The girls knew nothing more till next morning. There was no reason why
they should be alarmed. After all a cold is no such great matter. When
they went to bed they went to sleep, as is natural at their age, and
heard nothing more till they were up and dressed, having almost
forgotten their father’s illness altogether. Before, however, they were
quite ready to leave their room, something occurred which startled them
greatly. There was a knock at the door, in which of itself there was an
alarming sound. Mystery and meaning were in it far beyond the sound of
an ordinary knock. When one of them rushed to open it, a woman came in
of imposing appearance. She did not speak to them at the door, as the
servants of the hotel did, but came in even without being asked.
Importance was in her look, in her rustling silk dress and lofty cap, in
her soft and almost stately step.
“My dear young ladies,” she said, “you must not be alarmed;” and with
this came in, and with her hand behind her shut the door. Naturally the
girls’ imagination immediately leapt at things terrible--bad news from
Canada, a summons home.
“What is the matter? Is it a telegram?” they cried with one breath.
“Oh, no, it is no telegram; fortunately, the poor gentleman is in his
own comfortable room, where he will be seen to as comfortably as if he
were at home. He said you were not to be alarmed.”
“We are thoroughly alarmed now,” said Grace; “tell us the truth at
once.”
“Your poor papa, my dear young ladies, is very poorly,” said their
visitor. “I am the manageress of this hotel. He rang his bell in the
night, and we sent for a doctor; everything has been done that could
have been done. I made the mustard with my own hands for his poultice.
We are always ready in our great way of business for everything that can
be required. I had the _Foil de Rigolette_ ready, but he preferred
mustard. Everything was done that could be done.”
The two girls instinctively had drawn together, and caught each other by
the arm in mutual support. “Oh, tell us, tell us,” they cried; “is
papa----” and then their lips refused to fashion the other dreadful word
that leapt to them. The manageress was satisfied with the effect she had
produced. Instead of the fresh and cheerful girls to whom she had
introduced herself, two woebegone and colourless ghosts stood before her
trembling with dismay and terror.
Then she nodded her head encouragingly. “A little better--yes, a little
better. We have made as much progress, the medical gentleman says, as
can be expected in such a sharp attack. Mustard chest and back have
eased the breathing, and though he does not wish it to be concealed from
you that it is a very sharp attack----”
Milly dropped her sister’s arm, and, sinking down upon a chair, fell
a-weeping in mingled excitement and terror and relief. Grace stood
still, holding by the table for support, very pale, and with trembling
lips.
“You have not told us what it is. He had a bad cold.”
“That is how it always begins,” said the manageress; “but you will have
the consolation of knowing that it has been taken in time, and that
everything has been done. I was called up at once, and I have given him
my best attention. I always say I am half a doctor myself. Yes, it is
congestion of the lungs; but you must not be alarmed--indeed you must
not be alarmed, my dear young ladies; there’s no reason to suppose that
he won’t recover----”
“Recover!” they both cried together like a lamentable echo, turning
towards her four beseeching eyes, as if she held in her hand the issues
of fate.
“And do well--and do well,” she said hastily. “That’s what I meant. Go
and take some breakfast, and fortify yourselves like good dears; and
when the doctor comes, we’ll see. You can ask him; and if the sight of
you wouldn’t agitate your poor papa----”
Why should it agitate him? Why should it not be the most natural thing
in the world to see them by his bedside? That this should not have been
his first thought was beyond measure extraordinary to the girls; but
they yielded to the wonderful, appalling argument after a little. If it
would agitate him, if it might hurt him, whatever it might cost them,
they must stay away. There could not be any question about that. After a
while they went, sick-hearted and miserable, into the sitting-room where
their breakfast was laid, and where, the one persuading the other, they
swallowed each a cup of tea. Then they sat down to wait the coming of
the doctor. They had a long time to wait. It was a bright morning after
the rain, and they sat at the window and watched all the comings and
goings in the dingy London street. Opposite to them was a tall house
with a balcony, filling up all the horizon; and the tradesmen’s carts
jostled up and down for an hour or two, and lugubrious organ-grinders
stopped underneath, encouraged by the sight of the two faces, possible
listeners, which appeared at their window. And thus the first of the
morning passed, and hansom cabs began to rattle about, depositing, with
loud clang and hum, now young men and now old, at the different doors;
and the stream of passers-by quickened; and postmen and telegraph boys
came and went with sharp rattles of knocking; and quick footsteps
beating up and down the street. The girls were not always at the window:
now one, now another would go to the door of the sick-room and listen to
the sounds inside. And sometimes the door would be opened, and something
asked for, which Grace or Milly, far more rapid than any waiter, would
rush to get. “Just the same, just the same,” was all the nurse could say
to them. They began to feel as if they were entirely dependent upon this
woman, and that in her hand was the decision of all.
