PROMOTION.
At that moment a rush was heard on the stairs, and Rose and May burst
into their mother's room, Rose at the last moment bethinking herself
that she had left school, accordingly she must be grown up, or on the
brink of it, if Annie would but allow it, and therefore trying to
moderate the headlong pace, which would have better become a troop of
boys than a pair of girls.
"Little May," who, in spite of her height, was still in frocks an inch
from the ground, was not troubled by any such scruples. She scampered up
to her mother, and hailed her breathlessly--"Mother, we want you to let
us--Rose and me--go with Ella and Phyllis Carey a walk to the Beeches.
Ella says she saw some periwinkles and young ferns there, and we need,
oh! ever so many fresh roots for the rockery. We should have gone
without coming home to tell you, because you wouldn't mind, but we might
have kept tea waiting, and we'll be horribly late. Besides, we are not
coming home for tea; Ella and Phyllis say we must go up with them to the
Bank House."
"No, no, my dears, you can't do that," said Mrs. Millar, hurriedly but
decidedly. "I am sorry that you should be disappointed, but you must not
think of such a thing. Ella and Phyllis don't understand--don't
know--that their mother is particularly engaged this afternoon. She will
not wish to have people in the house, not even in the schoolroom."
Rose and May looked in wonder at their mother, discomposed enough in her
own person, sitting leaning back in her chair doing nothing; she whose
motherly hands were wont to be busy with some little bit of sewing or
knitting.
Annie, too, was sitting idle at a short distance, with her hat thrown on
the bed, but still wearing her jacket; and Dora, in her walking dress,
was standing like a lady-in-waiting, or a sentry, behind Mrs. Millar's
chair.
Annie and Dora remained silent, looking at the intruders in a peculiar
manner. At the same time the first pair did not tell the second more or
less curtly, as the elder girls had been in the habit of doing not so
very long ago, to go away and leave grown-up people to finish important
discussions in peace.
What other new thing could have come about? Was there a fresh wooer in
the field, a second offer of marriage to be laid at reluctant feet? Was
it Annie, their beauty, who was in request this time? Who was the lover?
not Cyril Carey, with his plush waistcoat and gold chains and odious
snuff-box? He had no means of keeping a wife, unless his father took him
into partnership in the bank, and their father would not hear of Cyril;
besides, Annie held him in supreme disdain. She had more patience with
Tom Robinson and "the shop" than with the nineteenth century dandy, whom
she pronounced a mistaken revival of one of the many curiosities of
Queen Anne's reign.
But Rose and May had no certainty that Annie was the object of pursuit.
She was pretty enough, they had all pinned their faith to her beauty,
yet already Dora had been preferred before her, though it was only by
the head of "Robinson's." Was it possible that now it might be Rose,
unsuspecting, unconsulted? Could her own mother and sisters be so unfair
as to arrogate to themselves the settlement of her affairs without her
consent or knowledge, without so much as admitting her into the
conclave?
Annie took the initiative, she was sufficiently quick to see both behind
and before her. She had a head for directing and managing which her
mother did not possess.
"Mother, don't you see they had better be told at once?" she said, with
the aplomb of a girl who, however young and irresponsible, is capable of
arriving at independent conclusions and reversing existing conditions.
"They are, as Rose says, all but grown up; indeed not so very much
younger than Dora and I. I think Rose and May are entitled to be told."
Annie was proceeding to act upon the permission implied in her mother's
nod. She was not without some small sense of personal importance in
being the mouthpiece which was to announce the calamity to her younger
sisters. She did it in a very different fashion from that in which their
mother had broken the news to her and Dora.
"What we are going to speak to you about is not a thing that can be long
concealed. It will not be a secret for more than a few days, if for so
long. But that does not mean that you are not to shut this room door
which you have left wide open. Thanks, May. Don't bang it! You are not
to show that you know what is going to happen. And, after it has
happened, you are not to chatter about it before the servants or to your
companions. We are trusting you because you have almost come to the
years of discretion, and ought to have a notion how to behave under the
circumstances."
"Well, this is too bad of you, Annie!" cried Rose, showing instant
symptoms of revolt. "What have May and I done that we should be spoken
to as if we were a pair of tell-tales, or babies--and geese into the
bargain? Dora and you are not so much older, as you confess; neither are
you so much wiser with all your pretensions. If something of so much
consequence to everybody is on the eve of happening, I think we might
have been told before. Surely mother is not afraid that we should repeat
anything which we ought not to mention," and she glanced with burning
reproach at her mother.
Rose was both high-spirited and touchy. She was not disposed to play the
second part without a murmur like Dora. She was not content, with her
art as a balance to Annie's beauty and May's budding scholarship. Rose
desired everybody to acknowledge her mother-wit and trustworthiness.
