“Oh, don’t let her say such things to me, Miller, Miller!” cried the patient, with the cry of a sick child.
“Madam,” said the maid, “she’s very bad, as you see, and you’re making her every minute worse. You can see it yourself. It’s my duty to ask you to go away.”
Miss Bethune rose from the side of the bed like a ghost, tall and stern, and towering over the agitated, weeping woman who lay back on the white pillows, holding out supplicating hands and panting for breath. She stood for a moment looking as if she would have taken her by the throat. Then she gave herself a little shake, and turned away.
Once more the invalid clutched at her dress and drew her back. “Oh,” she cried, “have mercy upon me! Don’t go away—don’t go away! I will bear anything. Say what you like, but bring me Dora—bring me Dora—before I die.”
“Why should I bring you Dora? Me to whom nobody brings—— What is it to me if you live or if you die?”
“Oh, bring me Dora—bring me Dora!” the poor woman wailed, holding fast by her visitor’s dress. She flung herself half out of the bed, drawing towards her with all her little force the unwilling, resisting figure. “Oh, for the sake of all you wish for yourself, bring me Dora—Dora—before I die!”
“What have you left me to wish for?” cried the other woman; and she drew her skirts out of the patient’s grasp.
No more different being from her who had entered an hour before by the long passages and staircases of the great hotel could have been than she who now repassed through them, looking neither to the right nor to the left—a woman like a straight line of motion and energy, as strong and stiff as iron, with expression banished from her face, and elasticity from her figure. She went back by the same streets she had come by, making her way straight through the crowd, which seemed to yield before the strength of passion and pain that was in her. There was a singing in her ears, and a buzzing in her head, and her heart was in her breast as if it had been turned to stone. Oh, she was not at her first shock of disappointment and despair. She had experienced it before; but never, she thought, in such terrible sort as now. She had so wrapped herself in this dream, which had been suggested to her by nothing but her own heart, what she thought her instinct, a suddenflash of divination, the voice of nature. She had felt sure of it the first glimpse she had of him, before he had even told her his name. She had been sure that this time it was the voice of nature, that intuition of a mother which could not be deceived. So many likenesses seemed to meet in Harry Gordon’s face, so many circumstances to combine in establishing the likelihood, at least, that this was he. South America, the very ideal place for an adventurer, and the strange fact that he had a mother living whom he did not know. A mother living! These words made a thrill of passion, of opposition, of unmoved and immovable conviction, rush through all her veins. A mother living! Who could that be but she? What would such a man care—a man who had abandoned his wife at the moment of a woman’s greatest weakness, and taken her child from her when she was helpless to resist him—for the ruin of her reputation after, for fixing upon her, among those who knew her not, the character of a profligate? He who had done the first, why should he hesitate to say the last? The one thing cost him trouble, the other none. It was easier to believe that than to give up what she concluded with certainty was her last hope.
Gilchrist, who had seen her coming, rushed downstairs to open the door for her. But Gilchrist, at this moment, was an enemy, the last person in the world in whom her mistress would confide; Gilchrist, who had never believed in it, had refused to see the likeness, or to encourage any delusion. She was blind to the woman’simploring looks, her breathless “Oh, mem!” which was more than any question, and brushed past her with the same iron rigidity of pose, which had taken all softness from her natural angularity. She walked straight into her bedroom, where she took off her bonnet before the glass, without awaiting Gilchrist’s ministrations, nay, putting them aside with a quick impatient gesture. Then she went to her sitting-room, and drew her chair into her favourite position near the window, and took up the paper and began to read it with every appearance of intense interest. She had read it through every word, as is the practice of lonely ladies, before she went out: and she was profoundly conscious now of Gilchrist following her about, hovering behind her, and more anxious than words can say. Miss Bethune was an hour or more occupied about that newspaper, of which she did not see a single word, and then she rose suddenly to her feet.
“I cannot do it—I cannot do it!” she cried. “The woman has no claim on me. Most likely she’s nothing but a fool, that has spoilt everything for herself, and more. Maybe it will not be good for Dora. But I cannot do it—I cannot do it. It’s too strong for me. Whatever comes of it, she must see her child—she must see her child before she passes away and is no more seen. And oh, I wish—I wish that it was not her, but me!”
Dorapassed the long evening of that day in her father’s room. It was one of those days in which the sun seems to refuse to set, the daylight to depart. It rolled out in afternoon sunshine, prolonged as it seemed for half a year’s time, showing no inclination to wane. When the sun at last went down, there ensued a long interval of day without it, and slowly, slowly, the shades of twilight came on. Mr. Mannering had been very quiet all the afternoon. He had sat brooding, unwilling to speak. The big book came back with Mr. Fiddler’s compliments, and was replaced upon his table, where he sat sometimes turning over the pages, not reading, doing nothing. There are few things more terrible to a looker-on than this silence, this self-absorption, taking no notice of anything outside of him, of a convalescent. The attitude of despondency, the bowed head, the curved shoulders, are bad enough in themselves: but nothing is so dreadful as the silence, the preoccupation with nothing, the eyes fixed on a page which is not read, or a horizon in which nothing is visible. Dora sat by him with a book, too, in which she was interested, which is perhaps the easiest way of bearing this; but the book ended before the afternoon did, and then she had nothing to do but to watch him and wonderwhat he was thinking of—whether his mind was roving over lands unknown to her, whether it was about the Museum he was thinking, or the doctor’s orders, or the bills, two or three of which had by misadventure fallen into his hands. What was it? He remained in the same attitude, quite still and steady, not moving a finger. Sometimes she hoped he might have fallen asleep; sometimes she addressed to him a faltering question, to which he answered Yes or No. He was not impatient when she spoke to him. He replied to her in monosyllables, which are almost worse than silence. And Dora durst not protest, could not upbraid him with that dreadful silence, as an older person might have done. “Oh, father, talk to me a little!” she once cried in her despair; but he said gently that he had nothing to talk about, and silenced the girl. He had taken the various meals and refreshments that were ordered for him, when they came, with something that was half a smile and half a look of disgust; and this was the final exasperation to Dora.
“Oh, father! when you know that you must take it—that it is the only way of getting well again.”
“I am taking it,” he said, with that twist of the lip at every spoonful which betrayed how distasteful it was.
This is hard to bear for the most experienced of nurses, and what should it be for a girl of sixteen? She clasped her hands together in her impatience to keep herself down. And then there came a knock at the door, and Gilchrist appeared,begging that Miss Dora would put on her hat and go out for a walk with Miss Bethune.