When the doctor appeared at last he was so rapid and so hurried that it
was all they could do to get him to pause to speak to them as he left
the room. “No better; but I did not expect it,” he said. “No worse:
these things must take their course.”
“But we are his daughters,” cried Grace. “Is it possible that you will
shut us out from his bedside? Whenever he has been ill, we have always
nursed him. Oh, why must we be kept out now?”
“Always nursed him?” said the doctor; “that is well thought of. Step in
here. Do you mean to say that he has had this before?”
“What is it?” said Grace. “He has had bad colds, very bad colds. Mamma
was always anxious when he had one of his colds.”
“And mamma told us above all things that we must not allow him to catch
cold,” cried Milly. “Oh, how badly we must have managed! but how could
we know? and what could we do? And it was only the second night.”
The doctor was quick-witted and sympathetic; but naturally he thought of
his patient as a case, and not as a man. “Not to allow him to catch
cold! that’s easier said than done,” he said with a half-smile, shaking
his head. “I thought there must be delicacy of the chest to begin with;
all that could not have been done in one day.”
“No, no, there was no delicacy; he was always well and strong--always
strong,” the girls cried, emulating and supplementing each other. They
poured upon him instantly a hundred examples of their father’s
robustness. He had never been ill in his life, except with a cold, and
everybody has colds. He never took any special care. Mamma was anxious,
but then mamma was always anxious about us all, though we are known to
be the healthiest family! To all these eager explanations Doctor Brewer
listened with that half-smile, shaking his head; but he was interested.
From looking at this matter as only a case, he began to realise the
human creatures involved in it, and to perceive that the man who was ill
was the head of an anxious, probably dependent family, and that these
two pale, frightened, eager girls, with their young beauty all obscured
by this cloud of pale terror and confusion, were his children. He began
to look at them with a certain tenderness of pity.
“You are very young,” he said at last, when they gave him time to speak.
“I think you had better telegraph at once for your mother.”
“For mamma?” their faces were pale before, but this suggestion withdrew
from them every tinge of colour.
“She is the best nurse he can have; she ought to be here to take care of
you in any case. Give me her address, and I will telegraph. She ought to
know at once.”
“Doctor!” said Grace, separating herself from her sister, “oh, let _us_
know at once. Is it so serious? is it dangerous? I am not very young,
and I am the eldest, and have had a great deal of experience. Mamma
could not be here for nearly a fortnight; and think what a thing it
would be, the long voyage alone, and the fear of what she might find
when she came, and no news--no news for ten days or more--for she might
not have so good a passage as we had. And then she has never been used
to travel, or do anything by herself. Oh, doctor, do you think--do you
think that it is so serious as that?”
“Where is your mother?” he said.
“In Canada,” they both cried in one breath.
Dr Brewer began to be more interested than was at all justifiable in
what was after all only one case out of a hundred. “Poor children! poor
children!” he said. They stood with their faces intent upon him, four
great brown eyes, with the eyelids curved and puckered over them in
deep arches of anxiety and terror, appealing as if to a god who could
kill and make alive. He was overcome by this passionate trouble and
suspense. He put out his hand (he had children of his own) and touched
lightly with a soothing touch the nearest shoulder. “You must not be
frightened,” he said. “I see you are brave girls; you will do your duty.
No; if she is so far away as that, we will not frighten your mother
to-day--not to-day.”
“You think he is very ill?” they said, searching his face as if it were
full of secret folds and hieroglyphics which searching could find out.
“He has a sharp attack. Come, one of you shall go, one at a time, and be
at hand if anything is wanted. I sent him a nurse last night, whom I
happened to be able to lay my hand upon. She will want a rest
occasionally. If you will obey orders exactly, and call her whenever you
are at a loss--one at a time.”
