ROSE'S FOLLY AND ANNIE'S WISDOM.
Annie Millar not only warmed to her work in St. Ebbe's, she recovered
her full glow of health and spirits. She not only liked her nursing, she
enjoyed her holiday hours intensely with the peculiarly keen enjoyment
of busy women doing excellent service in the world. If any one wishes to
know what such enjoyment is like let him have recourse to a great
authority. "_In the few hours of holiday that--only now and then--they
(a nursing sisterhood) allow themselves, they show none of the weariness
that sometimes follows the industry of toiling after self-amusement.
Reaction, after great strain on the powers of self-sacrifice and
endurance that they have to exert, may be thought to account in some
part for the happy result; but, whatever the cause, their society has in
it all that can best and most surely attract--grace, freshness, and
natural charm._"[1]
[Footnote 1: Kinglake in his _History of the Crimean
War_, vol. vi. p. 436.]
Rose felt as if she had never sufficiently appreciated Annie before. She
was very proud of her sister now when she came to Welby Square, and
everybody, whether in Mrs. Jennings's set or in Hester's, was struck
with Annie's beauty and brightness.
Even Hester Jennings saw nothing to find fault with on the ornamental
side of a girl who had gone in so heartily for the serious business of
life, nine-tenths of whose hours were occupied with grave tasks, to
which Hester owned honestly that she with all her public spirit was not
equal.
Annie's face was not only the most unclouded, her laugh the merriest of
all the faces and laughs which appeared and were heard in Welby Square.
She became almost as much of a peacemaker, a smoother-down of rough
interludes, an allayer of irritating ebullitions, as Dora was wont to be
at home.
"Annie is so much improved," Rose wrote to May, "I never saw her looking
prettier. She is just splendid when she comes out of St. Ebbe's for an
afternoon and evening. Everybody is delighted to see her, and wants to
have her for his or her particular friend. She and I have such jolly
walks and talks; she hardly ever calls me back or puts me down now."
After pronouncing this high encomium it was rather a shock to Rose not
only to incur Annie's righteous displeasure, but to discover that on
occasions Annie could be as severe and relentless in her sentences as
ever.
Rose, like most middle-class girls not fairly out of their teens, and
committed to their own discretion in the huge motley world of London,
had been solemnly charged to behave with the greatest wariness. She was
to treat every man or woman she encountered well-nigh as a dangerous
enemy in disguise till her suspicions were proved to be misplaced, and
the stranger shown to Rose's satisfaction and that of her seniors and
guardians to be a harmless friend.
To do Rose justice, she remembered for the most part what had been told
her, and was careful not to expose herself to the slightest chance of
misapprehension--not to say rudeness, such as would have frightened her
mother and incensed her father. Rose would not be tempted by the
fearless independence of Hester Jennings and her cronies. They
maintained, in theory at least, that though there might be dens of vice
and dark places of cruelty in the great city, for those whose feet trod
the downward path, yet its crowded thoroughfares, to those who honestly
went about their own business, or to the messengers of divine charity
and mercy, were as safe, and safer, than any quiet country road.
Womanhood in the strength and confidence of its purity and fearlessness
might traverse them alone at any hour of the day or night.
But Rose submitted to the ordinary if antiquated code, which implies the
timidity and defencelessness of young women whenever and wherever
assailed. She had not gone far enough in her emancipation to reckon as
part of it, immunity from apprehension of every kind, including the
strife of evil tongues.
However, one day in the beginning of May, Rose went to Covent Garden in
pursuit of a pot of tulips, which she suddenly felt she must have,
without delay, as an accessory in one of her sketches. She was coming
home laden with her spoil by way of Burnet's, where there was an equal
necessity for her to procure, on the instant, a yard or two of gauzy
stuff of a certain uncertain hue, when a thunder-storm unexpectedly
broke over the haunt of artists. Torrents of rain followed, enough to
wash away whole pyramids of flowers and piles of art-materials. If the
downpour did nothing else it cleared the crowded street, with the
celerity of magic only seen in such circumstances, and left Rose
cowering in a doorway, alone as it seemed to her, but for a cab-driver
who took refuge in his cab, drawn up before one of the opposite houses.
The rain looked as if it meant to continue, while, laden as Rose was,
she could not have held up an umbrella even if she had found one ready
to her hand.