“I’ll come and sit with my work in a corner, and be there if he wants anything.”
Mr. Mannering did not seem to take any notice, but he heard the whisper at the door.
“There is no occasion for any one sitting with me. I am quite able to ring if I want anything.”
“But, father, I don’t want to go out,” said Dora.
“I want you to go out,” he said peremptorily. “It is not proper that you should be shut up here all day.”
“Let me light the candles, then, father?”
“I don’t want any candles. I am not doing anything. There is plenty of light for what I want.”
Oh, what despair it was to have to do with a man who would not be shaken, who would take his own way and no other! If he would but have read a novel, as Dora did—if he would but return to the study of his big book, which was the custom of his life. Dora felt that it was almost wicked to leave him: but what could she do, while he sat there absorbed in his thoughts, which she could not even divine what they were about?
To go out into the cool evening was a relief to her poor little exasperated temper and troubled mind. The air was sweet and fresh, even in Bloomsbury; the trees waved and rustled softly against the blue sky; there was a young moon somewhere, a white speck in the blue, though the light of day was not yet gone; the voices were softened and almost musical in the evening air, and it was so good to be out of doors, to be removedfrom the close controlling atmosphere of unaccustomed trouble. “Out of sight, out of mind,” people say. It was very far from being that; on the contrary, it was but the natural impatience, the mere contrariety, that had made the girl ready to cry with a sense of the intolerable which now was softened and subdued, allowing love and pity to come back. She could talk of nothing but her father as she went along the street.
“Do you think he looks any better, Miss Bethune? Do you think he will soon be able to get out? Do you think the doctor will let him return soon to the Museum? He loves the Museum better than anything. He would have more chance to get well if he might go back.”
“All that must be decided by time, Dora—time and the doctor, who, though we scoff at him sometimes, knows better, after all, than you or me. But I want you to think a little of the poor lady you are going to see.”
“What am I going to see? Oh, that lady? I don’t know if father will wish me to see her. Oh, I did not know what it was you wanted of me. I cannot go against father, Miss Bethune, when he is ill and does not know.”
“You will just trust to another than your father for once in your life, Dora. If you think I am not a friend to your father, and one that would consider him in all things——”
The girl walked on silently, reluctantly, for some time without speaking, with sometimes a half pause, as if she would have turned back.Then she answered in a low voice, still not very willingly: “I know you are a friend".
“You do not put much heart in it,” said Miss Bethune, with a laugh. The most magnanimous person, when conscious of having been very helpful and a truly good friend at his or her personal expense to another, may be pardoned a sense of humour, partially bitter, in the grudging acknowledgment of ignorance. Then she added more gravely: “When your father knows—and he shall know in time—where I am taking you, he will approve; whatever his feelings may be, he will tell you it was right and your duty: of that I am as sure as that I am living, Dora.”
“Because she is my aunt? An aunt is not such a very tender relation, Miss Bethune. In books they are often very cold comforters, not kind to girls that are poor. I suppose,” said Dora, after a little pause, “that I would be called poor?”
“You are just nothing, you foolish little thing! You have no character of your own; you are your father’s daughter, and no more.”
“I don’t wish to be anything more,” cried Dora, with her foolish young head held high.
“And this poor woman,” said Miss Bethune, exasperated, “will not live long enough to be a friend to any one—so you need not be afraid either of her being too tender or unkind. She has come back, poor thing, after long years spent out of her own country, to die.”
“To die?” the girl echoed in a horrified tone.
“Just that, and nothing less or more.”
Dora walked on by Miss Bethune’s side for some time in silence. There was a long, very long walk through the streets before they reached the coolness and freshness of the Park. She said nothing for a long time, until they had arrived at the Serpentine, which—veiled in shadows and mists of night, with the stars reflected in it, and the big buildings in the distance standing up solemnly, half seen, yet with gleams of lamps and light all over them, beyond, and apparently among the trees—has a sort of splendour and reality, like a great natural river flowing between its banks. She paused there for a moment, and asked, with a quick drawing of her breath: “Is it some one—who is dying—that you are taking me to see?”
“Yes, Dora; and next to your father, your nearest relation in the world.”
“I thought at one time that he was going to die, Miss Bethune.”
“So did we all, Dora.”
“And I was very much afraid—oh, not only heartbroken, but afraid. I thought he would suffer so, in himself,” she said very low, “and to leave me.”
“They do not,” said Miss Bethune with great solemnity, as if not of any individual, but of a mysterious class of people. “They are delivered; anxious though they may have been, they are anxious no more; though their hearts would have broken to part with you a little while before, it is no longer so; they are delivered. It’s a very solemn thing,” she went on, with something like a sob in her voice; “but it’s comforting, at least tothe like of me. Their spirits are changed, they are separated; there are other things before them greater than what they leave behind.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “I should not like to think of that: if father had ceased to think of me even before——”
“It is comforting to me,” said Miss Bethune, “because I am of those that are going, and you, Dora, are of those that are staying. I’m glad to think that the silver chain will be loosed and the golden bowl broken—all the links that bind us to the earth, and all the cares about what is to happen after.”
“Have you cares about what is to happen after?” cried Dora, “Father has, for he has me; but you, Miss Bethune?”
Dora never forgot, or thought she would never forget, the look that was cast upon her. “And I,” said Miss Bethune, “have not even you, have nobody belonging to me. Well,” she said, going on with a heavy long-drawn breath, “it looks as if it were true.”
This was the girl’s first discovery of what youth is generally so long in finding out, that in her heedlessness and unconscious conviction that what related to herself was the most important in the world, and what befel an elderly neighbour of so much less consequence, she had done, or at least said, a cruel thing. But she did not know how to mend matters, and so went on by her friend’s side dumb, confusedly trying to enter into, now that it was too late, the sombre complications of another’s thought. Nothing morewas said till they were close to the great hotel, which shone out with its many windows luminous upon the soft background of the night. Then Miss Bethune put her hand almost harshly upon Dora’s arm.
“You will remember, Dora,” she said, “that the person we are going to see is a dying person, and in all the world it is agreed that where a dying person is he or she is the chief person, and to be considered above all. It is, maybe, a superstition, but it is so allowed. Their wants and their wishes go before all; and the queen herself, if she were coming into that chamber, would bow to it like all the rest: and so must you. It is, perhaps, not quite sincere, for why should a woman be more thought of because she is going to die? That is not a quality, you will say: but yet it’s a superstition, and approved of by all the civilised world.”
