THE OLD TOWN, WITH ITS AIR STAGNANT YET TROUBLED. IS MAY TO BECOME A
SCHOLAR OR A SHOP-GIRL?
The spring found Redcross still staggering under the failure of Carey's
Bank. Hardly a week passed yet without some painful result of the
disaster coming to light. These results had ceased to startle, there had
been so many of them; but they still held plenty of interest for the
fellow-sufferers, and Dora and May's letters were full of the details.
Bell Hewett had left Miss Burridge's; she had got a situation, or
rather, she had been appointed to a junior form in the Girls' Day School
at Deweshurst, going in the morning and returning in the afternoon by
train. It was a good thing for Bell on the whole. She was more
independent, had a recognized position as a public school-mistress,
which she would not have had as a private governess; and if she
continued to study, and passed various examinations, she might rise to
higher and higher forms until she blossomed into a head-mistress--fancy
Bell a head-mistress! She had quite a handsome salary, more than poor
Ned's according to the chroniclers, Dora and May. That was the bright
side of it. Unluckily for Bell, as most people thought, there was
another. The daily journeys, together with the school-work, constituted
a heavy task for a girl. Bell, toiling up from the railway station on a
rainy day, with her umbrella ready to turn inside out, and her
waterproof flying open, because her left hand, cramped and numb, was
laden with a great bundle of exercises to correct at home, presented a
dejected figure, tired out and three-fourths beaten. So the Miss Dyers
thought as they rolled past her in their carriage, and debated whether
they should not stop to pick her up and save her walking the rest of the
road. But she was such a fright, positively bedraggled with mud enough
to soil the cushions, and she could speak of nothing now save the
Deweshurst Girls' Day School and her duties there. It was too tiresome
to be borne with. Poor Bell was not clever, she was one-idea'd and slow
at work like Ned, and she had also his conscientiousness. Probably
promotion was not for her; she must drudge on as best she might. Her
great encouragement at this time, next to her father's and sister's
approbation and sympathy, was, as she told Dora, the prospect of
spending her Easter holidays with Ned at his station-house. What did she
care for its being only a station-house? after the fagging school-work
it would be great fun to put Ned's small house in order, and play at
housekeeping with him for a fortnight. She was bent on making him
comfortable, and cheering him as well as herself. If the weather would
but be fine they might have glorious rambles on the Yorkshire moors when
no trains were due.
Colonel Russell was sailing once more for India, to lay his bones there
without fail, the little Doctor prophesied sadly. In the meantime he had
got, and been glad to get, a subordinate post in his old field. At the
last moment, after he had established Mrs. Russell and her children in a
cheerful house in Bath, he made up his mind to take his grown-up
daughter out with him. But she was not to stay in his bungalow, for he
was going to a small out-of-the-way station where there would be no
accommodation or society in the barrack circle for a solitary young
lady. Fanny was to be left with a cousin of her father's, in the Bombay
Presidency. The lady had offered to take charge of her, and have her for
a long visit.
Did Annie and Rose know what that meant? Could they form an indignant,
affronted guess? "Father said," Dora quoted, "that if Colonel Russell,
an honourable gentleman and gallant officer, had not lived in the old
days and had his feelings blunted to the situation, he would never have
consented to such an arrangement for his daughter. But he had seen his
sisters come out to India for the well-understood purpose of getting
married to any eligible man in want of a wife, so why should not Fanny
do the same thing, when his pecuniary losses rendered it particularly
desirable and the opportunity offered itself? It was not in Colonel
Russell's eyes an unworthy resource. Of course Fanny was going out to be
married and creditably disposed of within a given time, else her father
would not have felt justified in paying her outfit and passage-money.
Certainly he had no intention of paying her passage-money home as a
single woman."
What would the Millars have done in Fanny's case? For was it not
dreadful--particularly when all the young people interested in the
subject remembered quite well that there had been "something" between
Cyril Carey and Fanny Russell for more than a year back? Annie had
always wondered what Fanny could see in a silly, trifling fop like
Cyril. Rose had not been without a corresponding sense of wonder as to
what Cyril could find in Fanny, who, in spite of her grand Norman
peasant's carriage and profile, was dawdling and discontented with
things in general, and though she pretended to a little knowledge of
art, did not in the least understand what she was talking about.