“Milly is not strong--not so very strong,” cried Grace; “let it be me. I
nursed them all when we had scarlet fever: and I never cry nor break
down.”
“Oh, Grace! I should not cry if I were with papa,” cried Milly, with
streaming eyes.
Dr Brewer almost cried too. He was tender-hearted, as so many doctors
are, and then he had girls of his own. But he could not spend all his
morning with these two pretty forlorn creatures, and their father, who
was struggling for his life.
This went on for more than a week, during which there was to these poor
girls neither night nor day, but all one confused languor and excitement
and anxiety; the monotony of the sick-room, broken only by now and then
a terrified consultation with nurse and doctor, or between themselves,
as to what was to be done. During all this time they defended their
mother from the telegram with which the doctor had threatened her. The
more they thought of it the more impossible it seemed that she should be
summoned upon such a journey at a moment’s notice and kept, during all
its course, in the terrible anxiety which was inevitable if once she
knew what was hanging over them. After the first days Dr Brewer himself
did not urge it. He said to himself that all would be settled one way or
other before the poor woman could come: and that the girls, poor things!
must bear it as they could if matters came to the worst.
Meanwhile, as the dreary days went on, the sick-room, in its stillness
and monotony, became the scene of one of those hand-to-hand struggles
with death in which there is all the terrible force of a tragedy to
those who are aware of the conclusion which is drawing nigh; but it is
seldom that the persons who are most interested are aware of this. And
Grace and Milly were too young and inexperienced to realise more than
that papa was no better from morning to morning, from night to night.
There was always one of them in the room with the nurse, and
occasionally Mr Yorke was well enough to talk to them. But either he did
not realise the seriousness of his own position, or the torpor of
approaching death, and the self-absorption of weakness and suffering had
begun to steal over him. He liked Grace to do what was needful for him,
but smiled at poor little Milly, bidding her run away and amuse herself.
“You ought to be doing something. You ought to be taking advantage of
your opportunities. Who knows if you will ever be in London again?” he
said, once or twice, with that strange forgetfulness of all the
circumstances which bewildered the girls; but either he had nothing
important to say, or, in the languor of his illness, he deferred the
saying of it, preferring to turn his face to the wall and escape from
all consideration of what was coming. Once only this silence was broken;
but not to much purpose. He had asked for something to drink; and as
Grace raised him--she could do this now as easily as if he had been a
child--he caught and was touched by the look of anxiety on her face.
“Poor little Grace!” he said, when he was laid back again upon his
pillow, “this is a curious way of enjoying London.” He had not much
breath to talk, and had to pause between his words.
“Not at all, papa. Yes, it is dreadful for you to have to suffer, but
for me quite natural, you being ill.”
Then he gave a feeble laugh. “Your mother--will not suppose--that we are
engaged like this.”
“Milly has written to say you are not well.”
“Not well--that was right--not to make her anxious.” He laughed a little
again. “But she will have to be told--some day: my poor Milly.” This was
his wife’s name as well as his child’s.
“Yes, papa, when you are quite well again. She will not mind then; but
don’t you think that it is best to say little till you are better? for
she would be so anxious; and what would be the use of bringing her over,
when you will be all right again before she could get here?”
“I shall be all right again,” he said, pausing upon each word. The smile
had gone off his face. He seemed to weigh the words, and drop them one
by one. Was he asking himself whether that would ever be, or only
lingering for want of breath? “Remind me,” he said, “of the people I
went to see: there is something I want--to tell you about. But I
can’t--be troubled now,” and with that he turned once more, as he was so
fond of doing, his face to the wall.
Thus the melancholy days went on. Grace had begun to feel something
fatal in the air, but Milly had not yet gone farther than the fact that
papa was very ill, and that it might be weeks before he was well again,
when Dr Brewer came into their room after his nightly visit. They had
been trying to eat something, which they simply acknowledged as a duty,
but did not know how to get through. Their meals were the most dreadful
moments of their day, the only things that marked its melancholy course.
The doctor came in, not hurriedly, as he usually did. He drew a chair to
the table and sat down beside them. “What are you having--tea? I never
told you to take tea,” he said.
