A Houseful of Girls

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He gave himself a reassuring shake, and resumed briskly--"I crave leave
to say, Miss May, that I actually enjoy making up accounts, turning over
samples, and giving orders. Sometimes I hit on a good idea which the
commercial world acknowledges, and then I am as proud as if I had
unearthed an ancient manuscript, or found the philosopher's stone. I
pulled a fellow through a difficulty the other day, and it felt like
taking part in an exciting fight. I have speculated occasionally when I
was fishing--paying myself a huge compliment, no doubt--whether old
Izaak Walton felt like me about trade."

"Was he in trade?" inquired May, with some surprise. "I know he wrote
_The Complete Angler_, and was a friend of Dr. Donne's and George
Herbert's, and is very much thought of to this day."

"Deservedly," said Tom Robinson emphatically. "Yes, I am proud to say,
he was a hosier to begin with, and a linen-draper to end
with--well-to-do in both lines. They say his first wife, whom he married
while he was still in business, was a niece of the Archbishop of
Canterbury of the day, and his second wife, whom he married after he had
retired to live on his earnings, was a half-sister of good Bishop Ken's;
but I do not pretend to vouch for the truth of these statements. Now,
about your father. I cannot do what you ask--I cannot in conscience.
Will you ever forgive me, 'little May'--that is what your father and
mother and your sisters call you sometimes to this day, ain't it? and it
is what I should have called you if I had been--your uncle say? Shall we
be no longer friends?" he demanded ruefully.

"Of course we shall," said May, with a suspicion of petulance. "You are
not bound to do what I bid you--I never thought that; and you are father
and mother's friend--how could I help being your friend?"

"Don't try to help it," he charged her.

Tom Robinson went farther than not feeling bound to do what May begged
of him, he was constrained to remonstrate in another quarter to prevent
trouble and disappointment to all concerned. He screwed up his courage,
and everybody knows he was a modest man, and called at the Old Doctor's
House for the express purpose. He had called seldom during the past
year--just often enough to keep up the form of visiting--to show that he
was not the surly boor, without self-respect or consideration for the
Millars, which he would have been if he had dropped all intercourse with
the family because one of them had refused to marry him. But though he
had begged for Dora's friendship when he could not have her love, and
had meant what he said, the wound was too recent for him to act as if
nothing had happened. In addition to the pain and self-consciousness,
there was a traditional atmosphere of agitation and alarm, a kind of
conventional awkwardness, together with an anxious countenance, and
protection sedulously afforded by the initiated and interested
spectators to Tom and Dora, which, like many other instances of
countenance and protection, went far towards doing the mischief they
were intended to prevent.

Tom saw through the punctilious feints and solemn stratagems clearly;
Dora did the same as plainly. Indeed the two would have been idiots if
they could have escaped from the discomfiting perception of the care
which was taken of them and their feelings, and the fact that every eye
was upon them.

The sole result was to render the couple more wretchedly uncomfortable
than if they had been set aside and sentenced to the company of each
other and of no one else for a bad five minutes every day of their
lives.

Another unhappy consequence of their being thus elaborately spared and
shielded was, that when by some unfortunate chance the tactics failed,
the couple felt as flurried and guilty as if they had contrived the
fruitless accident to serve their own nefarious ends.

Tom Robinson called on the Millars between four and five the day after
May had made her raid upon him, expecting to find what was left of the
family gathering together for afternoon tea. He had the ulterior design
of drawing May's father and mother apart, and letting them judge for
themselves the advisability of her going up at once to St. Ambrose's,
before her whole heart and mind were disastrously set against her
natural and honourable destiny. He was distinctly put out by finding
Dora alone. As for Dora, she told a faltering tale of her father's
having been called away to a poor patient who was a pensioner of her
mother's, and of Mrs. Millar's having walked over to Stokeleigh with
him to see what she could do for old Hannah Lightfoot; while May was
spending the afternoon with the Hewetts at the Rectory.

He hesitated whether to go or stay under the circumstances, but he hated
to beat an ignominious retreat, as if _he_ thought that _she_ thought he
could not be beside her for a quarter of an hour without making an ass
of himself again and pestering her. Why should he not accept the cup of
tea which she faintly offered from the hands that visibly trembled with
nervousness? When he came to consider it, why should he not transact his
business with Dora? She was as deeply interested as anybody, unless the
culprit herself; she probably knew better what May was foolishly
planning than either their father or mother did, and would convey to
them the necessary information.

