AN evening in a hotel is seldom cheerful, and this evening was very forlorn. Mr Yorke did not return, though the hour for which he had ordered dinner was past. The girls sat very dolefully one on each side of the table, and read the books which had been provided for their amusement on board ship. Everything had been so lively on board ship, there had been so much society, so many expedients to make the time pass pleasantly, that they had not required to have recourse to these works. It was very strange and dreadfully disenchanting on their first night in London to be compelled to take to this way of getting through the evening. They expected to have been dining, cheerfully chatting about all their impressions, or, perhaps, though it was the first night, to have been taken to a theatre, and seen Shakespeare, perhaps, on Shakespeare’s native soil. Perhaps if they had attained this object of their desires they might not have found it much more satisfactory—but then that did not occur to their fresh minds. And instead of such delights, to find themselves seated in a common-place room with a lamp which smoked, and two dull novels,and the rain coming down in bucketfuls outside, was as dreary and disappointing a termination to the day as could well be supposed. The solemn waiter came in and laid the cloth, and the girls had to change their places. Grace went to the window and gazed out at the pouring rain and the street lamps twinkling feebly through it. Milly sat down vacantly in a big chair, too far off the lamp to continue her book.
“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said the soft-voiced waiter: “will you have the dinner up, or wait till the gentleman comes?”
“O, Grace!” said Milly, startled, appealing to her sister.
“Of course, we will wait for papa,” said Grace, turning round from the window.
When the man went away poor little Milly, overtired and depressed, fell a-crying. “Oh, how strange it is! Oh, how lonely it is!” she cried. “I feel as if there was nobody alive—nobody that knew us.”
Grace’s lip twitched and quivered a little too. “How silly!” she said; “this is how you always are—up to the skies one moment, and down to the depths the next. What does it matter if nobody knows us? Two of us can go through the world—with papa.”
“But what has become of papa?” said Milly.
They did not know what to think. He was not a man to be out at night, nor, though he was soundemonstrative, was he a man to abandon his children to an evening in an inn by themselves. Could anything have happened to him? There flashed across the minds of both recollections of stories they had heard, of sudden disappearances, stories mixed up in a great confusion with the Morgue, of which they remembered the name and the dismal use, without clearly remembering where it was; and of people found in the river, and all kinds of terrible catastrophes. These were so much too terrible, however, that after a while Grace laughed.
“What are you laughing at? I don’t feel at all like laughing,” Milly said in an aggrieved tone.
“We are behaving as if something had happened,” Grace said; “such nonsense! Papa has been detained, that’s all. I hope he is not getting wet out in this rain.”
“Oh, I hope he is not getting wet!” Milly said, rising up hastily and running to the window. Milly had a turn for taking care of everybody’s health. She was pleased with the importance of being a little “delicate” herself.
“I don’t see how he should,” said Grace with another laugh, which was somewhat forced, “when there are cabs at every step. Of course, he has not made up his mind to get wet, or to get lost, or to have an accident, solely to make us uncomfortable the very first day, like a naughtychild. The dinner will be spoiled; that is all that will happen.”
“As if it mattered about the dinner!” said Milly with feminine indifference, coming back from the window. The rain was not quite so heavy, and their spirits began to rise.
“Here is papa’s letter-case with all the introductions. Let us look them over and imagine what sort of people they will be. First of all and foremost,” said Grace, “Lord Conway; that isourMinister. He was once at our house—don’t you remember, Milly? years and years ago, when he was the Honourable Mr Something-or-other; at least I have heard mamma say so——”
“Mamma would be sure to say Something-or-other. Of course he will come directly and call——”
“And ask us to go and stay there,” added Grace seriously, “which would be grander than a hotel; but then one would not be so free to go out and in. I think I will advise papa not to go, or to go only for two or three days, to see how noble people live. To be sure,” she added, “if he is not married—I wonder if he is married?—he could not ask us; unless he has a mother, or sister, or something, to keep his house.”
“He is sure to be married,” said Milly, “if it is so long since he was in Canada—longer than we can recollect; and a Minister too: he must be quite old!”
“On the contrary, the Minister for the Colonies is often quite young, I believe,” said Grace. What she founded this opinion upon we are unable to state, but it was Grace’s peculiarity that she liked to be wiser than her neighbours. “Put Lord Conway on one side. Now there is Sir John Didcot. He is married; there is not any doubt about that. Don’t you rememberhim, Milly?—a fat man who had to do with railways. He was dreadfully rich. I should think very likely they live in the country, and would ask us for—Easter, or that sort of thing. Everybody in London goes out of town for Easter. There are several national solemnities of that kind, you know,” said Grace half satirically, half complacently. “Easter, and the Derby-day, and the 12th of August, and a few more.”
“What do people do on the 12th of August? But we shall be back home,” said Milly, “before that, shan’t we? How nice it will be to get back home. I shall make papa buy loads of presents—presents for everybody. I was thinking only to-day what Lenny would like, and old John.”
“It is rather too soon to think of presents for home, considering we only arrived yesterday,” said Grace: and then she, too, breathed a small sigh, thinking of the bright room at home with all the boys laughing and questioning, and the tables covered with the presents they would carry back, and the baby, the darling of the whole house,seated triumphant in the midst of them, the fairy distributor of all these riches. Though it had been such a great thing to come to England—though it was such an ecstasy to be in England—yet, after all, home was a different matter. She gave a glance round this inn parlour, and smothered another little sigh.
“I suppose we shall have to go to the Didcots,” she said, “sooner or later. Oh, after that here is something delightful! Mr Rivers, the author—you know. Of course, he will ask all the best people to meet papa. That will be far the most interesting of all. Fancy, perhaps we shall see Tennyson!” Grace raised a pair of great brown eyes opened wide with awe and rapture. “I wonder how one ought to behave one’s self to a great poet. I should like to go down on my knees and kiss his hand.”
“Ladies never go down on their knees—except to the Queen,” said Milly, rousing up. “I wonder if we shall be asked to Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace, or any of those places! It would be nice to know the princesses, don’t you think?”
“We ought to be,” said Grace sedately, “for papa had so much to do for the Prince of Wales. Oh!” cried the loyal colonial maiden, clasping her hands, “do you think the Princess will ask us, Milly? He will tell her, of course, who we are. That beautiful, beautiful creature! I don’t know which of the two would be most delightful—thePrincess or Tennyson. One would have to call himLordTennyson, as if he were nobody, a common peer,” she added with a plaintive tone; “but to the Princess one would say Madam, or Your Royal Highness.”
“Cissy Nunn told me you only said Ma’am.”
“Cissy Nunn had no manners,” said Grace. “I like titles; they are so pretty. Everybody that is beautiful, or delightful, or has genius should have some beautiful title. Princess!—that is what I should like to call her; but I suppose you can only do that when you are intimate—and I am afraid, with so many people as she must have to see,that’snot very likely,” the girl said regretfully.