“It is so easy to take,” Milly pleaded, “far easier than anything else.”
“In the meantime you must have some wine,” he said, ringing the bell;
“yes, yes, you must take it whether you like it or not. Now tell me a
little about yourselves, as I have some time to myself to-night. My wife
was talking of coming to see you. I have never heard anything about your
friends in London. It is time to think of looking them up----”
“That means papa is better,” said Milly. “I knew it from the first
moment, as soon as I saw the doctor’s kind face.”
He turned his kind face away from them with a forced smile. He could not
bear to meet their anxious eyes.
“But we have no friends--not to call friends,” said Grace, who was not
quite so sure as Milly, and yet was so glad to take Milly’s opinion for
this once. “We have letters to quantities of people, and some of them we
have seen at home. There is Lord Conway,” she said with a little
hesitation--“he once stayed at our house. It is a long time ago, but we
thought--oh, we did not want him to ask us, especially since papa has
been ill. It would be dreadful to have a long illness in a stranger’s
house.”
“Lord Conway!” Dr Brewer said, bewildered.
“But we don’t know him, not as you know your friends,” Grace made haste
to add; “we don’t know any one in that way. They are all people who have
been in Canada, or the friends of people who have been in Canada.”
The doctor shook his head. “Do you mean that you know nobody, my poor
dear children? You have no _friends_--people who really are acquainted
with you, who would take a little trouble for you, whom you could have
recourse to----” Here he stopped, confused, feeling Grace’s eye upon
him. “I thought you might have--relations even, on this side of the
water,” he said.
“Whom we could have recourse to!” said Grace--“oh, doctor, tell us, tell
us what you mean! Why should we want to have recourse to any one? That
means more than ordinary words----”
“He means--to show us some civility--to show us England--now that papa
is going to get better,” said Milly, throwing back her head with a
pretty movement of pleasure. But Dr Brewer did not raise his eyes. He
could not face them, the one so anxious to divine his meaning, the other
happy in her mistake. Milly was talkative and effusive in her joy. “Now
we ought to telegraph to mamma,” she cried. “She will have got the
first letter saying how ill papa was. It will be delightful to relieve
her mind all in a moment--to tell her he is getting well, almost as soon
as she knew that he was ill. We must telegraph to-morrow.”
Dr Brewer still did not meet Grace’s anxious gaze, which would have read
his face in a moment. “You are very young,” he said, “to have had such
a--responsibility upon you. You have been very brave hitherto, and you
will not break down now. I am afraid, indeed, that I shall have to
telegraph to your mother--very soon now.”
It was his tone more than what he said which disturbed Milly in her
happy confidence. She turned round suddenly and looked with an awful
inquiry, not at him but at Grace. Grace for her part, trembling, had
grasped Dr Brewer by the arm. “Doctor!” she said in a strange, stifled
voice. She could not say any more.
He covered her soft little thin hand with his and patted it gently. “My
poor dear children,” he said, “my poor children! how can I tell you----”
His voice was broken. It told all he had to say without the aid of any
words. How could he put it into words? For a moment it seemed to the
doctor as if the man’s death must be his fault, and that they would have
a right to upbraid him for letting their father die. He sat there with
his head drooped and with his heart full of sympathetic anguish, not
knowing what might happen next.
Milly gave a great cry. She had not feared all this time, and just now
she had been happy and triumphant in the thought that danger was over.
She cried out and threw herself suddenly on the ground at the doctor’s
feet. “Oh, no, no!” she cried. “Oh, don’t let it be. Don’t let it be!
Doctor, think of us poor girls; think of mamma and all the children;
doctor, doctor!” said Milly, her voice rising louder and louder in her
despair.
Grace had not said anything. She stood, her face all quivering with
anguish, her eyes fixed upon him. She seemed to take up the last
quivering note of Milly’s cry--“Is there no hope?” she said.
The doctor shook his head. He laid his hand tenderly upon poor Milly’s
hair--every line of his face was working. “Listen to me,” he said, his
voice trembling. “You have been very courageous, very good hitherto--and
now there is one last effort before you. You at least will stand by him
to the end. You will not make it worse, but better for him, Grace.”
The girl tried to speak two or three times before the words would come.