“Oh, Miss Bethune,” cried Dora, “I know that I deserve that you should say this to me: but yet——”
Her companion made no reply, but led the way up the great stairs.
The room was not so dark as before, though it was night; a number of candles were shining in the farther corner near the bed, and the pale face on the pillow, the nostrils dark and widely opened with the panting breath, was in full light, turned towards the door. A nurse in her white apron and cap was near the bed, beside a maid whose anxious face was strangely contrasted with the calm of the professional person. These accessoriesDora’s quick glance took in at once, while yet her attention was absorbed in the central figure, which she needed no further explanation to perceive had at once become the first object, the chief interest, to all near her. Dying! It was more than mere reigning, more than being great. To think that where she lay there she was going fast away into the most august presence, to the deepest wonders! Dora held her breath with awe. She never, save when her father was swimming for his life, and her thoughts were concentrated on the struggle with all the force of personal passion, as if it were she herself who was fighting against death, had seen any such sight before.
“Is it Dora?” cried the patient. “Dora! Oh, my child, my child, have you come at last?”
And then Dora found arms round her clutching her close, and felt with a strange awe, not unmingled with terror, the wild beating of a feverish heart, and the panting of a laborious breath. The wan face was pressed against hers. She felt herself held for a moment with extraordinary force, and kisses, tears, and always the beat of that troubled breathing, upon her cheek. Then the grasp relaxed reluctantly, because the sufferer could do no more.
“Oh, gently, gently; do not wear yourself out. She is not going away. She has come to stay with you,” a soothing voice said.
“That’s all I want—all I want in this world—what I came for,” gave forth the panting lips.
Dora’s impulse was to cry, “No, no!” torise up from her knees, upon which she had fallen unconsciously by the sick bed, to withdraw from it, and if possible get away altogether, terrified of that close vicinity: but partly what Miss Bethune had said, and partly natural feeling, the instinct of humanity, kept her in spite of herself where she was. The poor lady lay with her face intent upon Dora, stroking her hair and her forehead with those hot thin hands, beaming upon her with that ineffable smile which is the prerogative of the dying.
“Oh, my little girl,” she said,—“my only one, my only one! Twelve years it is—twelve long years—and all the time thinking of this! When I’ve been ill,—and I’ve been very ill, Miller will tell you,—I’ve kept up, I’ve forced myself to be better for this—for this!”
“You will wear yourself out, ma’am,” said the nurse. “You must not talk, you must be quiet, or I shall have to send the young lady away.”
“No, no!” cried the dying woman, again clutching Dora with fevered arms. “For what must I be quiet?—to live a little longer? I only want to live while she’s here. I only want it as long as I can see her—Dora, you’ll stay with me, you’ll stay with your poor—poor ——”
“She shall stay as long as you want her: but for God’s sake think of something else, woman—think of where you’re going!” cried Miss Bethune harshly over Dora’s head.
They disposed of her at their ease, talking over her head, bandying her about—she who was mistress of her own actions, who had never beenmade to stay where she did not wish to stay, or to go where she did not care to go. But Dora was silent even in the rebellion of her spirit. There was a something more strong than herself, which kept her there on her knees in the middle of the circle—all, as Miss Bethune had said, attending on the one who was dying, the one who was of the first interest, to whom even the queen would bow and defer if she were to come in here. Dora did not know what to say to a person in such a position. She approved, yet was angry that Miss Bethune should bid the poor lady think where she was going. She was frightened and excited, not knowing what dreadful change might take place, what alteration, before her very eyes. Her heart began to beat wildly against her breast; pity was in it, but fear too, which is masterful and obliterates other emotions: yet even that was kept in check by the overwhelming influence, the fascination of the chamber of death.
Then there was a pause; and Dora, still on her knees by the side of the bed, met as best she could the light which dazzled her, which enveloped her in a kind of pale flame, from the eyes preternaturally bright that were fixed upon her face, and listened, as to a kind of strange lullaby, to the broken words of fondness, a murmur of fond names, of half sentences, and monosyllables, in the silence of the hushed room. This seemed to last for a long time. She was conscious of people passing with hushed steps behind her, looking over her head, a man’s low voice, the whisper of the nurses, a movement of the lights; but alwaysthat transfigured face, all made of whiteness, luminous, the hot breath coming and going, the hands about her face, the murmur of words. The girl was cramped with her attitude for a time, and then the cramp went away, and her body became numb, keeping its position like a mechanical thing, while her mind too was lulled into a curious sense of torpor, yet spectatorship. This lasted she did not know how long. She ceased to be aware of what was being said to her. Her own name, “Dora,” over and over again repeated, and strange words, that came back to her afterwards, went on in a faltering stream. Hours might have passed for anything she knew, when at last she was raised, scarcely capable of feeling anything, and put into a chair by the bedside. She became dimly conscious that the brilliant eyes that had been gazing at her so long were being veiled as with sleep, but they opened again suddenly as she was removed, and were fixed upon her with an anguish of entreaty. “Dora, my child,—my child! Don’t take her away!”
“She is going to sit by you here,” said a voice, which could only be a doctor’s voice, “here by your bedside. It is easier for her. She is not going away.”
Then the ineffable smile came back. The two thin hands enveloped Dora’s wrist, holding her hand close between them; and again there came a wonderful interval—the dark room, the little stars of lights, the soft movements of the attendants gradually fixing themselves like a picture on Dora’s mind. Miss Bethune was behind in thedark, sitting bolt upright against the wall, and never moving. Shadowed by the curtains at the foot of the bed was some one with a white and anxious face, whom Dora had only seen in the cheerful light, and could scarcely identify as Harry Gordon. A doctor and the white-capped nurse were in front, the maid crying behind. It seemed to go on again and last for hours this strange scene—until there suddenly arose a little commotion and movement about the bed, Dora could not tell why. Her hand was liberated; the other figures came between her and the wan face on the pillow, and she found herself suddenly, swiftly swept away. She neither made any resistance nor yet moved of her own will, and scarcely knew what was happening until she felt the fresh night air on her face, and found herself in a carriage, with Harry Gordon’s face, very grave and white, at the window.
“You will come to me in the morning and let me know the arrangements,” Miss Bethune said, in a low voice.
“Yes, I will come; and thank you, thank you a thousand times for bringing her,” he said.
They all talked of Dora as if she were a thing, as if she had nothing to do with herself. Her mind was roused by the motion, by the air blowing in her face. “What has happened? What has happened?” she asked as they drove away.