Thus they went on talking the greatest nonsense in the world without suspecting it. The Yorkes were persons of importance at home. Whenever a great personage from England appeared there, he was received with all the resources of their simple and graceful, but by no means magnificent, hospitality. The distinguished visitors accepted all these little attentions cheerfully. They were the best to be had in the place, and they were characteristic of it, and amused the wandering peers and lions as much as if their hosts had been lions also, or peers. But it need not be said that the Colonial Secretary was very unlikely to invite the Yorkes to make his house their home, though that was how they had treated him; and that even the most amiable of princesses would not feel herself bound to invite,nor her august spouse even to recollect the name of the good colonial people who had been altogether at his service. Nay, we doubt much if the author would have felt himself bound to assemble a literary party for the admiration of the Canadian family. The simplicity of the girls considered all these natural returns of their hospitality not only as natural, but inevitable, though some doubts on the subject of the Princess did cross their minds. Still they could not help thinking an invitation was at least possible. These anticipations kept them amused, and made them forget the passage of time. The bland waiter came up to the door, and looked in more than once. Finally he entered, and asked respectfully if they would not like to have dinner served? Then they looked at each other blankly, relapsing all at once into alarm and gloom.
“Perhaps it will be better to have it put upon the table,” said Grace, faltering.
“I couldn’t eat a morsel,” said Milly energetically.
“Oh, hush!” said the elder sister, “most likely the people are angry having to wait so long.”
And this argument was too strong to be resisted. They were still a little afraid of making people angry, and loved to please everybody they were brought in contact with. Then came the soup, cold, which they tried to swallow; then a terrible soaked rag of fish. But the next moment Mr Yorke himself walked in. He told the girls hastilythat he had been caught in the rain—that he had been paying a visit in a suburb, where cabs were not to be got easily, and that he was so wet and it was so late that he would go to bed at once and have something brought to him to his room. This was a climax to the discomfort of the evening. They sent away the joint notwithstanding the almost tears of the waiter. “Oh, what do we care for dinner!” the girls cried. They had been warned when they left home that, above all things, they were to see that their father did not catch cold.
“Mamma will think it is our fault,” said Milly, with quivering lips. Who had ever heard of papa going to bed unless he were very, very ill? Even Grace, though she had so much strength of mind, could scarcely keep from crying. “Oh, how I wish we had never left home!” she said. “Oh, if mamma were only here!” said Milly. Left to their own resources, they could think of nothing but a longing, useless appeal to the one authority. Mamma would know what should be done in such an emergency. She would understand at a glance the position of affairs, and whether he might safely be left alone, or what should be done for him. The girls knew that he was a very difficult patient, and that nobody but their mother could persuade him to attend to himself. It was a terrible problem for them so soon, before they had even awoke to the possibility of such an accident; for who ever thought of papa falling ill? it had been the thingagainst which no precaution had been taken. The girls had a little medicine chest full of Mrs Yorke’s domestic preservatives, and had received the minutest directions respecting their own health—but papa! “Take care your father does not catch cold,” she had said: but that was all. He had always been subject to bad colds. “But what could we have done?” Grace asked of herself unconsciously, hearing her mother’s warnings in her ears. After a while she ventured to go to his room to see if anything could be done. Mr Yorke had not gone to bed; he was sitting by a fire which smoked a little, in his dressing-gown, with a steaming glass of brandy-and-water by his side. He did not send away the girls, who floated into his room with a doubtful air, keeping close together like a pair of doves; but he looked up with restrained impatience from some letters he was reading. “What is it?” he said. Oh, not crossly—not at all crossly! they said afterwards; but keeping from being cross with an effort. The letters he was reading were old letters. Some lying on the table before him did not seem even to have been opened. He threw his handkerchief over them as the girls came in. “What is it?” Clearly he had found something which was of more interest to him than anything they could do or say.
“I hope you have had something to eat, papa,” said Grace.
“I don’t want anything to eat. I am taking this by way of precaution,” he said.
“But you ought to eat. There is some mutton; it is quite hot still. May I ring and ask the waiter?”
“Don’t take any trouble about me. Don’t you think I am old enough to look after myself?”
Grace did not know what to do. Her mother, as she felt certain, and as Milly immediately suggested when they left the room, would have asked no questions; she would have had a tray brought in quite noiselessly without saying a word, and made him eat something. “Why didn’t you run, then, and ask for the tray if you knew that was the right thing?” Grace asked afterwards, aggrieved: but Milly had not the courage to take any initiative.
They stood for two or three moments more, looking at him with an anxiety that was altogether helpless.
“Is your cold in your head, papa? Is it in your chest? Have you got a cough? Do you feel any pain? Shall I bring you some lozenges?”
Poor Grace! she was cudgelling her brain to know what to do; but to ask questions was just the thing she was never to do. In the flurry and agitation of her feelings she forgot that.
“There is nothing the matter with me,” said Mr Yorke. “I have got a little cold; that is all; not to-night; I felt it when we landed. Go to bed. You must be tired too.”
“But, papa——” said Grace, gazing at him anxiously, helpless, with nothing to suggest, yet a scared consciousness that there was certainly something that she ought to do.
He had the air of a man interrupted in something much more interesting than their girlish talk. A little pucker of impatience gathered in his forehead; but he was too serious to smile, or to make a joke of it, as he often did. And there was a flush on his face, and he was very hoarse, looking exactly as he did when he caught one of hisworstcolds.
“Well,” he said almost harshly, “have you anything particular to say? If not, you see I am busy. I should prefer to be left alone.”
Grace’s anxious eyes were surveying him from head to foot. Milly, behind, plucked at her sleeve, meaning to convey some suggestion which she could not put into words. They wanted to do something—anything: but neither of them had the least idea what. Milly, who thus tried to prick her sister into exertion, was still more destitute than Grace was of any perception what to do.
“Good-night then, papa,” said Grace slowly. She stooped over him to kiss him; and, oh, how hot his head was! One of his worst colds! and nobody here who knew what ought to be done, or what the danger was.
“Good-night,” he said quickly. He gave a little sigh of relief as they went away, and turned backto the papers which he had hastily concealed. The girls saw this and it did not console them. They went back much depressed to the sitting-room, which had never been very bright, and which now was doleful beyond description. And this was their first night in England! Hearing, however, a furtive sob from Milly, Grace turned round upon her quite suddenly, and “snapped her up.”
“Well!” she cried, “after all, it is not anything so very dreadful; papa has a cold; he has often had a cold before. He is busy with something. I don’t see why you should make a fuss about it. I dare say he had something to eat when he was out. An old friend would be sure to offer him something. Of course, he will be better to-morrow; and we had better take his advice and go to bed.”