Her slender funds did not set her up in cabs, as she had told herself on
many a weary trudge in fog and drizzle between Mr. Foy's class-rooms and
Welby Square. Besides she would like to see Hester Jennings's face when
she (Rose Millar) proposed to indulge in such a luxury. But there would
be more lost than gained if she stood shivering in that doorway till her
best spring frock was ruined, waiting for an omnibus which was sure to
arrive with every available inch of space occupied. She would catch a
chill or an influenza with no kind father near to save her a doctor's
bill, and cure her simply for the pleasure of doing it. She would brave
Hester's eagle eye, supposing it could scan Rose's misdeeds from some
coigne of vantage commanding this end of the street. She signalled to
the cab-driver opposite, who put his head out of the cab window and
signalled back that he had a fare besides himself at present ensconced
in one of the inhospitable-looking houses.
Should she bid the thunder, lightning, and rain do their worst, and set
out to walk home in defiance of them? While she still paused irresolute,
peeping out disconsolately at the inky sky from which the downpour fell,
a young man in the conscious superiority of a waterproof and an ample
umbrella, walked leisurely along the sloppy, deserted pavement. He
looked at her, seemed arrested by something which struck him in her
appearance, hesitated a little undecidedly, stopped short, and addressed
her, colouring up to his frank, honest blue eyes as he did so.
"I am afraid you have been caught in this tremendous shower. Can I do
nothing to help you--call a cab, for instance?"
"Oh! thank you very much," she said gratefully, forgetting all about the
cunning enemy in disguise for whom she was to be always looking out.
Indeed she had felt so lonely a minute before that she was rather
disposed to welcome a comrade in misfortune. "The cabman in the cab
opposite tells me he is engaged, and I do not remember any cab-stand
near this."
"There is one round the corner, which I passed a minute ago, but it was
vacant; all the world is wanting cabs in such weather. However, I can
shelter you a little, if you will allow me," and he held the umbrella in
front of her.
"No, please; I am keeping you here in the wet, and you are exposing
yourself to the rain," protested Rose, remorsefully. "I was just
thinking of walking on, sooner than stand any longer getting gradually
soaked," she confided to him with pleasant inconsiderateness.
"Then will you take the use of my umbrella?" he asked promptly; "and
perhaps you will let me carry your parcels for you," he suggested in the
humblest manner possible, eyeing covetously her flower-pot, and the
paper wisp from "Burnet's."
"Oh dear, no," said Rose, pulling herself together when it was too late,
and with an adorable frankness, which was another mistake so far as an
unauthorized acquaintance's being nipped in the bud went. "I should be
taking you out of your way; you must want your own umbrella, and I can
manage perfectly well. I am accustomed to go about by myself"--the last
piece of information given with a proud inflection of the voice which
told its own tale.
"In storm and shine?" he took it upon him to question her, with the
slightest rallying tone, and a twinkle in his blue eyes, but still with
the greatest respect in his attitude and manner--"not in storm, surely.
I shall not be going out of my way. I am only taking a stroll--that is,
I generally do take a stroll in some direction on my way back to my
lodgings. You may not think the weather nice for strolling, but I don't
mind it. I am as strong as a horse, and I certainly don't want an
umbrella. I have this waterproof affair, which, like the umbrella, is
rather a nuisance than otherwise."
She could see at a glance that he was a broad-shouldered young fellow,
over six feet, and that his kindly, deferential face, seen through the
steaming atmosphere, was as ruddy as youth and a vigorous constitution
could make it. He was evidently speaking the truth, and she could not
resist the temptation of the friendly aid arriving thus opportunely, and
so obligingly pressed upon her.
"Only for a little way," she bargained cheerfully. "The rain may stop in
a minute, though I must say it does not look like it, or we may come on
a return cab; anyhow, it cannot be long till an omnibus overtakes us."
She would have demurred at his ridding her of her flowers and parcel,
which he disposed of easily under his arm and in his disengaged hand, as
if he were well accustomed to being cumbered with such small
impediments, had not a comical idea crossed her mind. He might think
that she did not trust his honesty, and was beset by a fear that he
would rush down a side street and disappear with her goods before she
could cry, "Stop, thief!" and arouse the scanty passers-by.