However, Annie's and Rose's opinions were of very little consequence
when the matter concerned--not them--but Cyril and Fanny. There had been
"something" between them which had changed the whole world to them last
summer. They would never entirely outlive and forget it--not though
Fanny went to far Cathay and married, not one, but half a dozen of
Nabobs. For she was going to obey her father, and give herself to the
first eligible bidder for her hand. No doubt she would do it with set
lips, blanched face, and great black eyes looking not only twice as
large as their natural size, but hollow and worn in the young face,
because of the dark rings round them. These were produced by the
sleepless nights which she pretended were occasioned by the hurry of her
preparations, and of her having to say good-bye to all her old friends.
But she would do it all the same.
Dora had only once caught Fanny Russell alone, and ventured on a timid,
heart-felt expostulation.
"Must you go to India, Fanny? We shall all miss you so much, and it is
not as if you were to be with your father, but just to stay with a
distant relative whom you have never seen; it does appear such a
sacrifice."
"And what should I do if I stayed behind papa, Dora?" asked Fanny,
turning upon her with those great burning eyes and parched lips. "The
house here is to be given up and the furniture sold immediately--of
course you know that. It will take all that he can spare after
discharging his share of the bank debts to keep Mrs. Russell and the
children. I am a useless sort of person--a blank in the world. I could
not nurse like Annie, or paint like Rose. I could not even be a
school-mistress like Bell Hewett. Supposing I were qualified I should
break down in a month. I was born in India, and spent the first five
years of my life there, so that I am idle and languid, without stamina
or moral courage; I am like the poor Bengalees, whom I can just
remember. There is nobody who will undertake to keep me in England,"
ended Fanny, with a short, hard laugh.
And Dora, thinking of Cyril Carey--still one of the unemployed, with his
old supercilious airs lost in the gait that was getting slouching, in
keeping with the clothes becoming shabbier and shabbier, and the
downcast, moody looks--could not find words with which to contradict
her.
Indeed, when Dora was betrayed into giving her mother a hint of that
"something," unsuspected by the seniors of the circle, which had been
between Cyril Carey and Fanny Russell, and rendered Fanny's destination
still more heartless and hateful, Mrs. Millar took an entirely
different view of the circumstances from that taken by her daughters,
and was both indignant and intolerant. "What presumption in Cyril
Carey!" broke out the gentle mother of marriageable daughters, full of
righteous wrath. "To dream of making up to a girl and perhaps engaging
her simple affections, with the danger of breaking her heart and
spoiling her prospects, when he had just failed to pass at college, and
had not so much as a calling--not to say an income, with which to keep a
wife! I shall think worse of him than I did before, after hearing this."
"But you forget, mother," remonstrated Dora, "that the bank was in
existence then. His father might have been able to do something for
Cyril."
"He was not going to live on the bank's capital and credit. There was
too much of that going on already with poor James Carey's encroaching,
dishonest relations and their friends. And I beg to tell you, Dora, that
a man who cannot help himself, but has to wait for his father to do
something for him, is a very poor match for any girl. Fanny Russell is
well rid of him. I have no doubt she will think so before she is many
years older--that is, if this is not all a piece of foolish nonsense
such as girls are apt to take into their heads about their companions.
If there was anything in it, and she had not been going away, her
father ought to have been warned, and Cyril Carey spoken to in the way
he deserved--selfish scapegrace! As it is, the bare suspicion is enough
to reconcile one to Fanny Russell's going out to India, though that
custom for girls has fallen into disrepute, and I never had any liking
for it. Still I hope that Fanny will soon make an excellent marriage,
and will learn to laugh at Cyril Carey and his unwarrantable
presumption, together with any girlish folly of which she may have been
guilty."
Mrs. Millar spoke in another fashion to the little Doctor. She had
happened to be at the railway station on the raw, chill morning when
Fanny Russell, in her smart new gray travelling suit--part of her
outfit--was put into a railway carriage by her father and left there
alone, while he went to look after the luggage and find a
smoking-carriage for himself.
Fanny sat like a statue. She did not even raise her veil when she was
bidding farewell to Lucy Hewett and Dora, who were seeing her off--not
to take a last look at Redcross, where she had spent her youth.