Now Milly began to cry in earnest. “We did not come to England all this long way,” she said, half miserable, half indignant, “only to go to bed.”
At which, though she was not much happier than Milly, Grace laughed. “Of course,” she said, “you little goose, the first thing we do everywhere is always to go to bed. We must do that. You may live without going to the theatre,” Grace added philosophically, with a little sigh, “without going into society—but not without going to bed.”
Nevertheless it was forlorn to be able to think at nine o’clock of no other way of spending the evening. They occupied a little of the vacant time by ordering tea, for the spoiled dinner had not temptedthem; and then sadly enough they put back the letters of introduction into the letter-case. It seemed less probable now somehow, they could not tell why, that the Princess would take any notice of them, or that Lord Conway would carry them off to his house. They put away those passports to society, through which they had seemed to have a momentary glimpse of everything that was splendid. As they did so a little piece of paper fell out. Milly took it up and read it first; then Grace came and looked over her shoulder. It was very inoffensive and unimportant in appearance—a simple address, 3 Grove Road, Hampstead, written in their father’s hand. He had sent, they recollected, for the Directory and taken an address out of it that morning. Could this be where he had been visiting—the suburb in which he had not been able to get a cab? A slight tremor ran over them, a sense of mystery which could scarcely be called disagreeable. Who could it be who lived at 3 Grove Road, Hampstead? And why had he gone the very first day to call there? The girls held their breath. Visions of some old love, far too old to be anything but a memory, came into their minds. They were divided between a little jealousy on their mother’s account and a romantic interest about the unknown.
“It is a lifetime since he left England,” said Grace with emphasis. Their imaginations leaped into a whole romantic story. They put back thescribbled address into the letter-case with a sort of awe. They had never been so much interested in their father before.
“I wonder who she is,” Milly said softly under her breath. “I wonder if we shall ever see her.”
“Whoever she is,” cried Grace, “and whether we see her or not, you must recollect—not a word, not a word to mamma!”
“As if I were such a goose!” cried Milly. “But she must be so old—so old! Mamma would not mind.”
This discovery, or supposed discovery, relieved them from the nervous alarm and misery which was beginning to overpower them. After a while they even laughed softly under their breath. Papa’s old, old love affair, though it was interesting and even touching, as a relic of the ancient ages, was yet more or less amusing too. They put back the scrap of paper along with all the big, imposing letters, which were so much more pretentious, but which it was very evident their father had not been nearly so much interested by. They liked him for goingtherefirst of all: and then they permitted themselves a little laugh.
“I dare say,” said Grace, “they were quite young when they were parted. How strange it must be to meet after so many years! One reads of it in books sometimes. I wonder if he will take us to see her. I should think she would like to see us—if she is nice,” she added with a little hesitation.
“She must be nice,” said Milly, “or he would not have remembered all these years, and gone to see her the very first minute. I wonder if mamma would be angry, Grace? I wonder ifsheis married too?”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Grace, decidedly. “Men may do that, but not women. You may be sure she has lived all the time—oh, not making herself unhappy—but always faithful! She will be good; she will do all sorts of things for people; but marry—no! Ihopehe will take us to see her. It is like England. It is what I have always thought of England. People are so faithful here. Not changing about, not always looking for something new. I do hope he will take us to see her, Milly.”
“I suppose mamma would have no objection,” said Milly, her mind somewhat divided on the subject.
They exhausted this new theme, looking at it from every side. And at last, much more cheerful—having, indeed, to exercise restraint upon themselves not to chatter too much as they passed their father’s door, and perhaps disturb him—they went to bed, no longer thinking it so dismal. This hypothesis, which was built upon so slight a foundation, was on the whole the most amusing and the most interesting suggestion that had ever yet entered their minds in respect to papa.
ROBERT YORKE had gone to Canada about thirty years before the beginning of this history. He was then a robust young man of about twenty-five, a great athlete, and bringing from “home” all that science in cricket and other cognate sports which people out there are proud to think is the inheritance of every Englishman. He had begun in a very humble way, without introductions or recommendations of any sort—a thing which made the first steps of his course both slow and difficult; but besides being a gentleman, which is a thing never without effect, he was a young fellow of resolution and self-control, and there is no disadvantage in the world which will stand against those qualities. He made his way slowly, but very surely, always working upward. He was a man whom people could not fail to note wherever he went, a man who was loved and hated, or at least vehemently disliked: the mild approval of indifference never was his. Perhaps it might even be said that the majority of people disliked the man. He was not conciliatory. He was very silent, very reserved, so reserved that his wife even knew nothing about him, where he came from, whowere his relations, or if he had any. On the other side of the Atlantic a man is permitted to be the son of his own actions. Where there are so many new people there are not the same researches into the antecedents of a candidate for social acceptance, as are common among us. He did not belong to a Canadian family, but was entirely a new man; and he was not enquired into. Any rash person who attempted to do so made little by his motion. Such anxious inquirers as ventured to put the question to him, whether he belonged to the Yorkes of Hardwicke, or any other great family of the name, were met with a stern and simple negative which made an end of them. “No,” he would say, with a perfectly blank countenance, and remain silent, defying further inquiry. When a man is married, then is the moment for investigations; but though Yorke married into a very good family, a family which had been settled in Canada for at least three generations—which is something like coming in with the Conqueror—he would seem to have successfully resisted all attempts to make him give an account of himself. He said shortly that he had “no relations” to the inquiries of his parents-in-law. It is not to be denied that they disliked this at first; but finding that no better was to be made of it, they reflected that it was rather a recommendation to a husband in some cases, and permitted the marriage. Mrs Yorke was about ten years younger than her husband,still a pretty woman, as she had a good right to be, having had neither cares nor troubles to deepen the genial lines, or engrave a single wrinkle on her pleasant countenance. She had never been required to think of anything beyond the needs of her household. Her mind was as fresh as her face. Though she was a great authority to her children, and knew exactly what to do in household emergencies, and how to take care of them all when anything was the matter with them—and even how to manage her husband when he had one of his bad colds—she had never had any harder intercourse with life. All went smoothly with her in its bigger affairs. She had everything that heart could desire—according to her position in life.