As for Dora, she was thinking in a restless fever, "I hope--I hope he
does not see how much I mind being alone with him. It is just because I
am not used to it. How I wish somebody would come in,--not mother,
perhaps, for she would start and look put out herself, and sit down
without so much as getting rid of her sunshade; and, oh dear, not May,
for she would stare, and I do not know what on earth she would
think--some wild absurdity, I dare say; anyhow, she would look exactly
what she thought."

"Look here, Miss Dora," he said abruptly; "you don't think your sister
May ought to renounce the object of her education hitherto, and your
father's views for her, in order to do like Miss Phyllis Carey? You are
aware that May has become enamoured of Phyllis Carey's example, and is
bent on following in her footsteps; but it won't do, and I have told her
so. I trust nobody suspects me of encouraging young ladies to become
shop-women," he added, with a slightly foolish laugh, "as old actors
used to be accused of decoying young men of rank and fashion into going
on the stage, and recruiting sergeants of beguiling country bumpkins
into taking the king's shilling."

"Has May spoken to you about it?" cried Dora, startled out of her
engrossing private reflections. "What a child she is! I am sorry she has
troubled you; she ought not to have done that. I hope you will excuse
her."

"Don't speak of it," he said a little stiffly, as he put down his cup
and signified he would have no more tea.

"And you said no," remarked Dora, with an involuntary fall of her voice
reflecting the sinking of her heart. "Of course you could not do
otherwise. It was a foolish notion. I am afraid Phyllis Carey is enough
of a nuisance to Miss Franklin--and other people. It is hard that you
should be bothered by these girls. Only I suspect poor 'little May' will
be most dreadfully, unreasonably disappointed;" and there was an attempt
to smile and a quiver of the soft lips which she could not hide.

"I am not bothered, and I hate to disappoint your sister,--I trust you
understand that," he said quickly and earnestly. "But it would be
sacrificing her and overturning your father's arrangements for
her--disappointing what I am sure are among his dearest wishes."

She did not ask, like May, why he did not count himself sacrificed. She
only said shyly and wistfully, "I knew it was out of the question, but
if it had not been so, or if there had been any other way, it would have
been such a boon to poor May not to be torn from home." At the harrowing
picture thus conjured up her voice fairly shook, and the tears started
into her dovelike eyes.

"Home," he said impatiently, "is not everything; at least, not the home
from which every boy must go, as a matter of course. 'Torn from home' in
order to go to school! Surely the first part of the sentence is tall
language."

"It is neither too tall nor too strong where May is concerned," said
Dora, rousing herself to plead May's cause. "She has not been away from
home and from father--especially from mother, and one or other of the
rest of us, for longer than a week since she was born."

"Then the sooner she begins the better for her," he said brutally, as it
sounded to himself, to the loving, shrinking girl he was addressing.

"She has always been the little one, the pet," urged Dora; "she will not
know what to do without some of us to take care of her and be good to
her."

"But she must go away some day," he continued his remonstrance. "How old
is your sister?"

"She was seventeen last Christmas," Dora answered shamefacedly.

"Why, many a woman is married before she is May's age," he protested.
"Many a woman has left her native country, gone among strangers, and had
to maintain her independence and dignity unaided, by the time she was
seventeen. Queen Charlotte was not more than sixteen when she landed in
England and married George the Third."

Dora could not help laughing, as he meant her to do. "May and Queen
Charlotte! they are as far removed as fire and water. But," she answered
meekly, "I know the Princess Royal was no older when she went to Berlin;
and poor Marie Antoinette was a great deal younger, as May would have
reminded me if she had been here, in the old days when she travelled
from Vienna to Paris. But there--it is all so different. They were
princesses from whom a great deal is expected, and the Princess Royal
was the eldest instead of the youngest of the Queen's children."