Mrs. Millar understood it better when she stumbled against Cyril Carey
half hidden by a lamp-post, watching the vanishing train. She might have
taken the opportunity to rebuke him for his unprincipled recklessness;
instead of doing so--after one glance at the young fellow's haggard
face--the ordinary words of greeting died away on the kind woman's lips.
She turned aside in another direction, making as if she had not seen
him, without breathing a word of the encounter until she had her
husband's ear all to herself in the privacy of the dining-room.
"O Jonathan!" she said, "I am so glad, so thankful that you did not
interfere and use any influence, any pressure on Dora about Tom
Robinson. I think it would have broken my heart to see any daughter of
mine going off as Fanny Russell went to-day, leaving the look I declare
I beheld on that poor lad's face. I should not wonder though she has
given him the last push on the road to destruction."
"Oh, come now; it is not so bad as that," protested Dr. Millar, and then
he was guilty of a most audacious paraphrase of a piece of schoolboy
slang, for which he had some excuse in the habits of his wife--"Keep
your cap on, Maria. In the first place, I see no analogy between the
cases. Dora had not a private love affair--at least I was never told of
it."
"Father, what are you thinking of? A private love affair in this house!
It was very different with poor Fanny Russell, who had only her silly,
selfish young stepmother between her and her father. I dare say she
would never have looked at an empty coxcomb like Cyril Carey if she had
been happy at home."
"And did I not hear you say," asked the gentleman, who had before now
been made the recipient of the disastrous complication of the story,
"that the girl was well quit of the jackanapes, for she could not have a
worse bargain made for her than she had nearly blundered into on her own
account?"
"Yes, I did say so," the lady admitted, when thus brought to book; "and
I'd say it again, if I had not seen that miserable, desperate expression
on his face, and he so young, and such a light-hearted, foolish dandy
only the other day. I may be sorry for him, I suppose, though I have no
son of my own. And I am grieved for poor James Carey, who is breaking up
so fast, and for poor, poor Mrs. Carey."
It was a positive relief when Dr. Millar came in one day and announced
that he had a piece of good news for the family, by far the best where
the Careys were concerned that he had heard for many a day. Cyril had
got an appointment at last; he had been offered the command of the
mounted police at Deweshurst.
"A policeman. Oh! what a downfall," cried Mrs. Millar and Dora. But when
the Doctor reminded them that there were policemen and policemen,
insisted on the fact that the practice of placing gentlemen at the head
of the constabulary was gaining ground, and asked them what they had
been in the habit of calling Colonel Shaw and Sir Edmund Henderson when
they were the chiefs of the London police, his womankind gave in.
Mrs. Carey did not say there would be another mouth less for her to
feed, but she remarked, with the same sardonic calmness, that Cyril's
clothes would be provided for him, which would be one good thing. Cyril
himself was only too glad to get away. He would have something to do,
however unpalatable in itself, instead of digging in the garden, and
going through the form of helping Robinson, his clerks, and cashier,
with their books. He would have a good horse under him once more, if he
were only to ride it to police drill.
Dora could not be sure whether he experienced a throb of thankfulness at
the thought that this had not happened till Fanny Russell was gone.
Where was constancy to draw the line? A man was not less a man because
he was also a mounted policeman. He might even be grandiloquently
styled, by those who were particular about the names of things, the
soldier of peace. Still Dora had an irresistible conception of the
pained disdain, the latent superciliousness, which would have sprung
into full force in Fanny's dark eyes, if she had ever seen the once
magnificent Cyril in the most careful modification of a _bobby's_
braided tunic and helmet.
Bell Hewett would not look so, if she, in her school-mistress character,
met Cyril at Deweshurst. Bell, like Dora, would feel her heart soften
and warm to Cyril in his misfortunes. She would think of Ned, and hurry
up to Ned's old playfellow and chum, to tell him the last news from
Yorkshire, and ask what message from him she should send to Ned in her
next letter. Dora was tempted to go on and wonder whether Cyril's heart
would not be touched in turn by the cordial recognition of his Rector's
daughter, who had, on the whole, kept her position better than he, with
his advantages, had kept his, whose frank greeting had become a kind of
credential of gentle birth and breeding afforded to him in full sight of
the natives of Deweshurst. If he felt all that, he must recognize how
womanly and sweet Bell was, though she was not pretty and not one bit
clever, and be full of gratitude to her. And gratitude combined with
considerable isolation on the one hand, and on the other the constantly
present possibility of agreeable encounters with a loyal old friend,
might lead to anything--to a good deal more than Dora cared to say even
to herself, feeling frightened at the length to which she had gone on
the spur of the moment in this most recklessly unworldly match-making.
