The Mannerings lived in a house in that district of Bloomsbury which has
so long meant everything that is respectable, mediocre, and dull,--at
least, to that part of the world which inhabits farther West. It is
possible that, regarded from the other side of the compass, Bloomsbury
may be judged more justly as a city of well-sized and well-built houses,
aired and opened up by many spacious breathing-places, set with stately
trees. It is from this point of view that it is regarded by many persons
of humble pretensions, who find large rooms and broad streets where in
other districts they would only have the restricted space of respectable
poverty, the weary little conventionality of the suburban cottage, or
the dingy lodging-house parlours of town.
Bloomsbury is very much town indeed, surrounded on all sides by the roar
of London; but it has something of the air of an individual place, a
town within a town.
The pavements are wide, and so are the houses, as in the best quarter of
a large provincial city. The squares have a look of seclusion, of shady
walks, and retired leisure, which there is nothing to rival either in
Belgravia or Mayfair. It is, or was--for it is many years since the
present writer has passed over their broad pavements, or stood under
the large, benignant, and stately shadow of the trees in Russell
Square--a region apart, above fashion, a sober heart and centre of an
older and steadier London, such as is not represented in the Row, and
takes little part in the rabble and rout of fashion, the decent town of
earlier days.
I do not mean to imply by this that the Mannerings lived in Russell
Square, or had any pretensions to be regarded among the magnates of
Bloomsbury; for they were poor people, quite poor, living the quietest
life; not rich enough even to have a house of their own; mere lodgers,
occupying a second floor in a house which was full of other lodgers, but
where they retained the importance and dignity of having furnished their
own rooms. The house was situated at the corner of a street, and thus
gave them a glimpse of the trees of the Square, a view over the gardens,
as the landlady described it, which was no small matter, especially from
the altitude of the second floor. The small family consisted of a father
and daughter--he, middle-aged, a quiet, worn, and subdued man, employed
all day in the British Museum; and she, a girl very young, yet so much
older than her years that she was the constant and almost only companion
of her father, to whom Dora was as his own soul, the sharer of all his
thoughts, as well as the only brightness in his life.
She was but fifteen at the time when this chapter of their history
begins, a creature in short frocks and long hair slightly curling on her
shoulders; taller, if we may state such a contradiction in words, than
she was intended to be, or turned out in her womanhood, with long legs,
long neck, long fingers, and something of the look of a soft-eyed,
timid, yet playfully daring colt, flying up and down stairs as if she
had wings on her shoulders, yet walking very sedately by the side of her
father whenever they went out together, almost more steady and serious
than he.
Mr. Mannering had the appearance of being a man who had always done
well, yet never succeeded in life; a man with a small income, and no
chance of ever bettering himself, as people say, or advancing in the
little hierarchy of the great institution which he served meekly and
diligently in the background, none of its promotions ever reaching him.
Scarcely any one, certainly none out of that institution, knew that
there had been a period in which this gentle and modest life had almost
been submerged under the bitterest wave, and in which it had almost won
the highest honours possible to a man of such pursuits. This was an old
story, and even Dora knew little of it. He had done so much at that
forgotten and troubled time, that, had he been a rich man like Darwin,
and able to retire and work in quiet the discoveries he had made, and
the experiences he had attained, Robert Mannering’s name might have been
placed in the rolls of fame as high as that of his more fortunate
contemporary.
But he was poor when he returned from the notable wanderings during the
course of which he had been given up as dead for years, poor and
heartbroken, and desiring nothing but the dimmest corner in which to
live out his broken days, and just enough to live upon to bring up his
little daughter, and to endure his existence, his duty to God and to
Dora forbidding him to make an end of it.
It would be giving an altogether false idea of the man with whom this
book is to be much occupied, to say that he had continued in this
despairing frame of mind. God and Dora--the little gift of God--had
taken care of that. The little girl had led him back to a way which, if
not brilliant or prosperous, was like a field-path through many humble
flowers, sweet with the air and breath of nature. Sooth to say, it was
no field-path at all, but led chiefly over the pavements of Bloomsbury;
yet the simple metaphor was not untrue.
