An evening in a hotel is seldom cheerful, and this evening was very
forlorn. Mr Yorke did not return, though the hour for which he had
ordered dinner was past. The girls sat very dolefully one on each side
of the table, and read the books which had been provided for their
amusement on board ship. Everything had been so lively on board ship,
there had been so much society, so many expedients to make the time pass
pleasantly, that they had not required to have recourse to these works.
It was very strange and dreadfully disenchanting on their first night in
London to be compelled to take to this way of getting through the
evening. They expected to have been dining, cheerfully chatting about
all their impressions, or, perhaps, though it was the first night, to
have been taken to a theatre, and seen Shakespeare, perhaps, on
Shakespeare’s native soil. Perhaps if they had attained this object of
their desires they might not have found it much more satisfactory--but
then that did not occur to their fresh minds. And instead of such
delights, to find themselves seated in a common-place room with a lamp
which smoked, and two dull novels, and the rain coming down in
bucketfuls outside, was as dreary and disappointing a termination to the
day as could well be supposed. The solemn waiter came in and laid the
cloth, and the girls had to change their places. Grace went to the
window and gazed out at the pouring rain and the street lamps twinkling
feebly through it. Milly sat down vacantly in a big chair, too far off
the lamp to continue her book.
“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said the soft-voiced waiter: “will you have
the dinner up, or wait till the gentleman comes?”
“O, Grace!” said Milly, startled, appealing to her sister.
“Of course, we will wait for papa,” said Grace, turning round from the
window.
When the man went away poor little Milly, overtired and depressed, fell
a-crying. “Oh, how strange it is! Oh, how lonely it is!” she cried. “I
feel as if there was nobody alive--nobody that knew us.”
Grace’s lip twitched and quivered a little too. “How silly!” she said;
“this is how you always are--up to the skies one moment, and down to the
depths the next. What does it matter if nobody knows us? Two of us can
go through the world--with papa.”
“But what has become of papa?” said Milly.
They did not know what to think. He was not a man to be out at night,
nor, though he was so undemonstrative, was he a man to abandon his
children to an evening in an inn by themselves. Could anything have
happened to him? There flashed across the minds of both recollections of
stories they had heard, of sudden disappearances, stories mixed up in a
great confusion with the Morgue, of which they remembered the name and
the dismal use, without clearly remembering where it was; and of people
found in the river, and all kinds of terrible catastrophes. These were
so much too terrible, however, that after a while Grace laughed.
“What are you laughing at? I don’t feel at all like laughing,” Milly
said in an aggrieved tone.
“We are behaving as if something had happened,” Grace said; “such
nonsense! Papa has been detained, that’s all. I hope he is not getting
wet out in this rain.”
“Oh, I hope he is not getting wet!” Milly said, rising up hastily and
running to the window. Milly had a turn for taking care of everybody’s
health. She was pleased with the importance of being a little “delicate”
herself.
“I don’t see how he should,” said Grace with another laugh, which was
somewhat forced, “when there are cabs at every step. Of course, he has
not made up his mind to get wet, or to get lost, or to have an accident,
solely to make us uncomfortable the very first day, like a naughty
child. The dinner will be spoiled; that is all that will happen.”
“As if it mattered about the dinner!” said Milly with feminine
indifference, coming back from the window. The rain was not quite so
heavy, and their spirits began to rise.
“Here is papa’s letter-case with all the introductions. Let us look them
over and imagine what sort of people they will be. First of all and
foremost,” said Grace, “Lord Conway; that is _our_ Minister. He was once
at our house--don’t you remember, Milly? years and years ago, when he
was the Honourable Mr Something-or-other; at least I have heard mamma
say so----”
“Mamma would be sure to say Something-or-other. Of course he will come
directly and call----”
“And ask us to go and stay there,” added Grace seriously, “which would
be grander than a hotel; but then one would not be so free to go out and
in. I think I will advise papa not to go, or to go only for two or three
days, to see how noble people live. To be sure,” she added, “if he is
not married--I wonder if he is married?--he could not ask us; unless he
has a mother, or sister, or something, to keep his house.”
“He is sure to be married,” said Milly, “if it is so long since he was
in Canada--longer than we can recollect; and a Minister too: he must be
quite old!”
“On the contrary, the Minister for the Colonies is often quite young, I
believe,” said Grace. What she founded this opinion upon we are unable
to state, but it was Grace’s peculiarity that she liked to be wiser than
her neighbours. “Put Lord Conway on one side. Now there is Sir John
Didcot. He is married; there is not any doubt about that. Don’t you
remember _him_, Milly?--a fat man who had to do with railways. He was
dreadfully rich. I should think very likely they live in the country,
and would ask us for--Easter, or that sort of thing. Everybody in London
goes out of town for Easter. There are several national solemnities of
that kind, you know,” said Grace half satirically, half complacently.