Dora and Mrs. Millar spoke together in reply. "Mother only told Annie
and me this afternoon," said the general peacemaker.
"It was not such a pleasant piece of information for me to give, or you
to receive, child, that you and May should grudge my keeping it from you
as long as I could, as I dared," was the mother's weary reply. "Besides,
your father did not wish it spoken about before; it would have been
wrong, a great risk to many others as well as to ourselves, to have
mentioned such a thing."
"Then don't tell us now if you don't care to, mother, and if father
disapproves of our hearing it," said Rose magnanimously, for she was
dying to be at the bottom of the mystery.
"No, don't, mother dear, please don't, if it will hurt you," said May
affectionately, with something of a childish ring in her voice. Her
mother took her hand at the words and clasped it tightly.
"Mother has made up her mind and father has given her leave to speak,"
said Annie with determination, "because you must hear soon anyhow. There
is something wrong with the bank, Mr. Carey's bank. We have all, even
May, read and heard of bank failures, and have some idea how disastrous
they are."
"The Carey's bank!" cried Rose, with sufficient intelligence in her
astonishment. "I understand now why we were not to go home with Ella and
Phyllis."
"Then somebody must run over and tell them that we are not coming,"
interrupted May. "Do let Bella take the message, mother, in case I
should look as if I knew something. Poor Mr. Carey! he was always so
kind to us. I am so sorry; but the bank has not anything to do with us;
father is not the banker, he is just a doctor like grandfather," ended
May composedly.
"O May, you are a baby, though you read the Greek Testament and have
something to say to Tacitus in the original," exclaimed Annie
indignantly.
"Your father has shares in the bank, my dear," explained her mother with
patient reiteration. "He bought them with his savings, and he will get
nothing for them. Nobody will buy them from him again, they will be no
better than waste paper. But that is not the worst. The shares make him
responsible for the bank's debts--I am sure I cannot tell you how far;
he told me, I daresay, but I was so grieved for him and for all of you,
and so confused, I could not take it in. But he says that what he will
have to pay up will be as much as he can do, with a hard fight, for the
rest of his days."
"I am so sorry for father," murmured May in an awed tone, but with a
little of a parrot note, just as she had pitied Mr. Carey, who was only
an old acquaintance and the father of her friends. The fact was that the
young girl, brought away suddenly from her girlish interests and her
whole past experience, and plunged into the cares of older people, was
thoroughly staggered and bewildered, in spite of a small head which was
capable of construing Latin and conjugating Greek.
There was a moment's pause. "Will it make a great difference to father
and the rest of us?" asked Rose, in spite of her quickness, and in spite
of what her mother had said.
"Certainly," Annie took it upon her to answer, with a mixture of fire
and conviction, "we'll all have to earn our living."
"Oh, don't make such sweeping statements, Annie, frightening your
sisters," said their mother reproachfully; and unquestionably May looked
scared, and dropped her gloves without noticing it. "You must do what
you can to help your poor dear father, and I am sure you'll do that
willingly, but so long as he is spared to work for all of us----" She
stopped short, unable to say any more.
Then her daughters closed round her, from the youngest to the eldest,
and told her in concert that she was not to be concerned for them. They
were ready for the occasion and equal to it, and they would not mind in
the very least.
"Mind!" declared Rose, with her eyes beginning to shine and her cheeks
to flush like Annie's. "Why, it is the one great comfort that we'll have
to make our way in the world, and push our fortunes like boys. We'll
have plenty of adventures and rise triumphant over them all, and be such
a help to you and father. Think of that, May, you little coward,"
appealing to her younger sister who, in spite of her small dabbling in
masculine acquirements, did not look as if the prospect of pushing her
fortune like a boy was full of unmixed charm for her. But she
brightened up at the visionary honour and delight of being a great help
to their father and mother, and cried, "Yes, yes, Rose," with subdued
enthusiasm.
Dora also echoed the "yes" with a quiet intensity.
Annie, on her part, graciously approved of her juniors, and rewarded
them by patronizing them tremendously.
"That is right. I don't very well know yet what Dora and I can do, but
we'll find something. However, you two young ones are the geniuses of
the family, and we'll look to you. I suspect Dora and I will have to
march under your wings. You, Rose, must be quick and paint Academy
pictures, get them hung on the line, and have them sold before the
opening day. May must pass all her examinations in no time, gain a
scholarship, and be appointed classical mistress to a Girls' Day-school,
of which she will eventually become the head. Fancy 'little May' a
full-blown school ma'am."
"Dear! what creatures girls are! They are jesting and laughing already
over their own and other people's misfortunes. It is little they know of
life, it is little they guess what will befall them," sighed Mrs. Millar
to herself. Nevertheless, in the middle of her anxiety and sorrow, she
was in some respects a happy woman, and she had a dim but consoling
perception of the truth.