"Does seniority make so great a difference?" he said, with an inflection
of his voice which she noticed, though he hastened to make her forget it
by speaking again gravely the next minute. "Should May not learn to
stand alone? Would it not be dwarfing and cramping her, all her life
probably, to give way to her now. Can it ever be too early to acquire
self-reliance, and is it not one of the most necessary lessons for a
responsible human being to learn? Besides, '_ce n'est que le premier pas
qui coute_.' It is only the first wrench which will hurt her. She will
find plenty of fresh interests and congenial occupations at St.
Ambrose's. In a week, a fortnight, she will not miss you too much."

Dora shook her head incredulously. It was little he knew of May, with
her fond family attachments, and her helplessness when left to herself
in common things.

"Follow my advice, Miss Dora," he said, rising to take his leave, "don't
aid and abet Miss May in seeking to shirk her obligations.
Unquestionably the one nearest to her at present is that she should go
to St. Ambrose's. Don't prevent her from beginning to think and act for
herself--not like a charming child, but in the light of her dawning
womanhood."

He gave a swift glance round him as he spoke, and a recollection which
had been in the background of both their thoughts during the whole of
the interview, flashed into the foreground. It was of that day a year
ago, a breezy spring day like this, when, as it seemed, there were the
same jonquils in the jar on the chimney-piece, and the same
cherry-blossom seen through the window against the blue sky, and he had
asked her with his heart on his lips, and the happiness of his life at
stake, to be his wife, and she had told him, with agitation and distress
almost equal to his, that he could never be anything to her. He caught
her half-averted eyes, and felt the whole scene was present with her as
with him once more, and the consciousness brought back all his old
shyness and reserve, and hurried his leave-taking. The slightest touch
to her hand, and he had bowed himself out and was gone.

"How silly he must think me," Dora reflected, walking up and down the
empty room in perturbation, "both about poor 'little May,' and about
remembering the last time we were alone together. I dare say he is
right about May, though men never do understand what girls feel. If she
should fall ill, and break her heart, and die of home-sickness--such
things have happened before now--I wonder what he would say then about
her learning to stand alone? Very likely he would assert that St.
Ambrose's is not St. Petersburg, or even Shetland or the Scilly Isles.
It is not far away, and if she were not well or happy, she could come
back in half a day, as the other girls could come down from London. But
then he would despise her, for as quiet and good-natured as he is, and
though people have said that he himself had no proper pride in
consenting to have a shop. And I don't think May could bear contempt
from anybody whom she had ever looked on as a friend. Men are hard--the
best of them are, and they don't understand. He is kind--I am sure he
means it all in kindness; but he is not yielding; he is as masterful as
when he dragged the dogs to the edge of the bank and let them drop into
the Dewes for their good. He will never be turned from what he thinks
right. I wish he had not guessed what I could not help remembering--he
was quick enough in doing that; and I could not tell him that I did not
imagine for a moment--I was not so foolish--that he was under the same
delusion he suffered from twelve months ago. If he had been oftener
here in the interval, and we had met and been together naturally as we
used to be, sometimes, I should have forgotten all about it, and so
would he, no doubt. But how could I help thinking of it when there has
always been such a point made of mother or some one else being present
when he called? I am certain it is quite unnecessary and a great
mistake. He will not speak to me again as he spoke that day. There is no
danger of his running away with me," Dora told herself with an unsteady
laugh. "I hope he is not under the impression that I did not think and
act for myself when I was forced to do it. Because, although they all
knew about it, and of course Annie and the others teased me about
'Robinson's,' and the colour of his hair, and his size, father and
mother told me to decide for myself, and I did not hesitate for a
moment. I could no more have borne to leave them all of my own free will
than May could. Surely it was proof positive I did not like him in that
way," Dora represented to herself with the greatest emphasis.