When she found utterance at last what she said was scarcely
intelligible. It was, “And Milly too.”
“It would be better, far better, that she should lie down and try to
rest. I will give her something; but you--you must come with me,
Grace.”
“And Milly too,” the girl said again, as if these were the only words
she was capable of. She gathered up her sister from where she lay at the
doctor’s feet, and whispered to her, smoothing away her disordered hair.
Milly was not able to stand. She leaned her weight upon her sister; her
pretty hair fell about her face, all wild and distorted with crying. She
wanted to get down again to the floor to kneel at the doctor’s feet. “He
could do something still if he were to try. Oh, Gracie, Gracie! think of
us two miserable girls, and mamma, and all the children. He could do
something if he were to try.”
“Milly! we have got to stand by him--to keep up his heart----”
“I cannot stand--I cannot stand, I think I will die. Oh, doctor, doctor!
do something, find out something! Couldn’t you do something if you were
to try?”
“Milly, am I to go alone--the last time--to papa?”
“Put our blood into him,” cried Milly, holding up her small white
wrists. “They do that sometimes. Take mine--oh, every drop!--and Grace’s
too. Doctor, doctor! you could do something if you were to try.”
For weeks after, this cry rang in the good doctor’s ears. They both
caught at the idea; even Grace, who had command of herself. How easy it
seemed!--to take the young blood out of their veins and pour it, like
new life, into his. Sometimes it is done in stories--why not, why not,
in actual life? Their voices ran into a kind of clamour, imploring him.
It was long before the impression made by this scene left the doctor’s
mind and recollection. Nevertheless, that night both the girls stood by
their father’s bedside quietly enough, making no scene, watching eagerly
for any last word he might have to say to them. But how few of the dying
have any last words to say! He opened his eyes, and smiled vaguely twice
or thrice, as though all had been quite happy and simple around him--he
had gone out of the region in which anxieties dwell. Perhaps he did not
remember that he was leaving them helpless among strangers--or if he
knew, the ebb of the wave had caught him and he could feel nothing but
the last floating out to sea, the sound of the waters, the tide of the
new life.
Left to themselves in such circumstances, the poor girls had no
alternative but to be crushed altogether, or to rise into heroic
fortitude; and happily Grace had strength enough for that better part.
She dressed herself, when the dreadful morning came, in the only black
frock her wardrobe contained, with the composure of a creature braced by
the worst that could happen, and knowing now that whatever might come,
nothing so terrible could fall on her again. The shock, instead of
prostrating her as it did her sister, seemed to rally all her forces,
and clear and strengthen every faculty. She had scarcely slept,
notwithstanding the calming dose which the doctor in his pity had
insisted upon administering to both. It procured for poor little Milly
some hours of feverish unconsciousness, but with Grace it acted on the
mind, not the body, numbing the pain but giving an unnatural and vivid
force to all her faculties. Her brain seemed to be beset by thoughts;
and first among them was a yearning sympathy and pity for her mother.
The sudden shock of a curtly worded telegram would be so novel, so
terrible, to that happy woman, who never all her life had known what
great sorrow was, that her young daughter shuddered at the thought.
As soon as she got up she began to write to her, while Milly still
tossed and moaned in her unquiet sleep. Grace’s letter was such as no
poet, save one of the highest genius, could have written. It was love
and not she that composed it. It was a history of all the last days,
tender and distinct as a picture. Every word that she said led up to the
terrible news at the end, imperceptibly, gradually, as it is the art of
tragedy to do, so that the reader should perceive the inevitable and
feel it coming without the horror of a sudden shock. When her sister
woke she read this letter to her, and they wept over it together. It was
almost as new to Milly as it would be to her mother, for she had not
realised the slow constant progress of the days to this event, nor had
Grace herself done so, till she had begun to put it down upon paper.
When the doctor came in the morning the letter was all ready, put up and
addressed; and then it was that Grace insisted no telegram should be
sent.
“Mamma has never had any trouble all her life. He always did everything.
Nothing dreadful has ever happened to us. The children have been ill,
but they always got better. We never were afraid of anything. If this
were flung at mamma like a shot--like a blow--it might kill her too.”