“Easter, and the Derby-day, and the 12th of August, and a few more.”
“What do people do on the 12th of August? But we shall be back home,”
said Milly, “before that, shan’t we? How nice it will be to get back
home. I shall make papa buy loads of presents--presents for everybody. I
was thinking only to-day what Lenny would like, and old John.”
“It is rather too soon to think of presents for home, considering we
only arrived yesterday,” said Grace: and then she, too, breathed a small
sigh, thinking of the bright room at home with all the boys laughing and
questioning, and the tables covered with the presents they would carry
back, and the baby, the darling of the whole house, seated triumphant
in the midst of them, the fairy distributor of all these riches. Though
it had been such a great thing to come to England--though it was such an
ecstasy to be in England--yet, after all, home was a different matter.
She gave a glance round this inn parlour, and smothered another little
sigh.
“I suppose we shall have to go to the Didcots,” she said, “sooner or
later. Oh, after that here is something delightful! Mr Rivers, the
author--you know. Of course, he will ask all the best people to meet
papa. That will be far the most interesting of all. Fancy, perhaps we
shall see Tennyson!” Grace raised a pair of great brown eyes opened wide
with awe and rapture. “I wonder how one ought to behave one’s self to a
great poet. I should like to go down on my knees and kiss his hand.”
“Ladies never go down on their knees--except to the Queen,” said Milly,
rousing up. “I wonder if we shall be asked to Windsor Castle or
Buckingham Palace, or any of those places! It would be nice to know the
princesses, don’t you think?”
“We ought to be,” said Grace sedately, “for papa had so much to do for
the Prince of Wales. Oh!” cried the loyal colonial maiden, clasping her
hands, “do you think the Princess will ask us, Milly? He will tell her,
of course, who we are. That beautiful, beautiful creature! I don’t know
which of the two would be most delightful--the Princess or Tennyson.
One would have to call him _Lord_ Tennyson, as if he were nobody, a
common peer,” she added with a plaintive tone; “but to the Princess one
would say Madam, or Your Royal Highness.”
“Cissy Nunn told me you only said Ma’am.”
“Cissy Nunn had no manners,” said Grace. “I like titles; they are so
pretty. Everybody that is beautiful, or delightful, or has genius should
have some beautiful title. Princess!--that is what I should like to call
her; but I suppose you can only do that when you are intimate--and I am
afraid, with so many people as she must have to see, _that’s_ not very
likely,” the girl said regretfully.
Thus they went on talking the greatest nonsense in the world without
suspecting it. The Yorkes were persons of importance at home. Whenever a
great personage from England appeared there, he was received with all
the resources of their simple and graceful, but by no means magnificent,
hospitality. The distinguished visitors accepted all these little
attentions cheerfully. They were the best to be had in the place, and
they were characteristic of it, and amused the wandering peers and lions
as much as if their hosts had been lions also, or peers. But it need not
be said that the Colonial Secretary was very unlikely to invite the
Yorkes to make his house their home, though that was how they had
treated him; and that even the most amiable of princesses would not feel
herself bound to invite, nor her august spouse even to recollect the
name of the good colonial people who had been altogether at his service.
Nay, we doubt much if the author would have felt himself bound to
assemble a literary party for the admiration of the Canadian family. The
simplicity of the girls considered all these natural returns of their
hospitality not only as natural, but inevitable, though some doubts on
the subject of the Princess did cross their minds. Still they could not
help thinking an invitation was at least possible. These anticipations
kept them amused, and made them forget the passage of time. The bland
waiter came up to the door, and looked in more than once. Finally he
entered, and asked respectfully if they would not like to have dinner
served? Then they looked at each other blankly, relapsing all at once
into alarm and gloom.
“Perhaps it will be better to have it put upon the table,” said Grace,
faltering.
“I couldn’t eat a morsel,” said Milly energetically.
“Oh, hush!” said the elder sister, “most likely the people are angry
having to wait so long.”