That position was very different in Canada from what it would have been at home. Here, in this old island, we ordinary folks, who modestly call ourselves ladies and gentlemen without aspiring to rank or greatness, are quite aware that we are out of the way of Princes and Princesses, and Secretaries of State. When we go to London, even if we may have arranged a royal entry into our special burgh, or been “of use” to a wandering Prince, it never occurs to us that the Princess will have heard of our arrival in town, and will forthwith ask us to tea. But on the other side of the Atlantic things are different, and to be in the best society, to be in the way of meeting, and even entertaining all the illustrious wanderers ofthe earth, it is not necessary to be very rich or great. Your position in life does not depend upon money, but upon many things that are little taken into account in more formal society—upon energy and civic services, and even sometimes upon that faculty of keeping in the front of affairs which many people who have no other merit possess, and which tells everywhere, more or less. The Yorkes were not overwhelmingly rich. He had not made a colossal fortune; but, on the other hand, his expenses were moderate. And without living at all splendidly, or with any ostentation of wealth, it was recognised that they were to be reckoned among the best people. They lived that kind of life which to many people appears, or did once appear, an ideal existence—a life of domestic comfort, of homely wealth, and family companionship: in which Cowper’s picture of the close-drawn curtains, the blazing fire, the hissing tea-urn was realised continually, with all the warm family adoration and mutual knowledge, and also, perhaps, something of the narrowness and sense of superior virtue which that ideal implies. The Yorkes living thus quite simply and domestically, parents and children together, had a position which people possessing six times their income, and living ten times as expensively, would not have had in England. They kept no more than one homely little carriage of all work, and were served in-doors by maidservants; but, notwithstanding, they wereamong “the best people,” and were not afraid to offer their simple hospitality, in happy ignorance of its want of splendour, to all the strangers who pleased them, and sometimes, among these, to very great people indeed.
While their children were young it had been several times proposed that Mr and Mrs Yorke should go “home” on a visit, to see England, and the ways of the old world. Mrs Yorke in particular, who had never been in England in her life, had been much excited by the idea of going “home;” but many things came in the way. Sometimes the drawback was on her side, in the shape of babies, or other natural impediments of a young mother’s career; and sometimes on his, in claims of business. Indeed, it had been generally remarked by all the friends of the family that Yorke himself never showed any great inclination to go home. After it had all been settled over and over again that they were to go, it came to be a foregone conclusion with all observers that something would certainly come in the way to change all the plans. Yet nobody could say that Yorke was to blame; the accidents that detained and deterred them were perfectly natural, and so far as could be seen, quite unavoidable. After the two elder girls grew up matters became more pressing, for while Mrs Yorke, with her children always on her mind, very easily accepted any excuse for giving up an expedition which must have carried her away fromthem, Grace and Milly had no such reasons to hold them back, and clamoured for the tour in which they themselves were to have a share.
What it was which at last decided their father to this journey, nobody knew. He was no more explanatory upon this matter than upon so many others. All he did was to announce one evening, coming back from his business, that he thought if they could get ready to start by next mail he really would be able to go. There was reality, and there was meaning in his tone. This time nobody said, “You will see: nothing will come of it.” From the very beginning everything was different this time. He went at once and inquired about berths in the steamers; he inquired after the outfits, the preparations which the ladies had to make, warning them that they could get all the new fashions in London—“or in Paris,” he added, seeing the smile of scorn upon the girls’ faces. But by this time Mrs Yorke had become more reluctant than ever to leave her little children, and encounter all the troubles of a long voyage. She had grown a little stout, not more than was becoming, all her friends said, though people who did not take any interest in her good looks were perhaps less flattering; and with this increased fulness there had come an increased disinclination to budge. She made a thousand excuses. Reginald was a little delicate. Lenny was just at that crisis in his education when, if he was not kept up to his work, something dreadfulmight happen. (“And mamma thinks she can keep him up to his work!” the girls said aside, with incredulous laughter; for, indeed, she was always the first to find out that he had a headache, and that health was of far more importance than any examination.) Then little Mary, the baby, had not yet got all her teeth. “And how a woman could find it in her heart to leave a baby teething—when everybody knows convulsions may come on at any moment,” Mrs Yorke protested she did not know. The end was that two days before the day of sailing, she announced point-blank that it was impossible. She could not do it. Home! why this was home, where they had all been born. She was very glad that the girls should go, who had the energy: but she had not the energy; and the little ones wanted her. All the bystanders, breaking out into accustomed smiles, declared that they knew it from the beginning. When it was not one thing it was another. When it was not Robert Yorke who could not leave his office, it was Louisa who could not leave her nursery—everybody knew from the first mention of the plan that it never would be carried out.
But this conclusion, though so often justified, was not infallible. On hearing, in an outburst of despair from the girls, mamma’s resolution, Mr Yorke stood stoutly to his colours. It was very unfortunate that mamma should feel so, but in that case he must go without her, he said; andhe believed that he could take care of Grace and Milly, so as not to lose the passage money altogether. Mrs Yorke was very thankful to consent to the compromise. She was not of an anxious mind; everything had gone well in her family up to this time; there had been no losses, no accidents; there was no tradition of misfortune in the household, such as chills the hearts of some; and she saw them go with a cheerful countenance. The wind blew rather strong the first night, nothing to hurt, only a quarter of a gale; and she shuddered, and was thankful she was not with them. “Robert is an excellent sailor, and the girls are young. They were never at sea before; they will take pleasure in being a little ill as a new experience. But I cannot bear it, it puts me out altogether. I am thankful I am not with them,” she said; and so settled herself quite quietly with her nursery tea-party to wait till the travellers should return; which would be “such an amusement.”
This is how it happened that Mr Yorke and his daughters came to England without her. The girls lamented her withdrawal loudly; but Yorke himself said little. He made a half confidence to her the evening before they left. “To tell the truth,” he said, “it is something I saw in the English papers that decided me, something about some property.”
“What property?” said Mrs Yorke, to whom, as she had six children, the question of propertywas by no means uninteresting; but he only said, “It may come to nothing. I will tell you all about it when I come back.” She had curiosity enough after he was gone to send to the office for the old newspapers, and to examine them carefully to see if she could find any clue to this mysterious speech; but she could not. And she was an easy-going soul, and found it not in the least impossible to wait for the information until he should come home.
Thus the father and daughters crossed the Atlantic, justifying her easy confidence in the invariable good fortune of the family by having a most prosperous voyage. And nothing could be more bright than the cheerful assault with which the two girls on that first morning took possession of London and all its associations. They had a delightful morning, but not a very cheerful night. As, however, the girls were both alive to the thought that a cold generally (“very often,” said Milly; “almost always,” cried Grace, more confidently still) goes off, when proper precautions are taken, in the night—they consoled themselves. To-morrow is always a new day.
THE girls knew nothing more till next morning. There was no reason why they should be alarmed. After all a cold is no such great matter. When they went to bed they went to sleep, as is natural at their age, and heard nothing more till they were up and dressed, having almost forgotten their father’s illness altogether. Before, however, they were quite ready to leave their room, something occurred which startled them greatly. There was a knock at the door, in which of itself there was an alarming sound. Mystery and meaning were in it far beyond the sound of an ordinary knock. When one of them rushed to open it, a woman came in of imposing appearance. She did not speak to them at the door, as the servants of the hotel did, but came in even without being asked. Importance was in her look, in her rustling silk dress and lofty cap, in her soft and almost stately step.