“Will she be up yonder already, beyond that shining sky? Will she know as she is known? Will she be satisfied with His likeness, and belike Him, seeing Him as He is?” said Miss Bethune, looking up at the stars, with her eyes full of big tears.
“Oh, tell me,” cried Dora, “what has happened?” with a sob of excitement; for whether she was sorry, or only awe-stricken, she did not know.
“Just everything has happened that can happen to a woman here. She has got safe away out of it all; and there are few, few at my time of life, that would not be thankful to be like her—out of it all: though it may be a great thought to go.”
“Do you mean that the lady is dead?” Dora asked in a voice of awe.
“She is dead, as we say; and content, having had her heart’s desire.”
“Was that me?” cried Dora, humbled by a great wonder. “Me? Why should she have wanted me so much as that, and not to let me go?”
“Oh, child, I know no more than you, and yet I know well, well! Because she was your mother, and you were all she had in the world.”
“My mother’s sister,” said Dora, with childish sternness; “and,” she added after a moment, “not my father’s friend.”
“Oh, hard life and hard judgment!” cried Miss Bethune. “Your mother’s own self, a poor martyr: except that at the last she has had, what not every woman has, for a little moment, her heart’s desire!”
YoungGordon went into Miss Bethune’s sitting-room next morning so early that she was still at breakfast, lingering over her second cup of tea. His eyes had the look of eyes which had not slept, and that air of mingled fatigue and excitement which shows that a great crisis which had just come was about his whole person. His energetic young limbs were languid with it. He threw himself into a chair, as if even that support and repose were comfortable, and an ease to his whole being.
“She rallied for a moment after you were gone,” he said in a low voice, not looking at his companion, “but not enough to notice anything. The doctor said there was no pain or suffering—if he knows anything about it.”
“Ay, if he knows,” Miss Bethune said.
“And so she is gone,” said the young man with a deep sigh. He struggled for a moment with his voice, which went from him in the sudden access of sorrow. After a minute he resumed: “She’s gone, and my occupation, all my reasons for living, seem to be gone too. I know no more what is going to happen. I was her son yesterday, and did everything for her; now I don’t know what I am. I am nobody, with scarcely the right even to be there.”
“What do you mean? Everybody must know what you have been to her, and her to you, all your life.”
The young man was leaning forward in his chair bent almost double, with his eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes,” he said, “I never understood it before: but I know now what it is to have no rightful place, to have been only a dependent on their kindness. When my guardian died I did not feel it, because she was still there to think of me, and I was her representative in everything; but now the solicitor has taken the command, and makes me see I am nobody. It is not for the money,” the young man said, with a wave of his hand. “Let that go however she wished. God knows I would never complain. But I might have been allowed to do something for her, to manage things for her as I have done—oh, almost ever since I can remember.” He looked up with a pale and troubled smile, wistful for sympathy. “I feel as if I had been cut adrift,” he said.
“My poor boy! But she must have provided for you, fulfilled the expectations——”
“Don’t say that!” he cried quickly. “There were no expectations. I can truly say I never thought upon the subject—never!—until we came here to London. Then it was forced upon me that I was good for nothing, did not know how to make my living. It was almost amusing at first, I was so unused to it; but not now I am afraid I am quite useless,” he added, with again a piteous smile. “I am in the state of the poor fellow in the Bible. ‘I can’t dig, and to beg Iam ashamed.’ I don’t know,” he cried, “why I should trouble you with all this. But you said I was to come to you in the morning, and I feel I can speak to you. That’s about all the explanation there is.”
“It’s the voice of nature,” cried Miss Bethune quickly, an eager flush covering her face. “Don’t you know, don’t you feel, that there is nobody but me you could come to?—that you are sure of me whoever fails you—that there’s a sympathy, and more than a sympathy? Oh, my boy, I will be to you all, and more than all!”
She was so overcome with her own emotion that she could not get out another word.
A flush came also upon Harry Gordon’s pale face, a look abashed and full of wonder. He felt that this lady, whom he liked and respected, went so much too far, so much farther than there was any justification for doing. He was troubled instinctively for her, that she should be so impulsive, so strangely affected. He shook his head. “Don’t think me ungrateful,” he cried. “Indeed, I don’t know if you mean all that your words seem to mean—as how should you indeed, and I only a stranger to you? But, dear Miss Bethune, that can never be again. It is bad enough, as I find out, to have had no real tie to her, my dear lady that’s gone—and to feel that everybody must think my grief for my poor aunt is partly disappointment because she has not provided for me. But no such link could be forged again. I was a child when that was made. It was natural; they settled things for me as they pleased, and I knewnothing but that I was very happy there, and loved them, and they me. But now I am a man, and must stand for myself. Don’t think me ungracious. It’s impossible but that a man with full use of his limbs must be able to earn his bread. It’s only going back to South America, if the worst comes to the worst, where everybody knows me,” he said.
Miss Bethune’s countenance had been like a drama while young Gordon made this long speech, most of which was uttered with little breaks and pauses, without looking at her, in the same attitude, with his eyes on the ground. Yet he looked up once or twice with that flitting sad smile, and an air of begging pardon for anything he said which might wound her. Trouble, and almost shame, and swift contradiction, and anger, and sympathy, and tender pity, and a kind of admiration, all went over her face in waves. She was wounded by what he said, and disappointed, and yet approved. Could there be all these things in the hard lines of a middle-aged face? And yet there were all, and more. She recovered herself quickly as he came to an end, and with her usual voice replied:—
“We must not be so hasty to begin with. It is more than likely that the poor lady has made the position clear in her will. We must not jump to the conclusion that things are not explained in that and set right; it would be a slur upon her memory even to think that it would not be so.”
“There must be no slur on her memory,” said young Gordon quickly; “but I am almost surethat it will not be so. She told me repeatedly that I was not to blame her—as if it were likely I should blame her!”
“She would deserve blame,” cried Miss Bethune quickly, “if after all that has passed she should leave you with no provision, no acknowledgment——”
He put up his hand to stop her.
“Not a word of that! What I wanted was to keep my place until after—until all was done for her. I am a mere baby,” he cried, dashing away the tears from his eyes. “It was that solicitor coming in to take charge of everything, to lock up everything, to give all the orders, that was more than I could bear.”
She did not trust herself to say anything, but laid her hand upon his arm. And the poor young fellow was at the end of his forces, worn out bodily with anxiety and want of sleep, and mentally by grief and the conflict of emotions. He bent down his face upon her hand, kissing it with a kind of passion, and burst out, leaning his head upon her arm, into a storm of tears, that broke from him against his will. Miss Bethune put her other hand upon his bowed head; her face quivered with the yearning of her whole life. “Oh, God, is he my bairn?—Oh, God, that he were my bairn!” she cried.