Thus he lived, and did his work dutifully day by day. No headship of a
department, no assistant keepership for him; yet much esteem and
consideration among his peers, and a constant reference, whenever
anything in his special sphere was wanted, to his boundless information
and knowledge. Sometimes a foreign inquirer would come eager to seek
him, as the best and highest authority on this subject, to the
consternation of the younger men in other branches, who could not
understand how anybody could believe “old Mannering” to be of
consequence in the place; but generally his life was as obscure as he
wished it to be, yet not any hard or painful drudgery; for he was still
occupied with the pursuit which he had chosen, and which he had followed
all his life; and he was wise enough to recognise and be thankful for
the routine which held his broken existence together, and had set up
again, after his great disaster, his framework as a man.
Dora knew nothing of any disaster; and this was good for him too,
bringing him back to nature. “A cheerful man I am in life,” he might
have said with Thackeray, who also had good reason for being sad enough.
A man who has for his chief society a buoyant, curious, new spirit,
still trailing clouds of glory from her origin, still only making
acquaintance with things of earth, curious about everything, asking a
thousand penetrating questions, awakening a mood of interest everywhere,
can scarcely be otherwise than cheerful.
The second floor at the corner of the Square which was inhabited by this
pair consisted of three rooms, all good-sized and airy; the sitting-room
being indeed spacious, larger than any two which could have been found
in a fashionable nook in Mayfair. It was furnished, in a manner very
unexpected by such chance visitors as did not know the character of the
inhabitants, with furniture which would not have been out of place in
Belgravia, or in a fine lady’s drawing-room anywhere, mingled strangely
with certain plain pieces put in for evident use.
A square and sturdy table occupied the portion of the room which was
nearest to the door, with the clearest utility, serving for the meals
of the father and daughter, while the other part of the room, partially
separated by a stamped leather screen, had an air of subdued luxury, a
little faded, yet unmistakable. The curtains were of heavy brocade,
which had a little lost their colour, or rather gained those shadings
and reflections which an artist loves; but hung with the softness of
their silken fabric, profoundly unlike the landlady’s nice fresh crimson
rep which adorned the windows of the first floor. There was an Italian
inlaid cabinet against the farther wall, which held the carefully
prepared sheets of a herbarium, which Mr. Mannering had collected from
all the ends of the earth, and which was of sufficient value to count
for much in the spare inheritance which he meant for his only child. The
writing-table, at which Dora had learned to make her first pothooks, was
a piece of beautiful _marqueterie_, the oldest and most graceful of its
kind.
But I need not go round the room and make a catalogue of the furniture.
It settled quite kindly into the second floor in Bloomsbury, with that
grace which the nobler kind of patrician, subdued by fortune, lends to
the humblest circumstances, which he accepts with patience and goodwill.
Mr. Mannering himself had never been a handsome man; and all the colour
and brightness of youth had died out of him, though he was still in the
fulness of middle age. But the ivory tone of his somewhat sharply cut
profile and the premature stoop of his shoulders suited his surroundings
better than a more vigorous personality would have done.
Dora, in her half-grown size and bigness, with her floating hair and
large movements, seemed to take up a great deal more space than her
father; and it was strange that she did not knock down more frequently
the pretty old-fashioned things, and the old books which lay upon the
little tables, or even those tables themselves, as she whisked about;
but they knew Dora, and she knew them. She had spent a great part of
every day alone with them, as long as she could remember, playing with
those curiosities that lay upon them, while she was a child, in the
long, silent, dreamy hours, when she was never without amusement, though
as constantly alone.
Since she had grown older, she had taken pleasure in dusting them and
arranging them, admiring the toys of old silver, and the carved ivories
and trifles of all kinds, from the ends of the earth. It was her great
pleasure on the Sunday afternoons, when her father was with her, to open
the drawers of the cabinet and bring out the sheets of the herbarium so
carefully arranged and classified. Her knowledge, perhaps, was not very
scientific, but it was accurate in detail, and in what may be called
locality in the highest degree. She knew what family abode in what
drawer, and all its ramifications. These were more like neighbours to
Dora, lodged in surrounding houses, than specimens in drawers. She knew
all about them, where they came from, and their genealogy, and which
were the grandparents, and which the children; and, still more
interesting, in what jungle or marsh her father had found them, and
which of them came from the African deserts in which he had once been
lost.
