all the dignity of womanhood in the eyes of a child. Young Gordon’s impulse slackened in spite of himself; he was pleased, and still more amused, by the interest he excited in this lady, who had suddenly taken him into her intimacy with no reason that he knew of, and was so anxious to know all his story. It was droll to see her listening in that rapt way,—droll, yet touching too. She had said that he reminded her of somebody she knew—perhaps it was some one who was dead, a young brother, a friend of earlier years. He laughed a little to himself, though he was also affected by this curious unexpected interest in him. But he certainly had not the same freedom and eloquence in talking of the old South American home, now broken up, and the visionary little maiden, who, all unknown herself, had lent it a charm, when Dora was gone. Neither, perhaps, did Miss Bethune concentrate her interest on that part that related to Dora. When he began to flag she asked him questions of a different kind.

“Those guardians of yours must have been very good to you—as good as parents?” she said.

“Very good, but not perhaps like parents; for I remember my father very well, and I still have a mother, you know.”

“Your father,” she said, turning away her head a little, “was devoted to you, I suppose?”

“Devoted to me?” he said, with a little surprise, and then laughed. “He was kind enough. We got on very well together. Do men and their sons do more than that?”

“I know very little about men and their sons,” she said hastily; “about men and women I maybe know a little, and not much to their advantage. Oh, you are there, Gilchrist! This is the gentleman I was speaking to you about. Do you see the likeness?”

Gilchrist advanced a step into the room, with much embarrassment in her honest face. She uttered a broken laugh, which was like a giggle, and began as usual to fold hems in her apron.

“I cannot say, mem, that I see a resemblance to any person,” she said.

“You are just a stupid creature!” said her mistress,—“good for nothing but to make an invalid’s beef tea. Just go away, go away and do that.” She turned suddenly to young Gordon, as Gilchrist went out of the room. “That stupid woman’s face doesn’t bring anything to your mind?” she said hastily.

“Bring anything to my mind?” he cried, with great surprise. “What should she bring to my mind?”

“It was just a fancy that came into mine. Do you remember the scene in Guy Mannering, where Bertram first sees Dominie Sampson? Eh, I hope your education has not been neglected in that great particular?”

“I remember the scene,” he said, with a smile.

“It was perhaps a little of what you young folk call melodramatic: but Harry Bertram’s imagination gets a kind of shock, and he remembers. And so you are a reader of Sir Walter, and mind that scene?”

“I remember it very well,” said the young man, bewildered. “But about the maid? You said–”

“Oh, nothing about the maid; she’s my faithful maid, but a stupid woman as ever existed. Never you mind what I said. I say things that are very silly from time to time. But I would like to know how you ever heard your mother was living, when you have never seen her, nor know anything about her? I suppose not even her name?”

“My father told me so when he was dying: he told Mr. Bristow so, but he gave us no further information. I gathered that my mother– It is painful to betray such an impression.”

She looked at him with a deep red rising over her cheeks, and a half-defiant look. “I am old enough to be your mother, you need not hesitate to speak before me,” she said.

“It is not that; it is that I can’t associate that name with anything—anything—to be ashamed of.”

“I would hope not, indeed!” she cried, standing up, towering over him as if she had added a foot to her height. She gave forth a long fiery breath, and then asked, “Did he dare to say that?” with a heaving breast.

“He did not say it: but my guardian thought–”

“Oh, your guardian thought! That was what your guardian would naturally think. A man—that is always of an evil mind where women are concerned! And what did she think?—her, his wife, the other guardian, the woman I have seen?”

“She is not like any one else,” said young Gordon; “she will never believe in any harm. You have given me one scene, I will give you another. She said what Desdemona said, ‘I do not believe there was ever any such woman’.”

“Bless her! But oh, there are—there are!” cried Miss Bethune, tears filling her eyes, “in life as well as in men’s ill imaginations. But not possible to her or to me!”

CHAPTER XI

Young Gordon had gone, and silence had fallen over Miss Bethune’s room. It was a commonplace room enough, well-sized, for the house was old and solid, with three tall windows swathed in red rep curtains, partially softened but not extinguished by the white muslin ones which had been put up over them. Neither Miss Bethune nor her maid belonged to the decorative age. They had no principles as to furniture, but accepted what they had, with rather a preference than otherwise for heavy articles in mahogany, and things that were likely to last. They thought Mr. Mannering’s dainty furniture and his faded silken curtains were rather of the nature of trumpery. People could think so in these days, and in the locality of Bloomsbury, without being entirely abandoned in character, or given up to every vicious sentiment. Therefore, I cannot say, as I should be obliged to say now-a-days, in order to preserve any sympathy for Miss Bethune in the reader’s mind, that the room was pretty, and contained an indication of its mistress’s character in every carefully arranged corner. It was a room furnished by Mrs. Simcox, the landlady. It had been embellished, perhaps, by a warm hearthrug—not Persian, however, by any means—and made comfortable by a few easy chairs. There were a number of books about, and there was one glass full of wallflowers on the table, very sweet in sober colours—a flower that rather corresponds with the mahogany, and the old-fashioned indifference to ornament and love of use. You would have thought, had you looked into this room, which was full of spring sunshine, bringing out the golden tints in the wallflower, and reflected in the big mirror above the fireplace, that it was empty after young Gordon had gone. But it was not empty. It was occupied instead by a human heart, so overbursting with passionate hope, love, suspense, and anxiety, that it was a wonder the silence did not tinge, and the quiet atmosphere betray that strain and stress of feeling. Miss Bethune sat in the shadowed corner between the fireplace and the farther window, with the whiteness of the curtains blowing softly in her face as the air came in. That flutter dazzled the beholder, and made Gilchrist think when she entered that there was nobody there. The maid looked round, and then clasped her hands and said to herself softly: “She’ll be gane into her bedroom to greet there".

“And why should I greet, you foolish woman?” cried Miss Bethune from her corner, with a thrill in her voice which betrayed the commotion in her mind.

Gilchrist started so violently that the bundle of clean “things,” fresh and fragrant from the country cart which had brought home the washing, fell from her arms. “Oh, mem, if I had kent you were there.”

“My bonnie clean things!” cried Miss Bethune, “with the scent of the grass upon them—and now they’re all spoiled with the dust of Bloomsbury! Gather them up and carry them away, and then you can come back here.” She remained for a moment as quiet as before, after Gilchrist had hurried away; but any touch would have been sufficient to move her in her agitation, and presently she rose and began to pace about the room. “Gone to my room to greet there, is that what she thinks? Like Mary going to the grave to weep there. No, no, that’s not the truth. It’s the other way. I might be going to laugh, and to clap my hands, as they say in the Psalms. But laughing is not the first expression of joy. I would maybe be more like greeting, as she says. A person laughs in idleness, for fun, not for joy. Joy has nothing, nothing but the old way of tears, which is just a contradiction. And maybe, after all, she was right. I’ll go to my room and weep for thankfulness, and lightheartedness, and joy.”

“Oh, mem,” cried Gilchrist, coming in, “gang softly, gang softly! You’re more sure than any mortal person has a right to be.”