Yet was it reckless, when Bell would be such a good poor man's wife, and
when marriage with a woman like Bell might make another man of Cyril
Carey?
However, the Careys' adversity, with its reaction on their old
associates, approached a climax shortly after Cyril left. His father
grew so much more helpless an invalid that it was found absolutely
necessary to have a resident nurse for him. Then Mrs. Carey, though she
continued the nurse-in-chief, stated clearly and dispassionately that
she was now sufficiently disengaged to look after her house and give her
single servant what assistance she required. Therefore, as it was high
time that Phyllis should be doing something for herself, Mrs. Carey
proposed to put her at once into "Robinson's," under Miss Franklin, if
Mr. Robinson would receive Phyllis for an apprentice.
It was in vain that Phyllis cried and implored her mother to take back
her resolution, and that all her friends apprised of the proposed step
remonstrated; Dr. Millar even called expressly to enter his protest.
Mrs. Carey would hear of no objections. Phyllis must do something for
herself, and she was not clever or qualified in any way to be a
governess. Mrs. Carey had every confidence in "Robinson's" as an
excellent shop, conducted on the best principles. She had a great
respect for both Mr. Robinson and Miss Franklin--she would never find a
more desirable place for Phyllis. As to cutting her off from all her
connections and the circumstances of her birth and education, that had
been done already pretty effectually. The sooner everybody found his or
her level the better for the world in general. If Mrs. Carey was not
much mistaken, more girls than Phyllis would have to learn that lesson
before these hard times were over. No, it was not Phyllis who was to be
cut off from her connections--from those who ought to be nearest and
dearest to her. It was poor Ella who was separated from the rest of the
family, and condemned to gilded exile. Mrs. Carey was doing her best to
keep Phyllis, not only for her mother and her poor father, but for her
brothers, who must all start in life in a humble way, by putting the
girl into "Robinson's," since Mr. Robinson had reluctantly consented to
have her.
Dr. Millar retired from the field beaten.
The unheard-of destination of her friend Phyllis played the most
extraordinary pranks with May Millar's mind. The fact was, there were
two Mays dwelling side by side in one goodly young tabernacle of flesh.
There was the May with the exceptional scholarly proclivities. She had
a life of her own into which none of the family except her father
possessed so much as the tools to penetrate. She cherished dreams of
Greece and Rome, with the mighty music of the undying voices of their
sages and poets, and the rich treasures of learning, among which a poor
little English girl, far far down in the centuries, could only walk with
reverend foot and bated breath.
And there was the other May, hanging about her mother, running to bring
her father's slippers, sitting on his knee to this day, taking
possession of Dora, ordering her about like a young tyrant, adoring
Tray--the most guileless, helpless, petted simpleton of a child-woman
that ever existed. The second May was at the present date the more
prominent and prevailing of the two, so much so that all the
sharp-tongued, practical-minded ladies in Redcross made a unanimous
remark. Dr. and Mrs. Millar's youngest daughter was the most
disgracefully spoilt, badly brought-up, childish creature for her years
whom the critics knew. It was a poor preparation in view of her having
to work to maintain herself. They could not tell what was to become of
her.
At first May lamented, day and night, over the fate of Phyllis Carey, to
have to stand behind counters, sort drawers full of ribands, tape, and
reels of cotton, and wait on her townswomen! May could think of no
fitting parallel unless the pathetic one of that miserable young
princess apprenticed to the button-maker, dying with her cheek on an
open Bible, at the text, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest."
Then, as Phyllis accommodated herself to the new yoke, and found it not
so galling as she had expected it to be, her friend May altered her tone
with sympathetic quickness, and reflected Phyllis's change of mood
almost before the mood was established. Phyllis was in mental
constitution like her father, single-hearted and submissive--not bright
any more than Bell Hewett was bright, but contented and trustful as long
as she was suffered to be so. She had been enduring harder and harder
lines at home. She found existence actually brightening instead of
darkening round her when she was transferred to "Robinson's." For
everybody, knowing all about her and her father and mother, with their
altered circumstances, began, at least, by treating her with kindly
respect and forbearance, in spite of Mrs. Carey's austere request that
she should be dealt with exactly like the other shop-girls.
