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?”
“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.