And this argument was too strong to be resisted. They were still a
little afraid of making people angry, and loved to please everybody they
were brought in contact with. Then came the soup, cold, which they tried
to swallow; then a terrible soaked rag of fish. But the next moment Mr
Yorke himself walked in. He told the girls hastily that he had been
caught in the rain--that he had been paying a visit in a suburb, where
cabs were not to be got easily, and that he was so wet and it was so
late that he would go to bed at once and have something brought to him
to his room. This was a climax to the discomfort of the evening. They
sent away the joint notwithstanding the almost tears of the waiter. “Oh,
what do we care for dinner!” the girls cried. They had been warned when
they left home that, above all things, they were to see that their
father did not catch cold.
“Mamma will think it is our fault,” said Milly, with quivering lips. Who
had ever heard of papa going to bed unless he were very, very ill? Even
Grace, though she had so much strength of mind, could scarcely keep from
crying. “Oh, how I wish we had never left home!” she said. “Oh, if mamma
were only here!” said Milly. Left to their own resources, they could
think of nothing but a longing, useless appeal to the one authority.
Mamma would know what should be done in such an emergency. She would
understand at a glance the position of affairs, and whether he might
safely be left alone, or what should be done for him. The girls knew
that he was a very difficult patient, and that nobody but their mother
could persuade him to attend to himself. It was a terrible problem for
them so soon, before they had even awoke to the possibility of such an
accident; for who ever thought of papa falling ill? it had been the
thing against which no precaution had been taken. The girls had a
little medicine chest full of Mrs Yorke’s domestic preservatives, and
had received the minutest directions respecting their own health--but
papa! “Take care your father does not catch cold,” she had said: but
that was all. He had always been subject to bad colds. “But what could
we have done?” Grace asked of herself unconsciously, hearing her
mother’s warnings in her ears. After a while she ventured to go to his
room to see if anything could be done. Mr Yorke had not gone to bed; he
was sitting by a fire which smoked a little, in his dressing-gown, with
a steaming glass of brandy-and-water by his side. He did not send away
the girls, who floated into his room with a doubtful air, keeping close
together like a pair of doves; but he looked up with restrained
impatience from some letters he was reading. “What is it?” he said. Oh,
not crossly--not at all crossly! they said afterwards; but keeping from
being cross with an effort. The letters he was reading were old letters.
Some lying on the table before him did not seem even to have been
opened. He threw his handkerchief over them as the girls came in. “What
is it?” Clearly he had found something which was of more interest to him
than anything they could do or say.
“I hope you have had something to eat, papa,” said Grace.
“I don’t want anything to eat. I am taking this by way of precaution,”
he said.
“But you ought to eat. There is some mutton; it is quite hot still. May
I ring and ask the waiter?”
“Don’t take any trouble about me. Don’t you think I am old enough to
look after myself?”
Grace did not know what to do. Her mother, as she felt certain, and as
Milly immediately suggested when they left the room, would have asked no
questions; she would have had a tray brought in quite noiselessly
without saying a word, and made him eat something. “Why didn’t you run,
then, and ask for the tray if you knew that was the right thing?” Grace
asked afterwards, aggrieved: but Milly had not the courage to take any
initiative.
They stood for two or three moments more, looking at him with an anxiety
that was altogether helpless.
“Is your cold in your head, papa? Is it in your chest? Have you got a
cough? Do you feel any pain? Shall I bring you some lozenges?”
Poor Grace! she was cudgelling her brain to know what to do; but to ask
questions was just the thing she was never to do. In the flurry and
agitation of her feelings she forgot that.
“There is nothing the matter with me,” said Mr Yorke. “I have got a
little cold; that is all; not to-night; I felt it when we landed. Go to
bed. You must be tired too.”
“But, papa----” said Grace, gazing at him anxiously, helpless, with
nothing to suggest, yet a scared consciousness that there was certainly
something that she ought to do.
He had the air of a man interrupted in something much more interesting
than their girlish talk. A little pucker of impatience gathered in his
forehead; but he was too serious to smile, or to make a joke of it, as
he often did. And there was a flush on his face, and he was very hoarse,
looking exactly as he did when he caught one of his _worst_ colds.
“Well,” he said almost harshly, “have you anything particular to say? If
not, you see I am busy. I should prefer to be left alone.”
Grace’s anxious eyes were surveying him from head to foot. Milly,
behind, plucked at her sleeve, meaning to convey some suggestion which
she could not put into words. They wanted to do something--anything: but
neither of them had the least idea what. Milly, who thus tried to prick
her sister into exertion, was still more destitute than Grace was of any
perception what to do.
“Good-night then, papa,” said Grace slowly. She stooped over him to kiss
him; and, oh, how hot his head was! One of his worst colds! and nobody
here who knew what ought to be done, or what the danger was.