“My dear young ladies,” she said, “you must not be alarmed;” and with this came in, and with her hand behind her shut the door. Naturally the girls’ imagination immediately leapt at things terrible—bad news from Canada, a summons home.
“What is the matter? Is it a telegram?” they cried with one breath.
“Oh, no, it is no telegram; fortunately, the poor gentleman is in his own comfortable room, where he will be seen to as comfortably as if he were at home. He said you were not to be alarmed.”
“We are thoroughly alarmed now,” said Grace; “tell us the truth at once.”
“Your poor papa, my dear young ladies, is very poorly,” said their visitor. “I am the manageress of this hotel. He rang his bell in the night, and we sent for a doctor; everything has been done that could have been done. I made the mustard with my own hands for his poultice. We are always ready in our great way of business for everything that can be required. I had theFoil de Rigoletteready, but he preferred mustard. Everything was done that could be done.”
The two girls instinctively had drawn together, and caught each other by the arm in mutual support. “Oh, tell us, tell us,” they cried; “is papa——” and then their lips refused to fashion the other dreadful word that leapt to them. The manageress was satisfied with the effect she had produced. Instead of the fresh and cheerful girls to whom she had introduced herself, two woebegone and colourless ghosts stood before her trembling with dismay and terror.
Then she nodded her head encouragingly. “A little better—yes, a little better. We have madeas much progress, the medical gentleman says, as can be expected in such a sharp attack. Mustard chest and back have eased the breathing, and though he does not wish it to be concealed from you that it is a very sharp attack——”
Milly dropped her sister’s arm, and, sinking down upon a chair, fell a-weeping in mingled excitement and terror and relief. Grace stood still, holding by the table for support, very pale, and with trembling lips.
“You have not told us what it is. He had a bad cold.”
“That is how it always begins,” said the manageress; “but you will have the consolation of knowing that it has been taken in time, and that everything has been done. I was called up at once, and I have given him my best attention. I always say I am half a doctor myself. Yes, it is congestion of the lungs; but you must not be alarmed—indeed you must not be alarmed, my dear young ladies; there’s no reason to suppose that he won’t recover——”
“Recover!” they both cried together like a lamentable echo, turning towards her four beseeching eyes, as if she held in her hand the issues of fate.
“And do well—and do well,” she said hastily. “That’s what I meant. Go and take some breakfast, and fortify yourselves like good dears; and when the doctor comes, we’ll see. You canask him; and if the sight of you wouldn’t agitate your poor papa——”
Why should it agitate him? Why should it not be the most natural thing in the world to see them by his bedside? That this should not have been his first thought was beyond measure extraordinary to the girls; but they yielded to the wonderful, appalling argument after a little. If it would agitate him, if it might hurt him, whatever it might cost them, they must stay away. There could not be any question about that. After a while they went, sick-hearted and miserable, into the sitting-room where their breakfast was laid, and where, the one persuading the other, they swallowed each a cup of tea. Then they sat down to wait the coming of the doctor. They had a long time to wait. It was a bright morning after the rain, and they sat at the window and watched all the comings and goings in the dingy London street. Opposite to them was a tall house with a balcony, filling up all the horizon; and the tradesmen’s carts jostled up and down for an hour or two, and lugubrious organ-grinders stopped underneath, encouraged by the sight of the two faces, possible listeners, which appeared at their window. And thus the first of the morning passed, and hansom cabs began to rattle about, depositing, with loud clang and hum, now young men and now old, at the different doors; and the stream of passers-by quickened; and postmen and telegraph boys came and wentwith sharp rattles of knocking; and quick footsteps beating up and down the street. The girls were not always at the window: now one, now another would go to the door of the sick-room and listen to the sounds inside. And sometimes the door would be opened, and something asked for, which Grace or Milly, far more rapid than any waiter, would rush to get. “Just the same, just the same,” was all the nurse could say to them. They began to feel as if they were entirely dependent upon this woman, and that in her hand was the decision of all.
When the doctor appeared at last he was so rapid and so hurried that it was all they could do to get him to pause to speak to them as he left the room. “No better; but I did not expect it,” he said. “No worse: these things must take their course.”
“But we are his daughters,” cried Grace. “Is it possible that you will shut us out from his bedside? Whenever he has been ill, we have always nursed him. Oh, why must we be kept out now?”
“Always nursed him?” said the doctor; “that is well thought of. Step in here. Do you mean to say that he has had this before?”
“What is it?” said Grace. “He has had bad colds, very bad colds. Mamma was always anxious when he had one of his colds.”
“And mamma told us above all things that we must not allow him to catch cold,” cried Milly.“Oh, how badly we must have managed! but how could we know? and what could we do? And it was only the second night.”
The doctor was quick-witted and sympathetic; but naturally he thought of his patient as a case, and not as a man. “Not to allow him to catch cold! that’s easier said than done,” he said with a half-smile, shaking his head. “I thought there must be delicacy of the chest to begin with; all that could not have been done in one day.”
“No, no, there was no delicacy; he was always well and strong—always strong,” the girls cried, emulating and supplementing each other. They poured upon him instantly a hundred examples of their father’s robustness. He had never been ill in his life, except with a cold, and everybody has colds. He never took any special care. Mamma was anxious, but then mamma was always anxious about us all, though we are known to be the healthiest family! To all these eager explanations Doctor Brewer listened with that half-smile, shaking his head; but he was interested. From looking at this matter as only a case, he began to realise the human creatures involved in it, and to perceive that the man who was ill was the head of an anxious, probably dependent family, and that these two pale, frightened, eager girls, with their young beauty all obscured by this cloud of pale terror and confusion, were his children. He began to look at them with a certain tenderness of pity.
“You are very young,” he said at last, when they gave him time to speak. “I think you had better telegraph at once for your mother.”
“For mamma?” their faces were pale before, but this suggestion withdrew from them every tinge of colour.
“She is the best nurse he can have; she ought to be here to take care of you in any case. Give me her address, and I will telegraph. She ought to know at once.”
“Doctor!” said Grace, separating herself from her sister, “oh, letusknow at once. Is it so serious? is it dangerous? I am not very young, and I am the eldest, and have had a great deal of experience. Mamma could not be here for nearly a fortnight; and think what a thing it would be, the long voyage alone, and the fear of what she might find when she came, and no news—no news for ten days or more—for she might not have so good a passage as we had. And then she has never been used to travel, or do anything by herself. Oh, doctor, do you think—do you think that it is so serious as that?”
“Where is your mother?” he said.
“In Canada,” they both cried in one breath.
