STANDING AND WAITING.
It was all over in its earlier stages, that dividing and dispersing of
the goodly young group of sisters, that bereaving and impoverishing of
the abandoned home to which Dora and May had looked forward with such
fear and pain, for which all Dr. Millar's fortitude and all his wife's
meekness had been wanted to enable them to bear it with tolerable
calmness. It was only Annie and Rose doing what every young man, with
few exceptions, has to do. It was only their going away to work out
their bents in London. They had often gone from home and followed
various impulses and promptings before. But this was different. All who
were left behind had a sure intuition that this was the beginning of the
end, the sifting and scattering which every large family must undergo if
their time is to be long on earth. Annie and Rose might often come back
on visits. Rose might even set up a studio in Redcross and work there,
but it would not be the same. She would be an independent member of
society, with her own interests to think of--however faithfully and
affectionately she might still be concerned for the interests of
others--and her individual career to follow. Her separate existence
would no longer be merged in that of a band of sisters; it would stand
out clearly and distinctly far apart from the old state of tutelage and
subserviency of each unit to the mass. The lament of the tender old
Scotch song over the departing bride applied equally to Annie and Rose,
though there were no gallant "Jamies" to accuse of taking them "awa',
awa'." In the same manner it was not so much over the cause of their
going that Dora and May lamented, or the father and mother's hearts were
sorrowful, as
"Just that they'd aye be awa', awa'."
One day as May was coming back from school she met Tom Robinson, and he
stopped her to ask how the family were, and to tell her something. There
had always been less restraint in his and May's greetings than there had
been in those of the others since his dismissal as a suitor. There was
something in May's mingled studiousness and simplicity, and in the
strong dash of the child in her, which dissipated his shyness and
tickled his fancy. If matters had turned out otherwise than they had
done, he told himself vaguely, he and "little May" would have been a
pair of friends. He had no sister, and she had no brother, and he would
have liked to play the brother to this most artless of learned ladies.
"Look here, Miss May," he said, after the usual formulas, while he
turned and walked a few paces by her side, "do you remember the
fox-terrier puppy I was to have got for you and your sister Rose, in the
spring? Well, he died of distemper, poor little brute; but I have heard
of another of the same kind that has had the complaint. I could get him
for you if you cared to have him."
"Oh! I am so much obliged to you, Mr. Robinson, so very much obliged,"
cried May, beaming with gratitude and pleasure. "Rose and I did so wish
to have that dear little puppy which you brought down to show to us
once--don't you remember? and so it is dead, poor little pet; and Rose
has gone away to London to be regularly trained as an artist, just as
Annie is in St. Ebbe's learning to be a nurse. I suppose you have
heard," she ended a little solemnly.
"Yes, I have heard--let me carry these books for you a bit--what is
there of Redcross news that one does not hear?" Then he paused abruptly,
while there darted simultaneously across his mind and May's whether his
speech did not sound as if he thought that Dora Millar's refusal of him
must be public property? "For that very reason," he went on with a
momentary shade of awkwardness, "I mean, because two of your sisters are
gone, I fancied you might like this other little dog to keep you
company."
"I have Dora," said May simply, and then she dashed on in an unhappy
consciousness that she ought not to have mentioned Dora's name to him on
any account. "I should like it immensely though--thank you a hundred
thousand times, it was so good of you to think of me. But Rose could not
have it now, could she? and she wished it quite as much as I did. It
does not seem nice to have it when she is not here to share it,"
finished May, with wistful jealousy for Rose's rights in the matter.
"I do not see the force of that objection," said Tom Robinson,
cheerfully. "Rose has something else instead. She has all London to
occupy her. I am certain she would like you to make the best of Redcross
without her."
"Yes, and of course the little dog would be half hers, the same as if
Rose were here. She would see it every time she came home. She might
have her turn of it at her studio, when she gets a studio. In the
meantime I could write full particulars of it, how it grew and what it
learnt. Oh, Mr. Robinson, has it white boots like the other you
brought?"
"I am afraid I did not attend to his boots, or to his stockings either
for that matter," said Tom with a laugh; "but he has a coal-black
muzzle, his teeth are in perfect order, and I believe he has the correct
tan spots."
"If mother would let us," said May longingly. "You know Rose and I had
not spoken to her about it; we were waiting for a good opportunity to
ask her, when you were so kind as to give us the chance of having the
other little dog. Mother seldom refuses us anything which she can let us
have, still Rose was not sure that mother would give her consent. You
see she is troubled about the stair-carpets and the drawing-room rugs,
and the garden-beds, and we were afraid she would think we should have
the dog with us everywhere."
"Then it rested with yourself, I should say, to show her that you could
keep a dog in his proper place."