But nobody would have guessed what this crisis had been who saw them a little after, as Dora saw them, who came into the room pale too with the unusual vigil of the previous night, but full of an indignant something which she had tosay. “Miss Bethune,” she cried, almost before she had closed the door, “do you know what Gilchrist told father about last night?—that I was tired when I came in, and had a headache, and she had put me to bed! And now I have to tell lies too, to say I am better, and to agree when he thanks Gilchrist for her care, and says it was the best thing for me. Oh, what a horrible thing it is to tell lies! To hide things from him, and invent excuses, and cheat him—cheat him with stories that are not true!”
Her hair waved behind her, half curling, crisp, inspired by indignation: her slim figure seemed to expand and grow, her eyes shone. Miss Bethune had certainly not gained anything by the deceptions, which were very innocent ones after all, practised upon Mr. Mannering: but she had to bear the brunt of this shock with what composure she might. She laughed a little, half glad to shake off the fumes of deeper emotion in this new incident. “As soon as he is stronger you shall explain everything to him, Dora,” she said. “When the body is weak the mind should not be vexed more than is possible with perplexing things or petty cares. But as soon as he is better——”
“And now,” cried Dora, flinging back her hair, all crisped, and almost scintillating, with anger and distress, her eyes filled with tears, “here comes the doctor now—far, far worse than any bills or any perplexities, and tells him straight out that he must ask for a year’s holiday and go away, first for the rest of the summer, and then for thewinter, as father says, to one of those places where all the fools go!—father, whose life is in the Museum, who cares for nothing else, who can’t bear to go away! Oh!” cried Dora, stamping her foot, “to think I should be made to lie, to keep little, little things from him—contemptible things! and that then the doctor should come straight upstairs and without any preface, without any apology, blurt out that!”
“The doctor must have thought, Dora, it was better for him to know. He says all will go well, he will get quite strong, and be able to work in the Museum to his heart’s content, if only he will do this now.”
“If only he will do this! If only he will invent a lot of money, father says, which we haven’t got. And how is the money to be invented? It is like telling poor Mrs. Hesketh not to walk, but to go out in a carriage every day. Perhaps that would make her quite well, poor thing. It would make the beggar at the corner quite well if he had turtle soup and champagne like father. And we must stop even the turtle soup and the champagne. He will not have them; they make him angry now that he has come to himself. Cannot you see, Miss Bethune,” cried Dora with youthful superiority, as if such a thought could never have occurred to her friend, “that we can only do things which we can do—that there are some things that are impossible? Oh!” she said suddenly, perceiving for the first time young Gordon with a start of annoyance and surprise. “I did not know,” cried Dora, “that I was discussingour affairs before a gentleman who can’t take any interest in them.”
“Dora, is that all you have to say to one that shared our watch last night—that has just come, as it were, from her that is gone? Have you no thought of that poor lady, and what took place so lately? Oh, my dear, have a softer heart.”
“Miss Bethune,” said Dora with dignity, “I am very sorry for the poor lady of last night. I was a little angry because I was made to deceive father, but my heart was not hard. I was very sorry. But how can I go on thinking about her when I have father to think of? I could not be fond of her, could I? I did not know her—I never saw her but once before. If she was my mother’s sister, she was—she confessed it herself—father’s enemy. I must—I must be on father’s side,” cried Dora. “I have had no one else all my life.”
Miss Bethune and her visitor looked at each other,—he with a strange painful smile, she with tears in her eyes. “It is just the common way,” she said,—“just the common way! You look over the one that loves you, and you heap love upon the one that loves you not.”
“It cannot be the common way,” said Gordon, “for the circumstances are not common. It is because of strange things, and relations that are not natural. I had no right to that love you speak of, and Dora had. But I have got all the advantages of it for many a year. There is no injustice if she who has the natural right to it gets it now.”
“Oh, my poor boy,” cried Miss Bethune, “you argue well, but you know better in your heart.”
“I have not a grudge in my heart,” he exclaimed, “not one, nor a complaint. Oh, believe me!—except to be put away as if I were nobody, just at this moment when there was still something to do for her,” he said, after a pause.
Dora looked from one to the other, half wondering, half impatient. “You are talking of Mr. Gordon’s business now,” she said; “and I have nothing to do with that, any more than he has to do with mine. I had better go back to father, Miss Bethune, if you will tell Dr. Roland that he is cruel—that he ought to have waited till father was stronger—that it was wicked—wicked—to go and pour out all that upon him without any preparation, when even I was out of the way.”
“Indeed, I think there is reason in what you say, Dora,” said Miss Bethune, as the girl went away.
“It will not matter,” said Gordon, after the door was closed. “That is one thing to be glad of, there will be no more want of money. Now,” he said, rising, “I must go back again. It has been a relief to come and tell you everything, but now it seems as if I had a hunger to go back: and yet it is strange to go back. It is strange to walk about the streets and to know that I have nobody to go home to, that she is far away, and unmoved by anything that can happen to me.” He paused a moment, and added, with that low laugh which is the alternative of tears: “Not to say that there is no home to go back to, nothing but a room in ahotel which I must get out of as soon as possible, and nobody belonging to me, or that I belong to. It is so difficult to get accustomed to the idea.”
Miss Bethune gave a low cry. It was inarticulate, but she could not restrain it. She put out both her hands, then drew them back again; and after he had gone away, she went on pacing up and down the room, making this involuntary movement, murmuring that outcry, which was not even a word, to herself. She put out her hands, sometimes her arms, then brought them back and pressed them to the heart which seemed to be bursting from her breast. “Oh, if it might still be that he were mine! Oh, if I might believe it (as I do—I do!) and take him to me whether or no!” Her thoughts shaped themselves as their self-repression gave way to that uncontrollable tide. “Oh, well might he say that it was not the common way! the woman that had been a mother to him, thinking no more of him the moment her own comes in! And might I be like that? If I took him to my heart, that I think must be mine, and then the other, the true one—that would know nothing of me! And he, what does he know of me?—what does he think of me?—an old fool that puts out my arms to him without rhyme or reason. But then it’s to me he comes when he’s in trouble; he comes to me, he leans his head on me, just by instinct, by nature. And nature cries out in me here.” She put her hands once more with unconscious dramatic action to her heart. “Nature cries out—nature cries out!”