Then Rose felt impelled to explain why she walked about London burdened
with flower-pots and rolls of gauze. "I have just been to Covent
Garden," she said. "I wished to get this pot of tulips--parrot
tulips--yellow and scarlet, you know, to harmonize with a Chinese screen
in a little picture I am painting. Then I had to go into 'Burnet's,'
for 'Liberty's' is too far away, for some blue stuff of the right shade
which I could drape into a frock for the little girl who is my model."
"Are you fond of painting?" he caught her up, being to the full as
willing to speak as she was. "So is my sister, and she also goes to
'Liberty's' for queer rags and tags. I suppose they are part of the
amateur's stock-in-trade."
"I am going to be a professional artist," said Rose again, with that
proud little inflection of the voice. But all the effect which her
communication had upon him was that he took it as an invitation, or at
least as a warrant, for responsive confidences on his own part.
"I am a doctor," he announced. "I have been entitled to write myself one
for the last two months. I have just passed my final exams, and got my
degree--stiffish work for a fellow who does not take to sapping as
easily as to the air he breathes."
"My father is a doctor," said Rose, brightly, with her tongue fairly
loosened. "I forget whether he says examinations were easier or more
difficult when he was young. He is Dr. Millar of Redcross."
"Millar!" exclaimed the tall young man so excitedly, that he stopped
short for an instant, in the middle of the dismally lashing rain, and
looked at her with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes. "I thought so,
I saw it at the first glance. You have a sister among the lady
probationers at St. Ebbe's."
"Yes--Annie," cried Rose, with equal ecstasy in the acquiescence; and
she, too, stood still for a second in the rain. "Do you know St. Ebbe's?
Have you seen Annie?"
"I should think I do, I should think I have," he answered her fervently.
"St. Ebbe's is my hospital. I have been 'walking it' for a year past. I
was there to-day, and Miss Millar is well known all over the place. She
is a great favourite with the matron, Mrs. Hull, and the house surgeon,
and especially with the operating surgeon. He is always asking to have
Miss Millar in his cases since that boy had his leg cut off."
"I know, I know," chimed in Rose, "the little boy who begged you to wait
till he had said his prayers, and when he could not do it for himself,
Annie was able to do it for him. Now he is hopping about on his crutches
quite actively and happily; and she has got him an engagement, to clean
the knives and boots at Mrs. Jennings, the boarding-house in Welby
Square where I stay. Isn't it too funny and nice that you should happen
to have to do with St. Ebbe's and Annie?"
"It has been a great pleasure to me--well, these are not the right
words," said the young fellow with sudden gravity and a shade of
agitation in his manner. "I count it the greatest piece of good fortune
which ever befell me that I took St. Ebbe's for my hospital. But I ought
not to presume on my acquaintance with Miss Millar," he began again
immediately, with an infusion of cautious reserve and something like
vexation creeping into his tone; "it is purely professional. We are far
too busy people at St. Ebbe's to know each other as private persons.
Very likely if you ask her, she will deny all knowledge of me as an
individual; she may not even be able to recall the fact of my existence
apart from a circle of big uncouth medical students in the train of the
doctors--all alike to her. At the same time I have drunk tea in her
company both in the matron's room and in Dr. Moss's, and I have often
sat near her in the services at the hospital chapel," he ended a little
defiantly.
The speech, save for its ring of half-boyish mortification, was
suspicious, as if he were providing a loophole for escape in case Annie
refused to indorse his assertion of mutual acquaintance. But Rose, in
spite of her spirit and quickness, was hardly more given to suspicion
than her sister May showed herself, and saw nothing dubious in his
remark. She was carried away with the agreeable surprise of having
stumbled on somebody connected with St. Ebbe's who knew all about Annie.
She chatted on in the frankest, friendliest way, plying him with
girlish questions, and supplying free comments on his answers; and he
was an auditor who was nothing loth to be so treated, and to be
furnished with stores of information on points which had aroused his
ardent curiosity. She forgot all about taking him out of his way, and
when they reached Welby Square she crowned her unbounded faith in him by
inviting him into the house. On his acceptance of her invitation, after
a moment's hesitation, she presented him to Mrs. Jennings as a friend of
Annie's from St. Ebbe's.