Dr Brewer began to be more interested than was at all justifiable in what was after all only one case out of a hundred. “Poor children! poor children!” he said. They stood with their faces intent upon him, four great brown eyes, with theeyelids curved and puckered over them in deep arches of anxiety and terror, appealing as if to a god who could kill and make alive. He was overcome by this passionate trouble and suspense. He put out his hand (he had children of his own) and touched lightly with a soothing touch the nearest shoulder. “You must not be frightened,” he said. “I see you are brave girls; you will do your duty. No; if she is so far away as that, we will not frighten your mother to-day—not to-day.”
“You think he is very ill?” they said, searching his face as if it were full of secret folds and hieroglyphics which searching could find out.
“He has a sharp attack. Come, one of you shall go, one at a time, and be at hand if anything is wanted. I sent him a nurse last night, whom I happened to be able to lay my hand upon. She will want a rest occasionally. If you will obey orders exactly, and call her whenever you are at a loss—one at a time.”
“Milly is not strong—not so very strong,” cried Grace; “let it be me. I nursed them all when we had scarlet fever: and I never cry nor break down.”
“Oh, Grace! I should not cry if I were with papa,” cried Milly, with streaming eyes.
Dr Brewer almost cried too. He was tender-hearted, as so many doctors are, and then he had girls of his own. But he could not spend all hismorning with these two pretty forlorn creatures, and their father, who was struggling for his life.
This went on for more than a week, during which there was to these poor girls neither night nor day, but all one confused languor and excitement and anxiety; the monotony of the sick-room, broken only by now and then a terrified consultation with nurse and doctor, or between themselves, as to what was to be done. During all this time they defended their mother from the telegram with which the doctor had threatened her. The more they thought of it the more impossible it seemed that she should be summoned upon such a journey at a moment’s notice and kept, during all its course, in the terrible anxiety which was inevitable if once she knew what was hanging over them. After the first days Dr Brewer himself did not urge it. He said to himself that all would be settled one way or other before the poor woman could come: and that the girls, poor things! must bear it as they could if matters came to the worst.
Meanwhile, as the dreary days went on, the sick-room, in its stillness and monotony, became the scene of one of those hand-to-hand struggles with death in which there is all the terrible force of a tragedy to those who are aware of the conclusion which is drawing nigh; but it is seldom that the persons who are most interested are aware of this. And Grace and Milly were too young and inexperienced to realise more than that papa was nobetter from morning to morning, from night to night. There was always one of them in the room with the nurse, and occasionally Mr Yorke was well enough to talk to them. But either he did not realise the seriousness of his own position, or the torpor of approaching death, and the self-absorption of weakness and suffering had begun to steal over him. He liked Grace to do what was needful for him, but smiled at poor little Milly, bidding her run away and amuse herself. “You ought to be doing something. You ought to be taking advantage of your opportunities. Who knows if you will ever be in London again?” he said, once or twice, with that strange forgetfulness of all the circumstances which bewildered the girls; but either he had nothing important to say, or, in the languor of his illness, he deferred the saying of it, preferring to turn his face to the wall and escape from all consideration of what was coming. Once only this silence was broken; but not to much purpose. He had asked for something to drink; and as Grace raised him—she could do this now as easily as if he had been a child—he caught and was touched by the look of anxiety on her face.
“Poor little Grace!” he said, when he was laid back again upon his pillow, “this is a curious way of enjoying London.” He had not much breath to talk, and had to pause between his words.
“Not at all, papa. Yes, it is dreadful for you to have to suffer, but for me quite natural, you being ill.”
Then he gave a feeble laugh. “Your mother—will not suppose—that we are engaged like this.”
“Milly has written to say you are not well.”
“Not well—that was right—not to make her anxious.” He laughed a little again. “But she will have to be told—some day: my poor Milly.” This was his wife’s name as well as his child’s.
“Yes, papa, when you are quite well again. She will not mind then; but don’t you think that it is best to say little till you are better? for she would be so anxious; and what would be the use of bringing her over, when you will be all right again before she could get here?”
“I shall be all right again,” he said, pausing upon each word. The smile had gone off his face. He seemed to weigh the words, and drop them one by one. Was he asking himself whether that would ever be, or only lingering for want of breath? “Remind me,” he said, “of the people I went to see: there is something I want—to tell you about. But I can’t—be troubled now,” and with that he turned once more, as he was so fond of doing, his face to the wall.
Thus the melancholy days went on. Grace had begun to feel something fatal in the air, but Milly had not yet gone farther than the fact that papa was very ill, and that it might be weeks before he was well again, when Dr Brewer came into their room after his nightly visit. They had been trying to eat something, which they simply acknowledgedas a duty, but did not know how to get through. Their meals were the most dreadful moments of their day, the only things that marked its melancholy course. The doctor came in, not hurriedly, as he usually did. He drew a chair to the table and sat down beside them. “What are you having—tea? I never told you to take tea,” he said.
“It is so easy to take,” Milly pleaded, “far easier than anything else.”
“In the meantime you must have some wine,” he said, ringing the bell; “yes, yes, you must take it whether you like it or not. Now tell me a little about yourselves, as I have some time to myself to-night. My wife was talking of coming to see you. I have never heard anything about your friends in London. It is time to think of looking them up——”
“That means papa is better,” said Milly. “I knew it from the first moment, as soon as I saw the doctor’s kind face.”
He turned his kind face away from them with a forced smile. He could not bear to meet their anxious eyes.
“But we have no friends—not to call friends,” said Grace, who was not quite so sure as Milly, and yet was so glad to take Milly’s opinion for this once. “We have letters to quantities of people, and some of them we have seen at home. There is Lord Conway,” she said with a little hesitation—“he once stayed at our house. It is a long timeago, but we thought—oh, we did not want him to ask us, especially since papa has been ill. It would be dreadful to have a long illness in a stranger’s house.”
“Lord Conway!” Dr Brewer said, bewildered.
“But we don’t know him, not as you know your friends,” Grace made haste to add; “we don’t know any one in that way. They are all people who have been in Canada, or the friends of people who have been in Canada.”
The doctor shook his head. “Do you mean that you know nobody, my poor dear children? You have nofriends—people who really are acquainted with you, who would take a little trouble for you, whom you could have recourse to——” Here he stopped, confused, feeling Grace’s eye upon him. “I thought you might have—relations even, on this side of the water,” he said.
“Whom we could have recourse to!” said Grace—“oh, doctor, tell us, tell us what you mean! Why should we want to have recourse to any one? That means more than ordinary words——”
“He means—to show us some civility—to show us England—now that papa is going to get better,” said Milly, throwing back her head with a pretty movement of pleasure. But Dr Brewer did not raise his eyes. He could not face them, the one so anxious to divine his meaning, the other happy in her mistake. Milly was talkative and effusive in her joy. “Now we ought to telegraph tomamma,” she cried. “She will have got the first letter saying how ill papa was. It will be delightful to relieve her mind all in a moment—to tell her he is getting well, almost as soon as she knew that he was ill. We must telegraph to-morrow.”