Unconsciously she said these words aloud, andherself startled by the sound of her own voice, looked up suddenly, to see Gilchrist, who had just come into the room, standing gazing at her with an expression of pity and condemnation which drove her mistress frantic. Miss Bethune coloured high. She stopped in a moment her agitated walk, and placed herself in a chair with an air of hauteur and loftiness difficult to describe. “Well,” she said, “were you wanting anything?” as if the excellent and respectable person standing before her had been, as Gilchrist herself said afterwards, “the scum of the earth".
“No’ much, mem,” said Gilchrist; “only to know if you were"—poor Gilchrist was so frightened by her mistress’s aspect that she invented reasons which had no sound of truth in them—“going out this morning, or wanting your seam or the stocking you were knitting.”
“Did you think I had all at once become doited, and did not know what I wanted?” asked Miss Bethune sternly.
Gilchrist made no reply, but dropped her guilty head.
“To think,” cried the lady, “that I cannot have a visitor in the morning—a common visitor like those that come and go about every idle person,—nor take a thought into my mind, nor say a word even to myself, but in comes an intrusive serving-woman to worm out of me, with her frightened looks and her peety and her compassion, what it’s all about! Lord! if it were any other than a woman that’s been about me twenty years, and had just got herself in to be ahabit and a custom, that would dare to come with her soft looks peetying me!”
Having come to a climax, voice and feeling together, in those words, Miss Bethune suddenly burst into the tempest of tears which all this time had been gathering and growing beyond any power of hers to restrain them.
“Oh, my dear leddy, my dear leddy!” Gilchrist said; then, gradually drawing nearer, took her mistress’s head upon her ample bosom till the fit was over.
When Miss Bethune had calmed herself again, she pushed the maid away.
“I’ll have no communication with you,” she said. “You’re a good enough servant, you’re not an ill woman; but as for real sympathy or support in what is most dear, it’s no’ you that will give them to any person. I’m neither wanting to go out nor to take my seam. I will maybe read a book to quiet myself down, but I’m not meaning to hold any communication with you.”
“Oh, mem!” said Gilchrist, in appeal: but she was not deeply cast down. “If it was about the young gentleman,” she added, after a moment, “I just think he is as nice a young gentleman as the world contains.”
“Did I not tell you so?” cried the mistress in triumph. “And like the gracious blood he’s come of,” she said, rising to her feet again, as if she were waving a flag of victory. Then she sat down abruptly, and opened upside down the book she had taken from the table. “But I’ll hold no communication with you on that subject,” she said.
Mr. Manneringhad got into his sitting-room the next day, as the first change for which he was able in his convalescent state. The doctor’s decree, that he must give up work for a year, and spend the winter abroad, had been fulminated forth upon him in the manner described by Dora, as a means of rousing him from the lethargy into which he was falling. After Dr. Roland had refused to permit of his speedy return to the Museum, he had become indifferent to everything except the expenses, concerning which he was now on the most jealous watch, declining to taste the dainties that were brought to him. “I cannot afford it,” was his constant cry. He had ceased to desire to get up, to dress, to read, which, in preparation, as he hoped, for going out again, he had been at first so eager to do. Then the doctor had delivered his full broadside. “You may think what you like of me, Mannering; of course, it’s in your power to defy me and die. You can if you like, and nobody can stop you: but if you care for anything in this world,—for that child who has no protector but you,"—here the doctor made a pause full of force, and fixed the patient with his eyes,—“you will dismiss all other considerations, and make up your mind to do what will make you well again, without anymore nonsense. You must do it, and nothing less will do.”
“Tell the beggar round the corner to go to Italy for the winter,” said the invalid; “he’ll manage it better than I. A man can beg anywhere, he carries his profession about with him. That’s, I suppose, what you mean me to do.”
“I don’t care what you do,” cried Dr. Roland, “as long as you do what I say.”
Mr. Mannering was so indignant, so angry, so roused and excited, that he walked into his sitting-room that afternoon breathing fire and flame. “I shall return to the Museum next week,” he said. “Let them do what they please, Dora. Italy! And what better is Italy than England, I should like to know? A blazing hot, deadly cold, impudently beautiful country. No repose in it, always in extremes like a scene in a theatre, or else like chill desolation, misery, and death. I’ll not hear a word of Italy. The South of France is worse; all the exaggerations of the other, and a volcano underneath. He may rave till he burst, I will not go. The Museum is the place for me—or the grave, which might be better still.”
“Would you take me there with you, father?” said Dora.
“Child!” He said this word in such a tone that no capitals in the world could give any idea of it; and then that brought him to a pause, and increased the force of the hot stimulant that already was working in his veins. “But we have no money,” he cried,—“no money—no money.Do you understand that? I have been a fool. I have been going on spending everything I had. I never expected a long illness, doctors and nurses, and all those idiotic luxuries. I can eat a chop—do you hear, Dora?—a chop, the cheapest you can get. I can live on dry bread. But get into debt I will not—not for you and all your doctors. There’s that Fiddler and his odious book—three pounds ten—what for? For a piece of vanity, to say I had the 1490 edition: not even to say it, for who cares except some of the men at the Museum? What does Roland understand about the 1490 edition? He probably thinks the latest edition is always the best. And I—a confounded fool—throwing away my money—your money, my poor child!—for I can’t take you with me, Dora, as you say. God forbid—God forbid!”
“Well, father,” said Dora, who had gone through many questions with herself since the conversation in Miss Bethune’s room, “suppose we were to try and think how it is to be done. No doubt, as he is the doctor, however we rebel, he will make us do it at the last.”
“How can he make us do it? He cannot put money in my pocket, he cannot coin money, however much he would like it; and if he could, I suppose he would keep it for himself.”
“I am not so sure of that, father.”
“I am sure of this, that he ought to, if he is not a fool. Every man ought to who has a spark of sense in him. I have not done it, and you see what happens. Roland may be a great idiot, but not so great an idiot as I.”
“Oh, father, what is the use of talking like this? Let us try and think how we are to do it,” Dora cried.
His renewed outcry that he could not do it, that it was not a thing to be thought of for a moment, was stopped by a knock at the door, at which, when Dora, after vainly bidding the unknown applicant come in, opened it, there appeared an old gentleman, utterly unknown to both, and whose appearance was extremely disturbing to the invalid newly issued from his sick room, and the girl who still felt herself his nurse and protector.