The young man had the grace to feel his ears tingle while Mrs. Jennings,
looking a little astonished, took him on Rose's word, bowed her welcome,
begged him to sit down with her usual gracious, languid good-breeding,
and said she was glad to see any friend of Miss Annie Millar's.
He did his best, with a flushed face, to remedy his and Rose's rashness.
He put down his card, with Harry Ironside, M.D., engraved on it, at Mrs.
Jennings's elbow. He set himself with a strenuous and sincere effort to
talk to her, and so to conduct himself as to do credit to Rose's
voucher.
Mrs. Jennings was easily propitiated on receiving the attention which
was due to her. She thought the young man's manners perfectly good; they
had well-bred ease, and at the same time the modesty which ought to
accompany youth, though his introduction to her had been somewhat
informal.
Irregularity and singularity were among the fashions of the day. She
would have been glad if her daughter Hester, in carrying out these
fashions, had brought forward no rougher, or commoner-looking, or more
eccentric satellites and protégés--secretaries of those horrid women's
unions and clubs--than this friend of Rose and Annie Millar's.
Mrs. Jennings never forgot a name and its social connection. "Ironside?"
she repeated tentatively, but with an air of agreeable expectation. "I
am familiar with the name. One of my sons, Captain Lawrence Jennings,
when his regiment was at Manchester, knew and received much kindness
from a family named Ironside."
"It must have been the family of one of my uncles," said Dr. Harry
Ironside, eagerly. "My Uncle John, and my Uncle Charles too, for that
matter, stay in Manchester. Both are married men with families. My Uncle
John was mayor a few years ago."
"The same," cried Mrs. Jennings with bland satisfaction. "Lawrie's
Ironsides were the family of the mayor, I remember perfectly when you
mention it;" and she added the mental note, "They were among the richest
cotton-brokers in the place--well-nigh millionaires."
"Were you all named from Cromwell's Ironsides?" inquired Rose, lightly,
inclined to laugh and colour at the absurd recollection that, though she
had seemed to know all about him from the moment he spoke of St. Ebbe's
and Annie, she had been ignorant of his very name till he put down his
card. If he had not done so, she would have had to describe him to Annie
as the big, fair-haired young doctor with the Roman nose, or by some
other nonsensical item, such as the signet-ring on his left hand, or the
trick of putting his hand to his chin.
"I am sure I cannot tell"--he met her question with an answering
laugh--"except that, so far as I know, we have had more to do with
cotton than with cannon-balls. My father was a Manchester man, like my
uncles. I have struck out a new line in handling--not to say a sword,
but a lancet."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Jennings with mild superiority, "all my sons are in the
services--I have given them to their Queen and country. Two of my
sons-in-law are also in the army, and I often say of the third--a
clergyman in a sadly heathen part of the Black Country--that, engaged as
he is in the Church militant, he is as much a fighter as the rest of
them." Having thus in the mildest, most ladylike manner, established her
social supremacy, Mrs. Jennings was doubly gracious to the visitor.
They made such progress in their acquaintance by means of the Manchester
Ironsides and other members of her very large circle of friends, with
regard to whom the two discovered the names at least of several were
also known to Harry Ironside, that the lady made another marked
concession. When he said he was in rooms in London, and had his only
sister with him, she signified with a kind and graceful bend of the
lace-enfolded shoulders and the bewigged head within the wonderful
edifice of a cap, that she meant to have the pleasure of calling on Miss
Ironside.
Rose could hardly believe her ears; and she did not wonder, though she
was glad that he had the sense and good feeling to thank Mrs. Jennings
with warmth, since Rose knew what a testimony it was to the genuine
liking which the mistress of the house had taken to her chance guest.
For Mrs. Jennings went very little out, and was exceedingly particular
in adding to her visiting-list, as became the head of a select
boarding-house, and the mother of so many officers and gentlemen, not to
say gentlewomen.