“Yes, it might kill her too,” Milly murmured, turning to the doctor her
large strained eyes.
“But, my dear children, somebody must come to you at once; you can’t be
left here alone. Your mother will be strengthened to bear it as you are,
and for your sake. Somebody must come to you at once.”
“O Gracie!” murmured Milly, looking at her sister with beseeching eyes.
“Why?” said Grace steadily. “That is just what I cannot see. Nobody
could wish mamma to come now. What good would it do? It would be
dreadful for her;--and to him--to him!----”
Here, brave as she was, she had to stop, and could not say any more.
“Of course,” said the doctor softly, “your father is beyond all need. He
is safe now, whatever happens; but you--what can you do? Somebody must
come at once to take care of you, to take you home.”
Once more Milly’s eyes travelled from Grace to the doctor, and back
again. To have some one to take care of them sounded to Milly the only
thing that was left on earth to desire.
“No one,” said Grace, wondering at her own calm, “could be here for a
fortnight; and the first days will be the worst. After that things will
be easier. Don’t you see, everything that can happen will have happened
then; and why should some one--for it could not be mamma now, Milly; it
would not be mamma: why should some one be disturbed and made
uncomfortable, and forced to start at a moment’s notice, only to take
care of us? I can take care of Milly, and we can go home.” Another pause
till the tears were swallowed somehow. “It will be less hard, on the
whole, to go home by ourselves, than with any one else.”
The doctor was struck by this argument. He looked at them anxiously,
fragile as they were, looking like shadows of girls after the long
anxiety and strain of these ten days.
“Do you think,” he said, doubtful, “that you are able for it?”
“Able!” said Grace with the petulance of grief. “What is there to be
able for now? We have borne the worst. If it had been a week ago, and I
had known what was coming, I should have said, No, we were not able. But
now!” the girl cried with a kind of disdain, “now we have suffered all
that can be suffered, doctor. We can never lose our father again.”
Here Milly broke out into hysterical cries.
“Oh, papa, papa! Oh, Grace! What shall we do? What shall we do?”
Grace took her sister into her arms standing by the bedside, while the
other sat up, her hair hanging about her, her face distraught with a
passion of grief over which she had no control. The tears rained from
Grace’s eyes, but she stood firm as a rock.
“We must bear it,” she said; “we must bear it, Milly. We cannot have
that to bear again. We will not make it harder for mamma.”
This scene upset the kind doctor for the day; he could not give his
attention to the other cases which awaited him for thinking of this
heartrending picture. And as for the nurse, whose services were
imperatively demanded for another “case”--she could not bear to take
leave of them at all, but stole away as if she had done them a wrong.
“How could any woman with a heart in her bosom leave them in their
trouble?” she said, sobbing, to the doctor; “but I am not a woman, I am
only a nurse----”
“And there is a life to be preserved,” the doctor said. The woman,
after all, was only a woman, petulant and unreasonable.
“We are all fools and know nothing. We could not save this life,” she
said, “though there were no complications.”
Dr Brewer, too, felt a little ashamed. What was the good of him? He had
done everything that his science was capable of, but that had been
nothing. Old Death, the oldest of practitioners and the most
experienced, had laughed at him, and out of his very hands had taken the
prey.
The girls never knew what happened till the funeral was over; and yet it
troubled them in the midst of their distress that there was nobody to
ask to it, no train of mourners to do honour to their father. They went
themselves, following the lonely coffin, and the doctor, half ashamed,
half astonished at his own emotion, went with them, to see the stranger
buried. He had sent the introductory letter to the Colonial office,
accompanied by a statement of the circumstances; but the Minister was up
to his eyes in parliamentary work, and his aides knew nothing about Mr
Robert Yorke of Quebec. The landlord, out of respect for what had
happened in his own house--though at first he had been very angry that
any one should have taken such a liberty as to die in his house at the
beginning of the season--followed at a little distance. He came by
himself in the second mourning coach which the undertakers felt to be
necessary, and in which it was well there should be some one for the
sake of respectability. Notwithstanding all that had been said and done,
it did not seem to the girls that they had ever realised what had
happened till they came back that dreary afternoon, and sat down hand in
hand in their sitting-room, the door closed upon all things, the murk
evening closing in, and nothing to look forward to now--nothing to think
of but their own desolation. They “broke down;” what could they do else?