“I hope I do not come at a bad moment,” the stranger said. “I took the opportunity of an open door to come straight up without having myself announced. I trust I may be pardoned for the liberty. Mr. Mannering, you do not recollect me, but I have seen you before. I am Mr. Templar, of Gray’s Inn. I have something of importance to say to you, which will, I trust, excuse my intrusion.”
“Oh,” cried Dora. “I am sure you cannot know that my father has been very ill. He is out of his room for the first time to-day.”
The old gentleman said that he was very sorry, and then that he was very glad. “That means in a fair way of recovery,” he said. “I don’t know,” he added, addressing Mannering, who was pondering over him with a somewhat sombre countenance, “whether I may speak to you about my business, Mr. Mannering, at such an early date: but I am almost forced to do so bymy orders: and whether you would rather hear my commission in presence of this young lady or not.”
“Where is it we have met?” Mannering said, with a more and more gloomy look.
“I will tell you afterwards, if you will hear me in the first place. I come to announce to you, Mr. Mannering, the death of a client of mine, who has left a very considerable fortune to your daughter, Dora Mannering—this young lady, I presume: and with it a prayer that the young lady, to whom she leaves everything, may be permitted to—may, with your consent——”
“Oh,” cried Dora, “I know! It is the poor lady from South America!” And then she became silent and grew red. “Father, I have hid something from you,” she said, faltering. “I have seen a lady, forgive me, who was your enemy. She said you would never forgive her. Oh, how one’s sins find one out! It was not my fault that I went, and I thought you would never know. She was mamma’s sister, father.”
“She was—who?” Mr. Mannering rose from his chair. He had been pale before, he became now livid, yellow, his thin cheek-bones standing out, his hollow eyes with a glow in them, his mouth drawn in. He towered over the two people beside him—Dora frightened and protesting, the visitor very calm and observant—looking twice his height in his extreme leanness and gauntness. “Who—who was it? Who?” His whole face asked the question. He stood a moment tottering, then dropped back in complete exhaustion into his chair.
“Father,” cried Dora, “I did not know who she was. She was very ill and wanted me. It was she who used to send me those things. Miss Bethune took me, it was only once, and I—I was there when she died.” The recollection choked her voice, and made her tremble. “Father, she said you would not forgive her, that you were never to be told; but I could not believe,” cried Dora, “that there was any one, ill or sorry, and very, very weak, and in trouble, whom you would not forgive.”
Mr. Mannering sat gazing at his child, with his eyes burning in their sockets. At these words he covered his face with his hands. And there was silence, save for a sob of excitement from Dora, excitement so long repressed that it burst forth now with all the greater force. The visitor, for some time, did not say a word. Then suddenly he put forth his hand and touched the elbow which rested like a sharp point on the table. He said softly: “It was the lady you imagine. She is dead. She has led a life of suffering and trouble. She has neither been well nor happy. Her one wish was to see her child before she died. When she was left free, as happened by death some time ago, she came to England for that purpose. I can’t tell you how much or how little the friends knew, who helped her. They thought it, I believe, a family quarrel.”
Mr. Mannering uncovered his ghastly countenance. “It is better they should continue to think so.”
“That is as you please. For my own part,I think the child at least should know. The request, the prayer that was made on her deathbed in all humility, was that Dora should follow her remains to the grave.”
“To what good?” he cried, “to what good?”
“To no good. Have you forgotten her, that you ask that? I told her, if she had asked to see you, to get your forgiveness——”
“Silence!” cried Mr. Mannering, lifting his thin hand as if with a threat.
“But she had not courage. She wanted only, she said, her own flesh and blood to stand by her grave.”
Mannering made again a gesture with his hand, but no reply.
“She has left everything of which she died possessed—a considerable, I may say a large fortune—to her only child.”
“I refuse her fortune!” cried Mannering, bringing down his clenched hand on the table with a feverish force that made the room ring.
“You will not be so pitiless,” said the visitor; “you will not pursue an unfortunate woman, who never in her unhappy life meant any harm.”
“In her unhappy life!—in her pursuit of a happy life at any cost, that is what you mean.”
“I will not argue. She is dead. Say she was thoughtless, fickle. I can’t tell. She did only what she was justified in doing. She meant no harm.”
“I will allow no one,” cried Mr. Mannering, “to discuss the question with me. Your client, I understand, is dead,—it was proper, perhaps, thatI should know,—and has left a fortune to my daughter. Well, I refuse it. There is no occasion for further parley. I refuse it. Dora, show this gentleman downstairs.”
“There is only one thing to be said,” said the visitor, rising, “you have not the power to refuse it. It is vested in trustees, of whom I am one. The young lady herself may take any foolish step—if you will allow me to say so—when she comes of age. But you have not the power to do this. The allowance to be made to her during her minority and all other particulars will be settled as soon as the arrangements are sufficiently advanced.”
“I tell you that I refuse it,” repeated Mr. Mannering.
“And I repeat that you have no power to do so. I leave her the directions in respect to the other event, in which you have full power. I implore you to use it mercifully,” the visitor said.
He went away without any further farewell—Mannering, not moving, sitting at the table with his eyes fixed on the empty air. Dora, who had followed the conversation with astonished uncomprehension, but with an acute sense of the incivility with which the stranger had been treated, hurried to open the door for him, to offer him her hand, to make what apologies were possible.
“Father has been very ill,” she said. “He nearly died. This is the first time he has been out of his room. I don’t understand what it all means, but please do not think he is uncivil. He is excited, and still ill and weak. I never in my life saw him rude to any one before.”
“Never mind,” said the old gentleman, pausing outside the door; “I can make allowances. You and I may have a great deal to do with each other, Miss Dora. I hope you will have confidence in me?”
“I don’t know what it all means,” Dora said.
“No, but some day you will; and in the meantime remember that some one, who has the best right to do so, has left you a great deal of money, and that whenever you want anything, or even wish for anything, you must come to me.”
“A great deal of money?” Dora said. She had heard him speak of a fortune—a considerable fortune, but the words had not struck her as these did. A great deal of money? And money was all that was wanted to make everything smooth, and open out vistas of peace and pleasure, where all had been trouble and care. The sudden lighting up of her countenance was as if the sun had come out all at once from among the clouds. The old gentleman, who, like so many old gentlemen, entertained cynical views, chuckled to see that even at this youthful age, and in Mannering’s daughter, who had refused it so fiercely, the name of a great deal of money should light up a girl’s face. “They are all alike,” he said to himself as he went downstairs.