Dr Brewer still did not meet Grace’s anxious gaze, which would have read his face in a moment. “You are very young,” he said, “to have had such a—responsibility upon you. You have been very brave hitherto, and you will not break down now. I am afraid, indeed, that I shall have to telegraph to your mother—very soon now.”
It was his tone more than what he said which disturbed Milly in her happy confidence. She turned round suddenly and looked with an awful inquiry, not at him but at Grace. Grace for her part, trembling, had grasped Dr Brewer by the arm. “Doctor!” she said in a strange, stifled voice. She could not say any more.
He covered her soft little thin hand with his and patted it gently. “My poor dear children,” he said, “my poor children! how can I tell you——” His voice was broken. It told all he had to say without the aid of any words. How could he put it into words? For a moment it seemed to the doctor as if the man’s death must be his fault, and that they would have a right to upbraid him for letting their father die. He sat there with his head drooped and with his heartfull of sympathetic anguish, not knowing what might happen next.
Milly gave a great cry. She had not feared all this time, and just now she had been happy and triumphant in the thought that danger was over. She cried out and threw herself suddenly on the ground at the doctor’s feet. “Oh, no, no!” she cried. “Oh, don’t let it be. Don’t let it be! Doctor, think of us poor girls; think of mamma and all the children; doctor, doctor!” said Milly, her voice rising louder and louder in her despair.
Grace had not said anything. She stood, her face all quivering with anguish, her eyes fixed upon him. She seemed to take up the last quivering note of Milly’s cry—“Is there no hope?” she said.
The doctor shook his head. He laid his hand tenderly upon poor Milly’s hair—every line of his face was working. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice trembling. “You have been very courageous, very good hitherto—and now there is one last effort before you. You at least will stand by him to the end. You will not make it worse, but better for him, Grace.”
The girl tried to speak two or three times before the words would come. When she found utterance at last what she said was scarcely intelligible. It was, “And Milly too.”
“It would be better, far better, that she should lie down and try to rest. I will give her something;but you—you must come with me, Grace.”
“And Milly too,” the girl said again, as if these were the only words she was capable of. She gathered up her sister from where she lay at the doctor’s feet, and whispered to her, smoothing away her disordered hair. Milly was not able to stand. She leaned her weight upon her sister; her pretty hair fell about her face, all wild and distorted with crying. She wanted to get down again to the floor to kneel at the doctor’s feet. “He could do something still if he were to try. Oh, Gracie, Gracie! think of us two miserable girls, and mamma, and all the children. He could do something if he were to try.”
“Milly! we have got to stand by him—to keep up his heart——”
“I cannot stand—I cannot stand, I think I will die. Oh, doctor, doctor! do something, find out something! Couldn’t you do something if you were to try?”
“Milly, am I to go alone—the last time—to papa?”
“Put our blood into him,” cried Milly, holding up her small white wrists. “They do that sometimes. Take mine—oh, every drop!—and Grace’s too. Doctor, doctor! you could do something if you were to try.”
For weeks after, this cry rang in the good doctor’s ears. They both caught at the idea; even Grace, who had command of herself. How easy itseemed!—to take the young blood out of their veins and pour it, like new life, into his. Sometimes it is done in stories—why not, why not, in actual life? Their voices ran into a kind of clamour, imploring him. It was long before the impression made by this scene left the doctor’s mind and recollection. Nevertheless, that night both the girls stood by their father’s bedside quietly enough, making no scene, watching eagerly for any last word he might have to say to them. But how few of the dying have any last words to say! He opened his eyes, and smiled vaguely twice or thrice, as though all had been quite happy and simple around him—he had gone out of the region in which anxieties dwell. Perhaps he did not remember that he was leaving them helpless among strangers—or if he knew, the ebb of the wave had caught him and he could feel nothing but the last floating out to sea, the sound of the waters, the tide of the new life.
Left to themselves in such circumstances, the poor girls had no alternative but to be crushed altogether, or to rise into heroic fortitude; and happily Grace had strength enough for that better part. She dressed herself, when the dreadful morning came, in the only black frock her wardrobe contained, with the composure of a creature braced by the worst that could happen, and knowing now that whatever might come, nothing so terrible could fall on her again. The shock, insteadof prostrating her as it did her sister, seemed to rally all her forces, and clear and strengthen every faculty. She had scarcely slept, notwithstanding the calming dose which the doctor in his pity had insisted upon administering to both. It procured for poor little Milly some hours of feverish unconsciousness, but with Grace it acted on the mind, not the body, numbing the pain but giving an unnatural and vivid force to all her faculties. Her brain seemed to be beset by thoughts; and first among them was a yearning sympathy and pity for her mother. The sudden shock of a curtly worded telegram would be so novel, so terrible, to that happy woman, who never all her life had known what great sorrow was, that her young daughter shuddered at the thought.
As soon as she got up she began to write to her, while Milly still tossed and moaned in her unquiet sleep. Grace’s letter was such as no poet, save one of the highest genius, could have written. It was love and not she that composed it. It was a history of all the last days, tender and distinct as a picture. Every word that she said led up to the terrible news at the end, imperceptibly, gradually, as it is the art of tragedy to do, so that the reader should perceive the inevitable and feel it coming without the horror of a sudden shock. When her sister woke she read this letter to her, and they wept over it together. It was almost as new to Milly as it would be to her mother, for she had notrealised the slow constant progress of the days to this event, nor had Grace herself done so, till she had begun to put it down upon paper. When the doctor came in the morning the letter was all ready, put up and addressed; and then it was that Grace insisted no telegram should be sent.
“Mamma has never had any trouble all her life. He always did everything. Nothing dreadful has ever happened to us. The children have been ill, but they always got better. We never were afraid of anything. If this were flung at mamma like a shot—like a blow—it might kill her too.”
“Yes, it might kill her too,” Milly murmured, turning to the doctor her large strained eyes.
“But, my dear children, somebody must come to you at once; you can’t be left here alone. Your mother will be strengthened to bear it as you are, and for your sake. Somebody must come to you at once.”
“O Gracie!” murmured Milly, looking at her sister with beseeching eyes.
“Why?” said Grace steadily. “That is just what I cannot see. Nobody could wish mamma to come now. What good would it do? It would be dreadful for her;—and to him—to him!—--”
Here, brave as she was, she had to stop, and could not say any more.
“Of course,” said the doctor softly, “your father is beyond all need. He is safe now, whateverhappens; but you—what can you do? Somebody must come at once to take care of you, to take you home.”
Once more Milly’s eyes travelled from Grace to the doctor, and back again. To have some one to take care of them sounded to Milly the only thing that was left on earth to desire.