But when there are two to break down, it is inevitable that one of the
two must see the vanity of tears and make an effort to check them.
“We cannot go on like this,” Grace said. “We will only kill ourselves
too; that will not be any comfort for mamma. In the first place, we must
find out whether there was anything that--papa wanted done while he was
in England. Yes! I mean to talk of him,” she said, “just as if he were
in Canada, as if he were next door; he must not be banished from his own
because he is dead. Mamma will never let him be forgotten and put aside.
We must accustom ourselves to talk about him. Perhaps there was
something he wanted done. Do you recollect, Milly? he went away by
himself that night?”
“Oh, Grace,” cried her sister, “whoever they are, I hate those people.
They were the cause of it. He would never have caught cold but for----”
“Hush,” said Grace, “we must not hate anybody. I should like to go and
ask about them; they must have been old--friends.”
It was at this moment that the waiter came in--the waiter who had always
been so kind to them. He came in with a countenance regulated to the
occasion.
“Young ladies,” he said, “here’s a gentleman below inquiring for a party
as has come from Canada. It’s not a name as ever I heard before. Mr
Crosthwaite, he’s asking for. I said as I did not like to disturb you
such a day; but if so be as you might have heard speak of the name--from
Canada.”
Grief is irritable, and Grace turned upon the questioner with quick
resentment. “Oh, how can you come and ask _us_?” she cried. “Is there
nobody in your house to be disturbed but my sister and me?”
“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said the waiter, “I hope I’m not unfeeling.
Nobody could have felt more--if it ain’t disrespectful to say
so--according to their station in life. If it hadn’t a been that the
manageress is that cantankerous about a death in the house I’d have
followed the poor gentleman willingly to his last ’ome, and never
grudged no trouble; but when a gentleman comes to me and asks for a
party as arrived from Canada a fortnight ago----”
The two girls looked at each other. Was this, perhaps, the clue for
which they were looking? They felt that it was wrong and a breach of the
decorum of their sorrow that they should see any one on this day: but
if, perhaps, this might be the clue they sought. “Arrived from Canada--a
fortnight ago?” it seemed years--but they gulped down that thought. “We
did so, you know,” said Grace, “but that is not our name. I know no one
of that name. Did you say----?”
“I told him all as had happened, miss,” said the sympathetic waiter who
brought the message, “and the gentleman was very sorry. He’s a feeling
gentleman, whoever he is. He said, ‘Poor young ladies!’ as feeling as I
could have done it myself; but he’s very anxious about this name
Crosthwaite, or whatever it is. I said you was very considerate, and
that if you could help him I made sure I might ask you. He would have
liked to speak to any one as was from Canada,” the waiter said.
Again the girls looked at each other. Any one from Canada! Perhaps,
though they did not know any Crosthwaites, they might know the gentleman
who was inquiring for them; and even the sight of some one from home
would be a kind of consolation. Grace, with a look, consulted Milly, who
had no counsel to give, but only appealed back again to Grace with her
beautiful eyes. Then the elder sister said, tremblingly, “We are not fit
to see any one; but if he thinks it will help him you may let him come
up-stairs.” She said this with a sigh of what she felt to be extreme
reluctance; but yet even the vaguest hope of an unknown friend and of
some succour in their trouble gave a new turn to their thoughts.
In a few minutes the door opened again and the visitor came in. The
girls were sitting together at one side of the table, two faint candles
throwing a white light upon each white face. They looked small and
young, almost childish, in their black dresses, and there was an anxious
look upon the two little wan girlish countenances. The stranger came in
with some diffidence. They could scarcely make out his face, but they
saw at once that it was somebody unknown; and the look of expectation
faded at once out of their eyes. They looked at each other with a
piteous mutual disappointment.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I fear this is an intrusion for which
there is no excuse. I am looking for a gentleman who has been long in
Canada--Robert Leonard Crosthwaite was his name: but I have some reason
to suppose----”
“We never heard the name,” said Grace. “We are very sorry. We came from
Quebec. Canada is a large place. It might be in another part.”
“He had been a very long time out of England. He came back only a few
weeks ago. We were sure--we thought we were sure--that he came to this
hotel.”