“Good-night,” he said quickly. He gave a little sigh of relief as they
went away, and turned back to the papers which he had hastily
concealed. The girls saw this and it did not console them. They went
back much depressed to the sitting-room, which had never been very
bright, and which now was doleful beyond description. And this was their
first night in England! Hearing, however, a furtive sob from Milly,
Grace turned round upon her quite suddenly, and “snapped her up.”
“Well!” she cried, “after all, it is not anything so very dreadful; papa
has a cold; he has often had a cold before. He is busy with something. I
don’t see why you should make a fuss about it. I dare say he had
something to eat when he was out. An old friend would be sure to offer
him something. Of course, he will be better to-morrow; and we had better
take his advice and go to bed.”
Now Milly began to cry in earnest. “We did not come to England all this
long way,” she said, half miserable, half indignant, “only to go to
bed.”
At which, though she was not much happier than Milly, Grace laughed. “Of
course,” she said, “you little goose, the first thing we do everywhere
is always to go to bed. We must do that. You may live without going to
the theatre,” Grace added philosophically, with a little sigh, “without
going into society--but not without going to bed.”
Nevertheless it was forlorn to be able to think at nine o’clock of no
other way of spending the evening. They occupied a little of the vacant
time by ordering tea, for the spoiled dinner had not tempted them; and
then sadly enough they put back the letters of introduction into the
letter-case. It seemed less probable now somehow, they could not tell
why, that the Princess would take any notice of them, or that Lord
Conway would carry them off to his house. They put away those passports
to society, through which they had seemed to have a momentary glimpse of
everything that was splendid. As they did so a little piece of paper
fell out. Milly took it up and read it first; then Grace came and looked
over her shoulder. It was very inoffensive and unimportant in
appearance--a simple address, 3 Grove Road, Hampstead, written in their
father’s hand. He had sent, they recollected, for the Directory and
taken an address out of it that morning. Could this be where he had been
visiting--the suburb in which he had not been able to get a cab? A
slight tremor ran over them, a sense of mystery which could scarcely be
called disagreeable. Who could it be who lived at 3 Grove Road,
Hampstead? And why had he gone the very first day to call there? The
girls held their breath. Visions of some old love, far too old to be
anything but a memory, came into their minds. They were divided between
a little jealousy on their mother’s account and a romantic interest
about the unknown.
“It is a lifetime since he left England,” said Grace with emphasis.
Their imaginations leaped into a whole romantic story. They put back
the scribbled address into the letter-case with a sort of awe. They had
never been so much interested in their father before.
“I wonder who she is,” Milly said softly under her breath. “I wonder if
we shall ever see her.”
“Whoever she is,” cried Grace, “and whether we see her or not, you must
recollect--not a word, not a word to mamma!”
“As if I were such a goose!” cried Milly. “But she must be so old--so
old! Mamma would not mind.”
This discovery, or supposed discovery, relieved them from the nervous
alarm and misery which was beginning to overpower them. After a while
they even laughed softly under their breath. Papa’s old, old love
affair, though it was interesting and even touching, as a relic of the
ancient ages, was yet more or less amusing too. They put back the scrap
of paper along with all the big, imposing letters, which were so much
more pretentious, but which it was very evident their father had not
been nearly so much interested by. They liked him for going _there_
first of all: and then they permitted themselves a little laugh.
“I dare say,” said Grace, “they were quite young when they were parted.
How strange it must be to meet after so many years! One reads of it in
books sometimes. I wonder if he will take us to see her. I should think
she would like to see us--if she is nice,” she added with a little
hesitation.
“She must be nice,” said Milly, “or he would not have remembered all
these years, and gone to see her the very first minute. I wonder if
mamma would be angry, Grace? I wonder if _she_ is married too?”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Grace, decidedly. “Men may do that, but not women.
You may be sure she has lived all the time--oh, not making herself
unhappy--but always faithful! She will be good; she will do all sorts of
things for people; but marry--no! I _hope_ he will take us to see her.
It is like England. It is what I have always thought of England. People
are so faithful here. Not changing about, not always looking for
something new. I do hope he will take us to see her, Milly.”
“I suppose mamma would have no objection,” said Milly, her mind somewhat
divided on the subject.
They exhausted this new theme, looking at it from every side. And at
last, much more cheerful--having, indeed, to exercise restraint upon
themselves not to chatter too much as they passed their father’s door,
and perhaps disturb him--they went to bed, no longer thinking it so
dismal. This hypothesis, which was built upon so slight a foundation,
was on the whole the most amusing and the most interesting suggestion
that had ever yet entered their minds in respect to papa.