“No one,” said Grace, wondering at her own calm, “could be here for a fortnight; and the first days will be the worst. After that things will be easier. Don’t you see, everything that can happen will have happened then; and why should some one—for it could not be mamma now, Milly; it would not be mamma: why should some one be disturbed and made uncomfortable, and forced to start at a moment’s notice, only to take care of us? I can take care of Milly, and we can go home.” Another pause till the tears were swallowed somehow. “It will be less hard, on the whole, to go home by ourselves, than with any one else.”
The doctor was struck by this argument. He looked at them anxiously, fragile as they were, looking like shadows of girls after the long anxiety and strain of these ten days.
“Do you think,” he said, doubtful, “that you are able for it?”
“Able!” said Grace with the petulance of grief. “What is there to be able for now? We have borne the worst. If it had been a week ago, andI had known what was coming, I should have said, No, we were not able. But now!” the girl cried with a kind of disdain, “now we have suffered all that can be suffered, doctor. We can never lose our father again.”
Here Milly broke out into hysterical cries.
“Oh, papa, papa! Oh, Grace! What shall we do? What shall we do?”
Grace took her sister into her arms standing by the bedside, while the other sat up, her hair hanging about her, her face distraught with a passion of grief over which she had no control. The tears rained from Grace’s eyes, but she stood firm as a rock.
“We must bear it,” she said; “we must bear it, Milly. We cannot have that to bear again. We will not make it harder for mamma.”
This scene upset the kind doctor for the day; he could not give his attention to the other cases which awaited him for thinking of this heartrending picture. And as for the nurse, whose services were imperatively demanded for another “case”—she could not bear to take leave of them at all, but stole away as if she had done them a wrong.
“How could any woman with a heart in her bosom leave them in their trouble?” she said, sobbing, to the doctor; “but I am not a woman, I am only a nurse——”
“And there is a life to be preserved,” the doctorsaid. The woman, after all, was only a woman, petulant and unreasonable.
“We are all fools and know nothing. We could not save this life,” she said, “though there were no complications.”
Dr Brewer, too, felt a little ashamed. What was the good of him? He had done everything that his science was capable of, but that had been nothing. Old Death, the oldest of practitioners and the most experienced, had laughed at him, and out of his very hands had taken the prey.
The girls never knew what happened till the funeral was over; and yet it troubled them in the midst of their distress that there was nobody to ask to it, no train of mourners to do honour to their father. They went themselves, following the lonely coffin, and the doctor, half ashamed, half astonished at his own emotion, went with them, to see the stranger buried. He had sent the introductory letter to the Colonial office, accompanied by a statement of the circumstances; but the Minister was up to his eyes in parliamentary work, and his aides knew nothing about Mr Robert Yorke of Quebec. The landlord, out of respect for what had happened in his own house—though at first he had been very angry that any one should have taken such a liberty as to die in his house at the beginning of the season—followed at a little distance. He came by himself in the second mourning coach which the undertakers felt to benecessary, and in which it was well there should be some one for the sake of respectability. Notwithstanding all that had been said and done, it did not seem to the girls that they had ever realised what had happened till they came back that dreary afternoon, and sat down hand in hand in their sitting-room, the door closed upon all things, the murk evening closing in, and nothing to look forward to now—nothing to think of but their own desolation. They “broke down;” what could they do else? But when there are two to break down, it is inevitable that one of the two must see the vanity of tears and make an effort to check them.
“We cannot go on like this,” Grace said. “We will only kill ourselves too; that will not be any comfort for mamma. In the first place, we must find out whether there was anything that—papa wanted done while he was in England. Yes! I mean to talk of him,” she said, “just as if he were in Canada, as if he were next door; he must not be banished from his own because he is dead. Mamma will never let him be forgotten and put aside. We must accustom ourselves to talk about him. Perhaps there was something he wanted done. Do you recollect, Milly? he went away by himself that night?”
“Oh, Grace,” cried her sister, “whoever they are, I hate those people. They were the cause of it. He would never have caught cold but for——”
“Hush,” said Grace, “we must not hate anybody. I should like to go and ask about them; they must have been old—friends.”
It was at this moment that the waiter came in—the waiter who had always been so kind to them. He came in with a countenance regulated to the occasion.
“Young ladies,” he said, “here’s a gentleman below inquiring for a party as has come from Canada. It’s not a name as ever I heard before. Mr Crosthwaite, he’s asking for. I said as I did not like to disturb you such a day; but if so be as you might have heard speak of the name—from Canada.”
Grief is irritable, and Grace turned upon the questioner with quick resentment. “Oh, how can you come and askus?” she cried. “Is there nobody in your house to be disturbed but my sister and me?”
“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said the waiter, “I hope I’m not unfeeling. Nobody could have felt more—if it ain’t disrespectful to say so—according to their station in life. If it hadn’t a been that the manageress is that cantankerous about a death in the house I’d have followed the poor gentleman willingly to his last ’ome, and never grudged no trouble; but when a gentleman comes to me and asks for a party as arrived from Canada a fortnight ago——”
The two girls looked at each other. Wasthis, perhaps, the clue for which they were looking? They felt that it was wrong and a breach of the decorum of their sorrow that they should see any one on this day: but if, perhaps, this might be the clue they sought. “Arrived from Canada—a fortnight ago?” it seemed years—but they gulped down that thought. “We did so, you know,” said Grace, “but that is not our name. I know no one of that name. Did you say——?”
“I told him all as had happened, miss,” said the sympathetic waiter who brought the message, “and the gentleman was very sorry. He’s a feeling gentleman, whoever he is. He said, ‘Poor young ladies!’ as feeling as I could have done it myself; but he’s very anxious about this name Crosthwaite, or whatever it is. I said you was very considerate, and that if you could help him I made sure I might ask you. He would have liked to speak to any one as was from Canada,” the waiter said.
Again the girls looked at each other. Any one from Canada! Perhaps, though they did not know any Crosthwaites, they might know the gentleman who was inquiring for them; and even the sight of some one from home would be a kind of consolation. Grace, with a look, consulted Milly, who had no counsel to give, but only appealed back again to Grace with her beautiful eyes. Then the elder sister said, tremblingly, “We are not fit tosee any one; but if he thinks it will help him you may let him come up-stairs.” She said this with a sigh of what she felt to be extreme reluctance; but yet even the vaguest hope of an unknown friend and of some succour in their trouble gave a new turn to their thoughts.
In a few minutes the door opened again and the visitor came in. The girls were sitting together at one side of the table, two faint candles throwing a white light upon each white face. They looked small and young, almost childish, in their black dresses, and there was an anxious look upon the two little wan girlish countenances. The stranger came in with some diffidence. They could scarcely make out his face, but they saw at once that it was somebody unknown; and the look of expectation faded at once out of their eyes. They looked at each other with a piteous mutual disappointment.