When Dora returned to the room, she found her father as she had left him, staring straight before him, seeing nothing, his head supported on his hands, his hollow eyes fixed. He did not notice her return, as he had not noticed her absence. What was she to do? One of those crises hadarrived which are so petty, yet so important, when the wisest of women are reduced to semi-imbecility by an emergency not contemplated in any moral code. It was time for him to take his beef tea. The doctor had commanded that under no circumstances was this duty to be omitted or postponed; but who could have foreseen such circumstances as these, in which evidently matters of life and death were going through his mind? After such an agitating interview he wanted it more and more, the nourishment upon which his recovery depended. But how suggest it to a man whose mind was gone away into troubled roamings through the past, or still more troubled questions about the future? It could have been no small matters that had been brought back to Mr. Mannering’s mind by that strange visit. Dora, who was not weak-minded, trembled to approach him with any prosaic, petty suggestion. And yet how did she dare to pass it by? Dora went about the room very quietly, longing to rouse yet unwilling to disturb him. How was she to speak of such a small matter as his beef tea? And yet it was not a small matter. She heard Gilchrist go into the other room, bringing it all ready on the little tray, and hurried thither to inquire what that experienced woman would advise. “He has had some one to see him about business. He has been very much put out, dreadfully disturbed. I don’t know how to tell you how much. His mind is full of some dreadful thing I don’t understand. How can I ask him to take his beef tea? And yet he must want it. He is lookingso ill. He is so worn out. Oh, Gilchrist, what am I to do?”
“It is just a very hard question, Miss Dora. He should not have seen any person on business. He’s no’ in a fit state to see anybody the first day he is out of his bedroom: though, for my part, I think he might have been out of his bedroom three or four days ago,” Gilchrist said.
“As if that was the question now! The question is about the beef tea. Can I go and say, ‘Father, never mind whatever has happened, there is nothing so important as your beef tea’? Can I tell him that everything else may come and go, but that beef tea runs on for ever? Oh, Gilchrist, you are no good at all! Tell me what to do.”
Dora could not help being light-hearted, though it was in the present circumstances so inappropriate, when she thought of that “great deal of money"—money that would sweep all bills away, that would make almost everything possible. That consciousness lightened more and more upon her, as she saw the little bundle of bills carefully labelled and tied up, which she had intended to remove surreptitiously from her father’s room while he was out of it. With what comfort and satisfaction could she remove them now!
“Just put it down on the table by his side, Miss Dora,” said Gilchrist. “Say no word, just put it there within reach of his hand. Maybe he will fly out at you, and ask if you think there’s nothing in the world so important as your confounded—— But no, he will not say that; he’s no’ a man that gets relief in that way. But, on theother hand, he will maybe just be conscious that there’s a good smell, and he will feel he’s wanting something, and he will drink it off without more ado. But do not, Miss Dora, whatever you do, let more folk on business bother your poor papaw, for I could not answer for what might come of it. You had better let me sit here on the watch, and see that nobody comes near the door.”
“I will do what you say, and you can do what you like,” said Dora. She could almost have danced along the passage. Poor lady from America, who was dead! Dora had been very sorry. She had been much troubled by the interview about her which she did not understand: but even if father were pitiless, which was so incredible, it could do that poor woman no harm now: and the money—money which would be deliverance, which would pay all the bills, and leave the quarter’s money free to go to the country with, to go abroad with! Dora had to tone her countenance down, not to look too guiltily glad when she went in to where her father was sitting in the same abstraction and gloom. But this time he observed her entrance, looking up as if he had been waiting for her. She had barely time to follow Gilchrist’s directions when he stretched out his hand and took hers, drawing her near to him. He was very grave and pale, but no longer so terrible as before.
“Dora,” he said, “how often have you seen this lady of whom I have heard to-day?”
“Twice, father; once in Miss Bethune’s room, where she had come. I don’t know how.”
“In this house?” he said with a strong quiver, which Dora felt, as if it had been communicated to herself.
“And the night before last, when Miss Bethune took me to where she was living, a long way off, by Hyde Park. I knelt at the bed a long time, and then they put me in a chair. She said many things I did not understand—but chiefly,” Dora said, her eyes filling with tears—the scene seemed to come before her more touchingly in recollection than when, to her wonder and dismay, it took place, “chiefly that she loved me, that she had wanted me all my life, and that she wished for me above everything before she died.”
“And then?” he said, with a catch in his breath.
“I don’t know, father; I was so confused and dizzy with being there so long. All of a sudden they took me away, and the others all came round the bed. And then there was nothing more. Miss Bethune brought me home. I understood that the lady—that my poor—my poor aunt—if that is what she was—was dead. Oh, father, whatever she did, forgive her now!”
Dora for the moment had forgotten everything but the pity and the wonder, which she only now began to realise for the first time, of that strange scene. She saw, as if for the first time, the dark room, the twinkling lights, the ineffable smile upon the dying face: and her big tears fell fast upon her father’s hand, which held hers in a trembling grasp. The quiver that wasin him ran through and through her, so that she trembled too.
“Dora,” he said, “perhaps you ought to know, as that man said. The lady was not your aunt: she was your mother—my"—there seemed a convulsion in his throat, as though he could not pronounce the word—“my wife. And yet she was not to blame, as the world judges. I went on a long expedition after you were born, leaving her very young still, and poor. I did not mean her to be poor. I did not mean to be long away. But I went to Africa, which is terrible enough now, but was far more terrible in those days. I fell ill again and again. I was left behind for dead. I was lost in those dreadful wilds. It was more than three years before I came to the light of day at all, and it seemed a hundred. I had been given up by everybody. The money had failed her, her people were poor, the Museum gave her a small allowance as to the widow of a man killed in its service. And there was another man who loved her. They meant no harm, it is true. She did nothing that was wrong. She married him, thinking I was dead.”
“Father!” Dora cried, clasping his arm with both her hands: his other arm supported his head.
“It was a pity that I was not dead—that was the pity. If I had known, I should never have come back to put everything wrong. But I never heard a word till I came back. And she would not face me—never. She fled as if shehad been guilty. She was not guilty, you know. She had only married again, which the best of women do. She fled by herself at first, leaving you to me. She said it was all she could do, but that she never, never could look me in the face again. It has not been that I could not forgive her, Dora. No, but we could not look each other in the face again.”
“Is it she,” said Dora, struggling to speak, “whose picture is in your cabinet, on its face? May I take it, father? I should like to have it.”
He put his other arm round her and pressed her close. “And after this,” he said, “my little girl, we will never say a word on this subject again.”