The girls both shook their heads. “If there had been any other Canadian
person here we must have heard. They would have come to us,” said Grace,
with a sob only half concealed.
“It is very important,” said the young man. “There is property
concerned, and the comfort of several people. Everybody thought he was
dead. It will upset the arrangements of a family--and make those poor
who were well off,” he said in an undertone, to himself, rather than to
them.
The girls looked at him with interest. There seemed a story involved,
and that gave them a sensation that, if not pleasure, was, at least,
relief from the pressure of their own continuously painful thoughts.
Milly even ventured a little “Oh!” of wistful interest. Then he went on
hastily--
“Pardon me: I ought not to disturb you. You can give me no clue? This
gentleman must have arrived about the same time as I hear you did. I
know--I know how painfully your time has been occupied. I am ashamed to
trouble you: but do you not think you could give me a clue----”
“We never heard the name,” said Grace. “We could write home and ask, but
that would not be of much use. We are going back,” she added with an
explanatoriness which perhaps was not necessary, “as soon as----” But
here her little strength broke down, and she could not say any more.
“I beg your pardon, I beg a thousand pardons,” the young man cried.
“Forgive me for intruding upon you.” And he turned with a respectful
bow; and opened the door; but when he had done this he turned again and
looked at them once more. “You will excuse me,” he said in a voice which
was full of emotion, “but I have a mother. If she could be of any use to
you----”
Here the girls, being so weeping-ripe, again lost their self-control
altogether. Milly began to sob audibly, throwing herself upon her
sister’s shoulder, and the tears dropped heavily one by one from Grace’s
eyes. She put one arm round poor Milly, and turned, with a tremulous
smile through her tears, to the stranger.
“Thank you for being so kind,” she said. “You are very kind; but we are
not quite so miserable as perhaps you think. We have got our mother too.
We are waiting till she tells us what to do.”
He said nothing but “Oh!” and stood for a moment uncertain, not knowing
what to say. But what could a stranger say? He was obliged to turn again
and go away, after a great many fumblings with the door.
Next morning they began, sadly, the necessary work of putting away their
father’s papers and his little personal possessions. In his
writing-book there was a letter half written to their mother, which
they put aside carefully as a sacred thing, not looking, for love, at
his last words. But on one of the pages of the blotting-book they found
once more the address which had excited their curiosity before, “3 Grove
Road, Hampstead,” written obliquely across the page. It was repeated on
a scrap of paper which marked his place in the book which they
remembered he had been reading, and on which, besides, there were some
jottings of dates and names which they did not understand. These
were--“Left July ’45---- U. A. died ’55---- due with interest for 20
years----.” The word “interest” discouraged the girls; it must be
something about business, they thought. This perpetually recurring
address, however, bewildered them. They went on with their sad
occupation without saying much to each other, but when they sat down to
rest and to take the food which their youthful appetites began to
demand, notwithstanding their trouble, Grace suddenly broke the silence.
“It must be some old friend, who lives there,” she said.
Milly made no reply in words, but she looked up with instant response
and comprehension.
“I think,” said Grace, “we ought to go and see who it is. It might be a
relation. It might be some one who would stand by us: we are so very
lonely here. It might be some--lady. I think we should go--directly--as
soon as you are ready, Milly.”
“Oh, I am ready,” Milly said, starting up. The new idea gave them a
little spring and energy. They almost ran to put on their little crape
bonnets and their out-door jackets--which had been made for them at the
pleasure of the dressmaker, hastily summoned and allowed to work her
will--and which were heavy and laden with crape. They were like
monuments of woe, from head to foot, in these garments; their two little
pale faces, so white and so small, looking out with increased pallor
from their heavy black. Milly had a good deal of gold and a good deal of
curl in her light brown hair, which shone out with double force from
these gloomy surroundings, like a protest of nature. Grace’s locks were
darker and smoother. She was the least pretty of the two, but her eyes
were larger and more expressive than those fawn eyes of Milly’s, which
at present wore but one look, that of startled wistfulness and
pleading--an entreaty to all the world to be pitiful. They went off upon
their new mission, however, with a little consolation in the relief of
the novelty, stealing quietly downstairs that nobody might come out upon
them to ask questions or offer help.