But matters did not end even there. He managed to convey the impression
that his sister and he were rather lonely in their rooms, while he
alluded to the facts that he and she were orphans, and with the
exception of each other had neither brother nor sister. They had looked
forward to being together, and making a home as soon as Kate left
school, and he had taken furnished lodgings at Campden Hill till he
settled down somewhere. But somehow the lodgings were not very
home-like. He should prize highly the friendship of Mrs. Jennings for
his sister. At this point the slightest gleam of a business interest
awoke in Mrs. Jennings's steel gray eyes, though she only told him
softly that she had known it all--the loneliness of one or two members
of a family in London, the comfortlessness of even the best of furnished
apartments. It was such considerations, in a great measure, which had
induced her to utilize her large house, much too large for herself and
the only daughter left at home with her, to receive a few old friends as
suitable boarders into her family. She had hoped to form a cheerful and
refined little society round her, and so to be of a little use to her
fellow-creatures. She might say she had succeeded in her humble mission,
she finished with artless benevolence. He met her half-way with
breathless alacrity. Had he and Kate but known in time Mrs. Jennings's
generous idea, what a boon it would have been if she had let them avail
themselves of it! Even yet if there ever occurred any change, any
opening--but he was afraid, he added in disconsolate tones, there never
would--the fortunate people would know too well when they were
happy--it would be doing him and Kate the greatest favour, the utmost
kindness to let them know. This was exactly the complimentary,
beseeching, deprecatory mode in which Mrs. Jennings liked business to be
conducted; whereas, if Hester had been present, she would have said in
the clumsiest, coarsest manner, "Mamma, there are some rooms vacant,
which any respectable person who cares to pay the rent may have."
But that was not Mrs. Jennings's plan. She said in her blandest
voice--"Well, Dr. Ironside, we must see what we can do for you and your
sister; I cannot bear to think of your feeling forlorn after what your
cousins did for my son Lawrence. We must stretch a point with regard to
accommodating you--that is, if you are not, both of you, dreadfully
particular. No, you are not at all difficult to put up, you and your
sister, you say? I am happy to hear it. It is such a good thing for
young people to be easily pleased. I am not sure that something could
not be contrived in the course of a week or two. I think I heard my old
servant speak of rooms which were to have been kept for cousins of my
friend Mr. Lyle, two charming ladies who were to have come up from the
country for the season. But their dear old aunt died unexpectedly, and
of course they are not inclined for any gaiety at present. I leave the
details of arranging the sets of rooms and letting them to my Susan. I
never interfere with her; she knows far better than I what is wanted,
and she is a sensible, practical person to deal with. If you care to
speak to Susan, I shall ring for her to see you in the dining-room, and
she will tell you at once what she can do for you," Mrs. Jennings
finished sweetly.
He did care; indeed he was so intent on benefiting by what Mrs.
Jennings, in her ladylike way, made so great an obligation conferred by
her on her fellow-creatures, that he caught at the hope held out to him.
He had an interview with the potent Susan, and came back radiant to tell
that the housekeeper had been nearly as kind to him as her mistress had
shown herself. He and Susan had settled everything. He was free to give
up the rooms which he and his sister were occupying the following week.
"What, without consulting Miss Ironside?" protested Mrs. Jennings in
pretty alarm.
"Oh! Kate will like any arrangement I make," he cried confidently; and
Rose came to the conclusion either that "Kate" was the simple
school-girl he represented her, or that Dr. Harry Ironside was an
autocrat in his domestic relations.
He insisted on furnishing references, because business was business,
even in the light of the dawning friendship which he trusted Mrs.
Jennings was going to extend to him and Kate, and they would come as
soon as she would let them.
Oh! he must arrange it all with Susan. Mrs. Jennings put up her still
dainty hands, and waived him off playfully. She dared not interfere with
Susan. All she would say was that she was delighted to look forward to
such an agreeable addition to her pleasant little circle. She was fond
of having young people about her, and was always ready to do what she
could (which was no more than the truth) to make them happy.
Rose was driven to the conclusion that Dr. Harry Ironside must have
found furnished lodgings such a pandemonium, that he was induced to
believe a select boarding-house must be a paradise by comparison. It was
comical how it had all come about. It did seem as if Rose's
heedlessness, if she had been heedless in drifting without an
introduction into an acquaintance with one of Annie's doctors, was
likely to bear good fruits to Mrs. Jennings, among other people. Hester
had been looking worried lately, and had not scrupled to give as the
reason of her pre-occupation--family affairs not prosperous. The whole
of the house was not let. Old Mr. and Mrs. Foljambe had actually been
unreasonable enough to try to exchange the best rooms, which they had
chosen for themselves in the winter for shabbier, cheaper quarters
during the summer, when the husband and wife might be occasionally
absent paying visits. Old Susan, in her black cap and gold-rimmed
spectacles, was especially triumphant in seeing the scheme balked, and
confided her mingled exultation and indignation to Rose, who had helped
to balk the schemers. The confidential family servant even forgot some
of her polite mannerliness in her excitement. "Now, Miss Millar, them
Foljambes has done for themselves; serve them right for seeking to get a
catch from a friend like Missus, as is that kind to her boarders, which
you can testify, Miss; they might be her own flesh and blood. Bless you!