"But I doubt if I could," said May candidly, shaking her head, with the
brown hair which had till recently hung loose on her shoulders, now
combed smoothly back, and twisted into as "grown-up" a twist as she
could accomplish the feat; while to keep the tucked-up hair in company,
her skirt was let down to the regulation length for young ladies.
"Indeed, I am almost certain I could not refuse anything to a dear
little dog coming to me and sitting up and begging for what he wanted.
What is more, if I could Dora couldn't." She could have bitten out her
tongue the next instant. What was she doing always speaking of Dora?
What would he think? That she was wilfully dragging her sister's name
into the conversation? And what had tempted her to say that Dora could
not refuse anything to a dog, when she had refused her heart in exchange
for his to the man walking beside May?
He made no remark. If his mouth twitched a little in reproach or
sarcasm, she could not see it under his red moustache; besides, she
dared not look at him.
"I wonder," continued Miss Malapropos, "how I could let you know what
mother thought." She never once suggested his bringing the dog for
inspection, as he had brought the other, or calling for her answer.
"You might drop me a note," he said, stopping to give her back her
books, "and I hope for your sake that it may be favourable, for this is
a nice little dog, and I think you would like him."
May went home more nearly on the wings of the wind than she had done
since Rose's departure, and presented her petition. Mrs. Millar could
not find it in her heart to refuse it, though the stair-carpet, the
drawing-room rugs, and the garden-beds were all to be sacrificed.
"Poor little May! she misses Rose, though Dora and May have become great
friends of late. Dora is very good, and puts herself on an equality with
May, as Annie could not have done. Still, she does not rouse the child
as Rose roused her. What do you think, Jonathan? Would a little dog be
in your way? Would its barking disturb you?" Mrs. Millar appealed to her
husband.
"Not in reason, Maria; not if it does not take to baying at the moon,
or yelping beyond bounds. Dora gives in too much to May, in place of
taking the child from her books, on which naturally she is inclined
to fall back. Dora has become her audience, and listens to her
performances--even aids and abets them. I caught them at it yesterday.
First May actually declaimed several paragraphs from a speech of
Cicero's, and next she got Dora to repeat after her the most crabbed
of the Greek verbs. I shall have a couple of blue-stockings, and what
is worse, one of them spurious, in the room of the single real
production I reckoned upon among my daughters. By all means let May
have a howling monster. She is not too old for a game of romps; and I
must say, though I have never opposed the higher education of women,
I don't want her cultivated into a gossamer, a woman all nerves and
sensations, before she is out of her teens."
"Do you suppose Tom Robinson can still be thinking of Dora?" suggested
Mrs. Millar dubiously.
"I wish he were," said the little Doctor, ruefully. "I wish he were.
Yes, Mrs. Millar, I am sufficiently mercenary or sordid, or whatever you
like to call it, where one of my daughters is concerned, to give
expression to that sentiment. But I should say he is not, unfortunately.
Robinson is a shy man, and, no doubt, proud after his fashion. It must
have taken a great effort--premature, therefore mistaken, according to
my judgment--for him to screw himself up to the pitch of proposing for a
girl of whose answering regard he was uncertain. Having made the blunder
and paid the penalty, he is not at all likely to put his fate to the
touch again, so far as Dora is concerned. He is not the style of
pertinacious, overbearing fellow who would persecute a woman with his
attentions and ask her twice. Poor Dora has lost her chance, I take it."
"I cannot say that I think it any great loss, to this day," answered
Mrs. Millar, stubbornly. She gave a toss of her head, of such unusual
spirit, that it so nearly dislodged her cap. Dr. Millar involuntarily
put out a finger and thumb to lay hold of the truant. "We have our
worldly losses, to be sure, and the other poor dear girls have gone out
into the world very cheerfully. I must say I could not have done what
they have done with so good a grace--so heroic a grace, not to save my
life, Jonathan. But that is not to say that they are to be in haste to
marry--tradesmen. Indeed, when I come to think of it, the fact of their
being so independent and able to provide for themselves, ought to be
like having so many fortunes. It should entitle them to be more
particular, and free to pick and choose the husbands who exactly suit
them. Another thing, if our daughters are not worthy of being wooed and
wooed, and asked--not twice, but half a dozen times, before they are
persuaded to say yes, I don't know who is. The idea of their jumping at
any man!--you have drawn me into vulgar language, Jonathan,--the moment
he makes his bow is too bad or too good, I do not know which to say. You
do not mean that I ever accustomed you to such forward behaviour?"
"No, no, Maria," the gentleman assured her with a smile, "far from it.
There was a bad epidemic raging at the time our little business came
off, don't you remember? I forget now whether it was small-pox or
scarlet fever, but I know I was not only tremendously busy, I dared not
go to your father's house. Then I heard that another swain--an officer
fellow from the barracks at Craigton was hanging about either you or
your poor sister Dolly, nobody could tell which, and I dared not delay
longer. I was driven to the supreme rashness of committing my suit to
paper, and what do you think you wrote back? Have you forgotten? You
thanked me very prettily for the compliment I had paid you, and you
promised to give the substance of my letter your best consideration.