Shop-work, in which Phyllis was to be gradually trained, felt
comparatively easy to a girl who had been taken from school and
launched into the coarsest drudgery of house-work under an
inexperienced, flurried, over-burdened maid-of-all-work. Mrs. Carey was
sufficiently just to exact no more home-work from Phyllis, and to
arrange that she should have her time to herself, like other shop-girls,
after "Robinson's" was closed, while the master of "Robinson's" was
inflexible in setting his face against late hours, except for the elder
hands on one evening in the week. Everybody was good to Phyllis, who, in
truth, just because she was enough of a little lady to be free from
arrogance and assumption, while she was willing to do her best to oblige
her neighbours, provoked no harsh treatment. Above all Tom Robinson for
one person could not be too considerate to her.
Miss Franklin looked on Phyllis Carey as a godsend, a harbinger of other
better-class girls going into trade. The woman not only took the girl
under her wing, she fell back instinctively and inevitably on Phyllis
for companionship, with a selection flattering in a woman to a girl.
Then a complete revolution was wrought in May's opinions and wishes.
Nothing would serve her but that she too must go as a shop-girl to
"Robinson's," and share the fortunes of her friend.
May did not yet confide her purpose to her father and mother, but she
poured it in daily and nightly outbursts into the startled ears of
Dora, to whom the hallucination sounded like a mocking retribution on
the young Millars' old scornful estimate of shopkeepers and shops. May
stuck to her point with a tenacity which, touching as it did a tender,
trembling chord in Dora's heart, threatened also to subvert her
judgment, that was at once sounder and more matured than May's.
The vibrating chord lay in the knowledge that May too was destined to
quit Redcross at no distant day, with the aching reluctance of Dora to
give her up, and to find herself in the position that domineering,
selfish girls sometimes covet--that of being the only girl at home,
having none to share with her in the rights and privileges of the
daughter of the house.
A sort of feverish anxiety, which was in itself ominous, had taken hold
of Dr. Millar to see all he had projected accomplished in so far as it
was still possible. That is, he would fain set in motion, at least, the
wheels which would carry out his purpose. Perhaps he had reason to
distrust his health and life; perhaps it was simply that he was not
insensible to the fact, that money had a trick of running through his
fingers and those of Mrs. Millar like water, though they did their best
to catch it up and arrest it in its rapid course. Mrs. Millar's little
private income was still in part free, and not engulfed in the needs of
the household at Redcross, as it might not long continue. Rose had only
sixty pounds of it, and Annie fifteen for pocket-money till she should
have passed her probation and be in a position to receive her nurse's
salary, which would be as soon as she had completed her first year in
the hospital. There were seventy-five pounds remaining, which might
serve to keep May at Thirlwall Hall in St. Ambrose's with the chance of
her gaining a scholarship and partly maintaining herself for the rest of
her stay in college. "Little May's" maintaining herself in any degree
was a notion half to laugh at, half to cry over, while it took
possession of Dr. Millar's imagination just as serving in "Robinson's"
along with Phyllis Carey had hold of May's.
Another year (who knew?) it might not be in the Millars' power to afford
May the opportunity of growing up a scholar, on which her father had set
his heart. That consciousness, and the sense of the value which her
husband put on May's abilities and their culture, brought round Mrs.
Millar. She began to contemplate with something like composure what she
would otherwise have strongly objected to, the sending forth of her
youngest darling--the child who so clung to her and to home--into an
indifferent or hostile world.
Truth to tell, it was May herself who was the great obstacle. She was
not cast in the heroic mould of Annie and Rose. It was like tearing up
her heart-strings to drag her away from her father and mother, Dora,
Tray, the Old Doctor's House, Redcross itself. She had enough perception
of what was due to everybody concerned--herself included--and just
sufficient self-control not to disgrace herself and vex her father by
openly opposing and actively fighting against his plans for her welfare.
But she threw all the discouraging weight of a passive resistance and
dumb protest into the scale.