she'll never make a rap by keeping boarders. She never grudges them
anythink, and would sooner deny herself than that they should go without
their fancies. But there, now, that fine young gentleman you brought,"
went on Susan with the slightest respectful significance, "I'm sure
we're greatly indebted to you, Miss--speaks as if he meant to stay on
here with his sister for the present. He has taken our largest rooms off
our hands, so that we may be easy on that head, and I for one won't be
sorry if Mr. and Mrs. Foljambe ain't able to shift back into them at
their will and pleasure. The young gent, as is a gent, had no
hargle-bargling about terms. He was satisfied to pay what we asked,
because he knew that though it was not a common boarding-house, and
though it was no more than right that he and his sister should pay for
the privilege of being under the roof of a real lady like Missus, we
were not the sort to ask more than our due."
The moment Rose got quit of Susan, she said to herself complacently, "It
is very nice to have done such a service to Mrs. Jennings and Hester and
everybody, instead of having got into a scrape and being scolded, as I
almost feared at one moment. If only Miss Kate Ironside is not too much
of a dumb belle and a mere school-girl," reflected Rose, with the
supercilious consciousness of maturity in a girl who had been more than
a year away from all teaching except what she had herself practised, and
what she received as a grown-up woman at Mr. St. Foy's. "I wonder if Dr.
Harry Ironside will have spoken of our encounter, and what came of it,
to Annie before I can tell her. I should like to see her face when she
learns that I know somebody who goes to St. Ebbe's," ended Rose, with
persistent audacity.
Annie's face was a study when she heard of it. Rose had been guilty of a
little wilful self-deception, still she received a shock.
The first time the sisters were able to meet and have a walk together,
after Rose's encounter with Dr. Ironside, Rose broached the great piece
of news, and witnessed the effect it produced. The girls had managed to
reach the Marble Arch into Hyde Park, beyond which they found a seat for
a few minutes. It was not too early in the season for them to take
possession of it, and they were still sufficiently strangers in London
to suppose that seats were placed for the accommodation of the weary of
all ranks and both sexes, and not merely for the benefit of nurse-maids
and their charges, or of able-bodied tramps. The sisters prepared to
talk over their own concerns and Redcross with the _empressement_ of
girls, to forget all about the moving crowd around them, and the
grinding of that great mill of London in the traffic that is never for
an instant still.
"Oh! Annie, have you seen him lately?" began Rose--"Dr. Harry Ironside,
I mean. Has he told you that he and his sister are coming to board at
Mrs. Jennings's?"
"Seen him! Dr. Harry Ironside! What do you know about Dr. Harry
Ironside? What are you saying, Rose?" cried Annie, sitting bolt upright,
opening wide her dark eyes, and fixing them in the most amazed,
displeased, discomfiting gaze on Rose. The rate at which the two had
been walking and talking, the suspicion of east wind, the premature heat
of the May sun, had converted the soft red in Annie's cheeks to a
brilliant scarlet.
"What I am saying," answered Rose, nodding gaily, and trying hard not to
flinch under the trying reception of her precious piece of information,
"is that, by the funniest chance, I made the acquaintance of a friend of
yours at St. Ebbe's. And the laughable coincidence of our meeting and
happening to speak to each other, and then of my finding out that he
knew all about you, is going to be a very good thing for poor dear Mrs.
Jennings," Rose hastened to add, taking the first word in self-defence.
"He is coming with his sister to board in Welby Square."
"He is not a friend of mine," said Annie, severely. "Is it possible that
you are such a simpleton as to believe that all the doctors, medical
students, and nurses--the whole staff of St. Ebbe's, in fact, are
intimately acquainted with each other, are acquainted at all, for the
most part, unless as doctors and nurses? Please, Rose, tell me at once
what nonsense this is--what foolish thing you have been about."