Literally that was all--to a man worn off his feet with work and
hungering for a word of assurance."
"Go away with you, sir," exclaimed his wife, restored to high good
humour, and tapping him on the shoulder. "You understood me
perfectly--you had wit enough for that. You went off directly and
ordered new drawing-room furniture, what we have to this day, on the
strength of that letter--you know you did."
"Showed how far gone, and what a confiding simpleton I was," he said,
and then he tried again to set her right with regard to Tom Robinson.
"You don't understand Robinson, Maria. It is not that he was not in
earnest, or that he is fickle or anything of the kind. It is rather a
case of the better man being beaten, and fools rushing in where angels
fear to tread. Such men as he is accept a sentence without disputing it,
because they do not think too much of themselves while they think a
great deal of other people. It is not a flaw in their sensitive
manliness, it is part and parcel of it, to know when they are dismissed,
and take the dismissal as final. They are not the most light-hearted and
sanguine of mortals, but they are constant enough, and brave enough to
boot, and a brave man is not without his compensations--
"'For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,'
"some poet has written."
"So much the better," said Mrs. Millar, again with a suspicion of
hauteur in her voice. "It is lucky for all parties, since I have not the
slightest reason to suppose that Dora would change her mind."
"Then why find fault with poor Tom Robinson?" Dr. Millar remonstrated in
vain.
The appearance of the dog on the scene with his fine pointed nose, alert
eyes, incessantly vibrating little tail, and miniver black and white
coat picked out with tan, caused May as much excitement and delight as
if she did not know one Greek letter from another, and were innocent of
Latin quantities. She was so wrapped up in her acquisition, so devoted
to his tastes in food, the state of his appetite, his sleeping place,
the collar he was to have, that for the first time in her life she had
to be reminded of her books. It needed her great superiority to her
companions in any approach to scholarly intellect and attainment to
enable her to retain the first place in Miss Burridge's classical
department.
"What shall we call him, Dora?" she earnestly consulted her sister,
hanging breathless on the important answer.
"Call him whatever you like, May. You know he is your dog," said Dora
with decision.
"Mine and Rose's," the faithful May made the amendment. "Of course Rose
must agree to any name we think of, or it cannot stand. Perhaps she
would like to choose the name as she is away. Don't you think it ought
to be put in her power--that she ought to have the compliment?"
suggested May quite seriously and anxiously. "I shall write to her this
very minute."
But Rose, like Dora, left the name to May.
"It was so kind of Tom Robinson to remember and offer him to me," said
May meditatively. "O Dora! do you think I might call him 'Tom'?"
"Certainly not," said Dora, with still greater decision. "What are you
thinking of, May? I don't suppose Mr. Robinson would relish having a
dog named for him. Besides, other people might wonder. 'Tom' is not an
ordinary name for a dog, though it is common enough for a man."
"Nobody, not even the person most concerned, would know if I were to
call him 'Son,' the termination of 'Robinson,' you know," explained May,
after a moment spent in concocting this subtle amendment, and in
fondling the unconscious recipient of a title which was to distinguish
him from the mass of dogs.
"Are you out of your senses, May?" was the sole comment Dora deigned to
deliver with some energy.
"'Friend,'" speculated May; "there is nothing very distinctive about
'Friend,' and I am sure it was the act of a friend to get him for me."
"'Foe' would be shorter and more easily said," was Dora's provoking
comment; "or why not 'Fox,' since he is a fox-terrier? You might also
desire to commemorate the donor's complexion, which you all used to call
foxy," said Dora, half reproachfully, half dryly.
"I don't like _doubles entendres_," said May with dignity, "and if I
ever said anything unkind of Tom Robinson I don't wish to be reminded of
it now; anyhow, I could never give a sneer in return for a kindness."
"No, I don't believe you could, May," said Dora, penitently.
May continued a little nettled in spite of her natural good temper.
"What are Shakespeare's names for little dogs?" she asked. "'Blanche,'
'Tray,' and 'Sweetheart.' You could not be 'Blanche,' could you, pet,
unless you were '_Blanche et Noir_'? and that is too long and reminds
one of a gaming-table. You could not be 'Sweetheart,'" went on May,
revenging herself with great coolness and deliberation in view of the
red that flew into Dora's cheeks; "no, of course not, because Mr. Tom
Robinson is not, never has been, and never will be _my_ sweetheart.
There is only 'Tray' left. Well, I think it is rather a good name,"
considered May, critically. "'Old dog Tray' is an English classic. It is
not altogether appropriate, because my Tray is just a baby terrier yet,
but we trust, he and I, that he will live to see a venerable age."