Tom Robinson was marching home with his hands in his pockets and his hat
drawn over his eyes. "How hard she must think me--little short of a
pragmatical, supercilious brute--not to do my best to keep 'little May'
at home, where the child wants to be. I asked her to let me call myself
her friend, and this is the first specimen of my friendship! she will
take precious good care not to ask for another. She will be horribly
dull left by herself without one girl companion, only the old people.
These sisters were so happy together--I liked to see them, perhaps all
the more because I had neither brothers nor sisters of my own--I thought
it was an assurance of what they might be in other relations of life. I
suppose she will tackle that little spitfire of a dog which I inflicted
on them. May will lay her parting injunctions on Dora to plague herself
perpetually with the monster, and these will be like dying words to
Dora, she will sooner die herself than intermit a single harassing
attention. And it will be impossible for her to avoid many deprivations.
There are more partings to be faced in the future. Millar is an old man,
even if he could hope to pay up the bank's calls and make some provision
for his widow and daughters. It was a pity poor Dora could not care for
me, when there need have been no partings where we two were concerned,
save that material separation of death which is quoted in the marriage
service. She would not have believed, nor I either, that it could touch
the spiritual side of the question and the love which is worth having,
that is God-like and belongs to immortality. I might have done what I
could if Dora had married me, so far as the other girls would have let
me, to serve as a buffer between the family and the adversity which I am
afraid not all their high spirit and gallant fight will hold entirely at
bay. It was not to be, and there is an end on't. I wonder where I found
the heart, and the cheek too for that matter, to bully Dora about May,
though, Heaven knows, I spoke no more than the truth. Well, she has her
revenge, and I am punished for it. It cut me up at the time to hurt her,
and the recollection of having contradicted and pained so sweet and
gentle a creature is very much as if I had dealt a lamb a blow or wrung
a pigeon's neck--on principle."

Half an hour afterwards Mrs. Millar bustled into her drawing-room with
an expression of mingled annoyance and excited expectation on her still
comely face.

"My dear Dora, I am so sorry; he gave his name to Jane, and she has told
me who has been calling in my absence. I wish I had not left you by
yourself. But who was to guess that Tom Robinson would call this
afternoon? It must have been exceedingly disagreeable for you."

"I don't know," said Dora, vaguely and desperately; "we must meet
sometimes when there is nobody by, if we continue to live in the same
town. I wish you would not mind it for me, mother, and keep on trying to
avoid such accidents, for I really think it makes them worse when they
do happen."

"Very well, my dear, you know your own feelings best," said Mrs. Millar,
a little puzzled. In her day it was reckoned no more than what was due
to maidenly delicacy and social propriety to preserve a respectful
distance between a rejected man and his rejector. As if the gentleman
might, as Dora had said, carry off the lady by force, or shoot her or
himself with the pistol hidden in his breast!

CHAPTER XVI.

ROSE'S FOLLY AND ANNIE'S WISDOM.

Annie Millar not only warmed to her work in St. Ebbe's, she recovered
her full glow of health and spirits. She not only liked her nursing, she
enjoyed her holiday hours intensely with the peculiarly keen enjoyment
of busy women doing excellent service in the world. If any one wishes to
know what such enjoyment is like let him have recourse to a great
authority. "_In the few hours of holiday that--only now and then--they
(a nursing sisterhood) allow themselves, they show none of the weariness
that sometimes follows the industry of toiling after self-amusement.
Reaction, after great strain on the powers of self-sacrifice and
endurance that they have to exert, may be thought to account in some
part for the happy result; but, whatever the cause, their society has in
it all that can best and most surely attract--grace, freshness, and
natural charm._"[1]

[Footnote 1: Kinglake in his _History of the Crimean
War_, vol. vi. p. 436.]

Rose felt as if she had never sufficiently appreciated Annie before. She
was very proud of her sister now when she came to Welby Square, and
everybody, whether in Mrs. Jennings's set or in Hester's, was struck
with Annie's beauty and brightness.

Even Hester Jennings saw nothing to find fault with on the ornamental
side of a girl who had gone in so heartily for the serious business of
life, nine-tenths of whose hours were occupied with grave tasks, to
which Hester owned honestly that she with all her public spirit was not
equal.

Annie's face was not only the most unclouded, her laugh the merriest of
all the faces and laughs which appeared and were heard in Welby Square.
She became almost as much of a peacemaker, a smoother-down of rough
interludes, an allayer of irritating ebullitions, as Dora was wont to be
at home.

"Annie is so much improved," Rose wrote to May, "I never saw her looking
prettier. She is just splendid when she comes out of St. Ebbe's for an
afternoon and evening. Everybody is delighted to see her, and wants to
have her for his or her particular friend. She and I have such jolly
walks and talks; she hardly ever calls me back or puts me down now."