When Annie said "please" to her sisters the situation was alarming.
On the other hand, Rose had not come up to London to be an artist, who
was already getting orders for scroll-work and executing them
successfully, to be put down by a sister not above four years her
senior.
"What are you making such a fuss about, Annie?" protested Rose, "I am
telling you as fast as you will let me. I came out this morning for the
express purpose, and I thought--I was almost sure--you would be amused
and interested, instead of 'getting into a wax'"--using one of Hester
Jennings's slang words, which set Annie's fine little teeth on edge. "It
is you who ought to explain and apologize to me," proceeded Rose,
boldly; "I am surely at liberty to make the acquaintance of anybody you
know without your looking annoyed, and accusing me of being foolish and
nonsensical. It is very unjust and ungrateful of you besides, for he
spoke very highly of you," Rose finished innocently.
"He spoke highly of me to my own sister!" repeated Annie, her lips
curling with unutterable disdain, and her cheeks in a wilder flame than
ever. "He had nothing to do speaking of me at all. And how did he come
to speak to you? I insist upon your telling me, Rose. I am older than
you, and we are alone in London. I am answerable for you to father and
mother."
"Well, I always thought I was answerable for myself," said Rose,
indignantly. "But I don't want to conceal anything from you; it is
insulting me to suppose so," and Rose showed herself highly resentful
in her turn. "As to how I met and spoke with Dr. Harry Ironside, I was
just coming to that," she was going on deliberately, when she was
stopped by Annie's irritable protest--
"I wish you would not bring forward that man's name and dwell upon it in
the way you are doing."
"Why, Annie, what ails you?" cried Rose in her bewilderment at Annie's
unreasonableness and excitement, forgetting any verdict that might be
passed on her own neglect of the code of conduct imposed upon her.
"Well, if you only knew how I have been tried--and molested--and laughed
at," Annie began wrathfully, saying the last words as if to be laughed
at was equivalent to being burnt alive. Then she stopped short and
turned again upon Rose. "What have you been doing? tell me this instant,
Rose."
"I don't think you ought to speak to me in this manner," said Rose,
rebelliously, holding her head high in the air, and forgetting in her
soreness of spirit either to crumple her nose or wrinkle her forehead;
"and I am not at all ashamed of myself. I have done nothing wrong;
indeed, I believe I have conferred a real benefit on Mrs. Jennings,
though she is apt to put it the other way, and indirectly on Hester. I
_am_ fond of Mrs. Jennings and Hester--_they_ always treat me, even
Hester does, like a rational creature. Oh! you need not fret and
fume--I am not trying to avoid telling you, though you have no right, no
sister has, to demand an account of my proceedings. Father and mother
may have, but they would never brandish their rights in my face or
refuse to trust me. I was coming home from Covent Garden on Saturday
afternoon, carrying a little pot of tulips for my picture, if you must
know, and I had also got a small parcel from 'Burnet's.' I was caught in
the thunder-storm. I was standing in a doorway not knowing what to do
when a gentleman passed--Dr. Harry Ironside, if I am to be allowed to
say his name, though I did not know it then. He was good-natured and
polite, like any other gentleman. He saw how I was encumbered, and he
must have felt the pelting rain. He stopped and asked if he could do
anything for me--call a cab or anything, and he wished to give me the
use of his umbrella till we reached a cab-stand or till an omnibus came
up. I thought I had better tell him why I was carrying things, for he
might have thought me just a shop-girl, so I merely said I required them
for a painting, and that I was learning to be an artist. He seemed to
think he ought to tell me in return what he was, and he said he was a
doctor. Then I said father was a doctor too, Dr. Millar of Redcross. He
cried out at that something about a likeness which he had seen, and he
asked had I a sister a nurse in St. Ebbe's, and oh! Annie, he looked so
pleased, and he did say you were such a favourite with the matron and
the doctors."
"Stop!" cried Annie, peremptorily, with an evident storm raging in her
gentle breast, to which she was too proud and self-restrained to give
free expression, "you are a greater baby than May is. You are not fit to
be left to yourself--a girl who would speak to any man she might meet in
the streets of London, and tell him all about herself and her family."
The accusation was too outrageous to be received with anything save
indignant silence.