By degrees she had found out much about that wonderful episode in his
life, and had become vaguely aware, which was the greatest discovery of
all, that it contained many things which she had not found out, and
perhaps never would. She knew even how to lead him to talk about it,
which had to be very skilfully done--for he was shy of the subject when
assailed openly, and often shrank from the very name of Africa as if it
stung him; while on other occasions, led on by some train of thought in
his own mind, he would fall into long lines of recollections, and tell
her of the fever attacks, one after another, which had laid him low, and
how the time had gone over him like a dream, so that he never knew till
long after how many months, and even years, he had lost.
Where was the mother all this time, it may be asked? Dora knew no more
of this part of her history than if she had come into the world without
need of any such medium, like Minerva from her father’s head.
It is difficult to find out from the veiled being of a little child what
it thinks upon such a subject, or if it is aware at all, when it has
never been used to any other state of affairs, of the strange vacancy in
its own life. Dora never put a single question to her father on this
point; and he had often asked himself whether her mind was dead to all
that side of life which she had never known, or whether some instinct
kept her silent; and had satisfied himself at last that, as she knew
scarcely any other children, the want in her own life had not struck
her imagination. Indeed, the grandchildren of Mrs. Simcox, the landlady,
were almost the only children Dora had ever known familiarly, and they,
like herself, had no mother, they had granny; and Dora had inquired of
her father about her own granny, who was dead long ago.
“You have only me, my poor little girl,” he had said. But Dora had been
quite satisfied.
“Janie and Molly have no papa,” she answered, with a little pride. It
was a great superiority, and made up for everything, and she inquired no
more. Nature, Mr. Mannering knew, was by no means so infallible as we
think her. He did not know, however, what is a still more recondite and
profound knowledge, what secret things are in a child’s heart.
I have known a widowed mother who wondered sadly for years why her
children showed so little interest and asked no questions about their
father; and then found out, from the lips of one grown into full
manhood, what visions had been wrapt about that unknown image, and how
his portrait had been the confidant of many a little secret trouble
hidden even from herself. But Dora had not even a portrait to give
embodiment to any wistful thoughts. Perhaps it was to her not merely
that her mother was dead, but that she had never been. Perhaps--but who
knows the questions that arise in that depth profound, the heart of a
child?
It was not till Dora was fifteen that she received the great shock, yet
revelation, of discovering the portrait of a lady in her father’s room.
Was it her mother? She could not tell. It was the portrait of a young
lady, which is not a child’s ideal of a mother. It was hidden away in a
secret drawer of which she had discovered the existence only by a chance
in the course of some unauthorised investigations among Mr. Mannering’s
private properties.
He had lost something which Dora was intent on surprising him by
finding; and this was what led her to these investigations. It was in a
second Italian cabinet which was in his bedroom, an inferior specimen to
that in the drawing-room, but one more private, about which her
curiosity had never been awakened. He kept handkerchiefs, neckties,
uninteresting items of personal use in it, which Dora was somewhat
carelessly turning over, when by accident the secret spring was touched,
and the drawer flew open. In this there was a miniature case which
presented a very strange spectacle when Dora, a little excited, opened
it. There seemed to be nothing but a blank at first, until, on further
examination, Dora found that the miniature had been turned face
downwards in its case. It may be imagined with what eager curiosity she
continued her investigations.
The picture, as has been said, was that of a young lady--quite a young
lady, not much older, Dora thought, than herself. Who could this girl
be? Her mother? But that girlish face could not belong to any girl’s
mother. It was not beautiful to Dora’s eyes; but yet full of vivacity
and interest, a face that had much to say if one only knew its language;
with dark, bright eyes, and a tremulous smile about the lips. Who was
it; oh, who was it? Was it that little sister of papa’s who was dead,
whose name had been Dora too? Was it ----
Dora did not know what to think, or how to explain the little shock
which was given her by this discovery. She shut up the drawer hastily,
but she had not the heart to turn the portrait again as it had been
turned, face downwards. It seemed too unkind, cruel almost. Why should
her face be turned downwards, that living, smiling face? “I will ask
papa,” Dora said to herself; but she could not tell why it was, any more
than she could explain her other sensations on the subject, that when
the appropriate moment came to do so, she had not the courage to ask
papa.