After pronouncing this high encomium it was rather a shock to Rose not
only to incur Annie's righteous displeasure, but to discover that on
occasions Annie could be as severe and relentless in her sentences as
ever.

Rose, like most middle-class girls not fairly out of their teens, and
committed to their own discretion in the huge motley world of London,
had been solemnly charged to behave with the greatest wariness. She was
to treat every man or woman she encountered well-nigh as a dangerous
enemy in disguise till her suspicions were proved to be misplaced, and
the stranger shown to Rose's satisfaction and that of her seniors and
guardians to be a harmless friend.

To do Rose justice, she remembered for the most part what had been told
her, and was careful not to expose herself to the slightest chance of
misapprehension--not to say rudeness, such as would have frightened her
mother and incensed her father. Rose would not be tempted by the
fearless independence of Hester Jennings and her cronies. They
maintained, in theory at least, that though there might be dens of vice
and dark places of cruelty in the great city, for those whose feet trod
the downward path, yet its crowded thoroughfares, to those who honestly
went about their own business, or to the messengers of divine charity
and mercy, were as safe, and safer, than any quiet country road.
Womanhood in the strength and confidence of its purity and fearlessness
might traverse them alone at any hour of the day or night.

But Rose submitted to the ordinary if antiquated code, which implies the
timidity and defencelessness of young women whenever and wherever
assailed. She had not gone far enough in her emancipation to reckon as
part of it, immunity from apprehension of every kind, including the
strife of evil tongues.

However, one day in the beginning of May, Rose went to Covent Garden in
pursuit of a pot of tulips, which she suddenly felt she must have,
without delay, as an accessory in one of her sketches. She was coming
home laden with her spoil by way of Burnet's, where there was an equal
necessity for her to procure, on the instant, a yard or two of gauzy
stuff of a certain uncertain hue, when a thunder-storm unexpectedly
broke over the haunt of artists. Torrents of rain followed, enough to
wash away whole pyramids of flowers and piles of art-materials. If the
downpour did nothing else it cleared the crowded street, with the
celerity of magic only seen in such circumstances, and left Rose
cowering in a doorway, alone as it seemed to her, but for a cab-driver
who took refuge in his cab, drawn up before one of the opposite houses.
The rain looked as if it meant to continue, while, laden as Rose was,
she could not have held up an umbrella even if she had found one ready
to her hand.

Her slender funds did not set her up in cabs, as she had told herself on
many a weary trudge in fog and drizzle between Mr. Foy's class-rooms and
Welby Square. Besides she would like to see Hester Jennings's face when
she (Rose Millar) proposed to indulge in such a luxury. But there would
be more lost than gained if she stood shivering in that doorway till her
best spring frock was ruined, waiting for an omnibus which was sure to
arrive with every available inch of space occupied. She would catch a
chill or an influenza with no kind father near to save her a doctor's
bill, and cure her simply for the pleasure of doing it. She would brave
Hester's eagle eye, supposing it could scan Rose's misdeeds from some
coigne of vantage commanding this end of the street. She signalled to
the cab-driver opposite, who put his head out of the cab window and
signalled back that he had a fare besides himself at present ensconced
in one of the inhospitable-looking houses.

Should she bid the thunder, lightning, and rain do their worst, and set
out to walk home in defiance of them? While she still paused irresolute,
peeping out disconsolately at the inky sky from which the downpour fell,
a young man in the conscious superiority of a waterproof and an ample
umbrella, walked leisurely along the sloppy, deserted pavement. He
looked at her, seemed arrested by something which struck him in her
appearance, hesitated a little undecidedly, stopped short, and addressed
her, colouring up to his frank, honest blue eyes as he did so.

"I am afraid you have been caught in this tremendous shower. Can I do
nothing to help you--call a cab, for instance?"

"Oh! thank you very much," she said gratefully, forgetting all about the
cunning enemy in disguise for whom she was to be always looking out.
Indeed she had felt so lonely a minute before that she was rather
disposed to welcome a comrade in misfortune. "The cabman in the cab
opposite tells me he is engaged, and I do not remember any cab-stand
near this."

"There is one round the corner, which I passed a minute ago, but it was
vacant; all the world is wanting cabs in such weather. However, I can
shelter you a little, if you will allow me," and he held the umbrella in
front of her.

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