"And then, I suppose, the next thing was you took him to Mrs. Jennings
and arranged between you that he and his sister should board there."
"I did not," Rose was goaded to speak. "When he had walked so far with
me in the rain I could not do less than invite him into the house. Then
I believe he gave his name, and Mrs. Jennings, who has a great deal of
knowledge of the world and a great deal of discrimination," put in poor
Rose with much emphasis, "seemed to like him immensely. She found that
one of her sons knew relations of his in Manchester, and they had other
friends in common. He spoke of his sister, who is with him, and of their
not liking living in lodgings, and who glad he would be if there ever
happened to be a vacancy in Mrs. Jennings's establishment which she
would permit them to fill. She referred him to Susan to see if there
were rooms which the Ironsides could have. It all came about quite
naturally, and was settled in less time than I have taken to tell it,
and I had nothing whatever to do with it. I should not dream of taking
it upon me to interfere with Mrs. Jennings's or anybody else's domestic
affairs."
"I do not know," said Annie, gloomily, "after the mess you have got
yourself and other people into. But there is one thing I can tell you
for your satisfaction, I shall not put my foot within Mrs. Jennings's
door so long as he--as Dr. Ironside and his sister are staying there.
You may keep your friends to yourself and do without your sister. You
can take them instead of me; perhaps you will not miss me or care for
the loss of an occasional hour or two of my society."
"Oh! Annie, how can you say so?" Rose was reduced to expostulation and
pleading. "What has come over you? You must not stay away; it would be
so unkind to me, so rude to everybody, and such a marked slight. We are
all so happy when you come to Welby Square, and I am sure the change is
good for you too. How can you be so cross?"
"No," said Annie with unbending decision, "it shall not be said of me
that I went and struck up a friendship, apart from our intercourse in
the wards, with any doctor at St. Ebbe's--one of the medical students,
the other day! I am not going to make his sister's acquaintance and get
up an intimacy with her, because you have chosen to introduce them to
Mrs. Jennings. A fine story to be circulated, and tittered over, about a
girl; a fine example to the working nurses, who are always seeking to
evade the rules, to become on familiar terms with their patients and to
gossip and philander with them, when they ought to have a great deal
more to do. I call it disgusting trifling, and it was not for that I
came up to London to be trained as a nurse."
Annie kept her word to Rose's and other people's deep chagrin. She made
no further ferment about what had happened. She did not write home and
complain of Rose's thoughtlessness, or take a single step to prevent
Mrs. Jennings securing a profitable pair of boarders--as a matter of
fact, she dropped the subject, perhaps she felt a little ashamed of the
animus she had shown. But for nearly three months, if Rose wished to see
her sister, the only plan was for her to go to St. Ebbe's, or to make an
appointment with Annie at the Academy or the British Museum, or to eat
their lunch together at some convenient restaurant.
In whatever manner Annie disposed of her few spare moments, not one of
them was now spent in Welby Square--just at the time, too, when the
boarding-house was particularly social and cheerful (for the new-comers
found special favour with the old, and promoted much good fellowship).
At least Dr. Harry Ironside did. He was a young fellow born to be
popular whether he would or not; handsome, with pleasant manners,
kind-hearted, possessed of a respectable competence independent of his
profession, to which he brought considerable abilities and great
singleness of purpose. Everybody "took" to him, from crusty Mr. Foljambe
to jaunty Mr. Lyle; from Miss Perkins, whose ear-trumpet he improved
upon, to old Susan, into whose gold-rimmed spectacles he put new glasses
which made her see like a girl again. The one drawback to his success in
everything he aimed at was, that he was always tremendously in earnest,
so that his very earnestness overweighted him, rendering him incapable
of measuring obstacles, and marshalling his forces, as a more
indifferent man might have done.
His sister Kate, apart from such importance as might be implied in her
finding herself presently in the enjoyment of a very pretty little
income for a young lady, was a simple, good-natured school-girl, in the
echoing and imitative stage of school-girl life. She looked up to her
brother in everything, and was disposed to regard whatever was by his
decree as infallibly best.
Yes, Annie kept her word after the fashion of most of us, till she saw
good reason to break it. She announced herself changeless till she
changed, which, to do her justice, was when the interests of others,
still more than her own, cried out against her maintaining her
resolution.