A Houseful of Girls

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The truth was that, in the matter of hair, nature had favoured Miss
Vanhansen with a peculiarly fine and luxuriant crop, so that she had no
need to apply to art for its help.

But as for May, she saw nothing and heard nothing of the discrepancies
which might mar the ancient story to far less ostentatiously
matter-of-fact and mocking critics than the would-be barbarian from
beyond the herring-pond. The piteous tragedy was enacted in all its
terror and pathos to May. She forgot even to sigh for one of the
original great open-air amphitheatres, with the cloudless blue sky of
Greece overhead, which had been the fit setting to those old-world
plays; while she appreciated, without being conscious of the
appreciation, every scenic item--the double stage, the attendant chorus,
the classic dress, that had awakened Miss Vanhansen's ridicule, from the
sandal on the foot to the toque on the head--all which could lend
verisimilitude to the spectacle. For the benefit of happy May, Alcestis
lived again in modern St. Ambrose's. Once more she suffered and died
willingly in the room of Admetus; once more the miserable husband's
half-heroic, half-savage ally, Harakles, fought Death for his pale prey,
and brought back the sacrificed wife from Hades, to restore her--a
figure veiled and motionless, yet instinct with glad life, every vein
throbbing with love and thankfulness--to the arms of her husband, more
joyful, and at the same time, in the middle of his joy, more full of
yearning sorrow and self-abasement than ever was happy bridegroom.

On the day after the play, Miss Lascelles casually mentioned to May that
even if she went in for the coming examination, she, Miss Lascelles,
thought May had better not try for the Markham scholarship.

"But I must, Miss Lascelles," protested May, starting up as if she
were awakening from a dream, and opening great eyes of distress and
apprehension--feelings which were only at that moment called into
life. "My father would be so vexed and disappointed if I did not."

"If you will take my advice, my dear, you will wait till next year;
there will be another scholarship falling in then. Very many of the
Thirlwall Hall girls do much better the second year than they have done
the first," Miss Lascelles continued to warn her girl-graduate, with the
delicate consideration and tact which qualified the lady principal for
her office. "It is bad policy to enter hastily into a competition with
failure staring you in the face. It will only serve to dishearten you,
and to mislead people with regard to what I am now certain--I can
honestly congratulate you on my conviction--are your really exceptional
gifts. You will do Thirlwall Hall credit, and we shall all be proud of
you, if you will have patience. You are very young; you can afford to
wait. It is a common occurrence for clever, studious girls, and lads
too, to come up to St. Ambrose's from the country, from private schools
or home-teaching, who are not sufficiently exact in their scholarship,
and do nothing beyond remedying the defect in their first or even their
second year. You don't grudge giving what is but a fraction of your
life, after all, to thorough as opposed to superficial learning, do you,
dear? Remember, the one is worthy and the other worthless--a mere
pretentious waste."

"I cannot help it," said May, with a little gasp of despair. "To wait is
just what I cannot afford to do. I am almost certain that my coming up
next year depends on what I can do this term. We have grown quite poor.
Father has lost a great deal of money lately. Even if he were content
to send me back here, I do not think it would be right in me to come,
unless I could do something to lessen the expense. My sister Annie is
in London learning to be a nurse, and my sister Rose is coming out as
an artist."

"I thought they were doing it from choice. Why did you not apply
yourself before, Miss Millar? You knew what you could do, better than
any of us here could possibly guess your talents and attainments.
From your general behaviour until the play was started, I for one, I
confess, fell into the grave error of supposing that you could do
little or nothing, or that any progress you had made was entirely
forced work." Miss Lascelles spoke sharply, for she was considerably
discomfited, and full of unavailing regret for her share in the
misadventure.

May could not tell her that she had been too miserable about coming
away from home, and leaving her mother and father, Dora and Tray, to
apply herself to learning; neither would there have been much use in
her applying if she had been destined to fade away presently as she
had imagined, and to die, bereft, among the lexicons, commentaries,
and lecture-notes of Thirlwall Hall. She preferred to say with meek
contriteness that she knew she had been very idle, but she would do
her best to atone for her idleness by working every lawful moment of
every hour of the few weeks which were left to her, if Miss Lascelles
would but allow her to go in for the examination, preparatory to
trying for the scholarship.

Miss Lascelles could not prevent her, she told May a little dryly, for
the students of Thirlwall Hall, though some of them were no more than
seventeen--May's age--were all regarded and treated as grown-up young
women capable of judging and acting for themselves. What Miss Lascelles
was bound to do was to see that Miss Millar did not run into the
opposite extreme, and bring on a brain fever by over-study. "And you
know, my dear," finished the kind, experienced woman, who was easily
softened, who had always the greatest difficulty to keep from being
sympathetic, "that would be a great deal worse than merely being turned
back in your examinations, though Dr. Millar is not rich, and there may
be obstacles--I sincerely trust they will not be insurmountable--to your
coming back in the autumn, to work with a will and at the same time with
moderation."

Poor May did not work herself into a brain fever, but she did in
other respects exactly as Miss Lascelles--a woman who understood
the position--had clearly foreseen. May succeeded in fretting, and
worrying, and getting herself into a state of nervous agitation.
Her brain, or that part of it which had to do with grammatical
declensions, derivations, rules, and principles, became a complete
muddle, so that in place of taking in new information, it seemed to
be rapidly letting go the old which it had once held securely.

Before the eventful day of May's examination, she had lost the last
shred of hope, and so had all who had heard her or formed a correct
estimate of the contents of her papers, of her crossing the rubicon. Of
her own accord she sorrowfully refrained from making any move to enter
the lists for the scholarship.

It is the fashion at St. Ambrose's not to issue the result of the
examinations for a considerable number of weeks, during which the
unhappy candidates hang on the tenterhooks of expectation. A looker-on
is inclined to consider this a refinement of cruelty till he or she has
taken into consideration that the motive of the protracted suspense is
to suit the convenience and lessen the arduous labours of the toil-worn
professors and tutors who serve as examiners.

But in May Millar's case her failure was such a foregone conclusion, was
so remedial by reason of her youth, and so qualified by the share she
had taken in the Greek play, that a point was stretched for her, and she
was privately put out of pain at once. Latterly May had not entertained
the slightest expectation of any other sentence, yet the blow fell so
heavily upon her that it was well it was the end of the term.

To do Thirlwall Hall no more than justice, everybody was sorry for
their youngest, gentlest, prettiest, most inspired, and withal most
inoffensive and obliging student. Miss Lascelles took May into her
private sitting-room and recklessly lavished the few moments the lady
principal had in which to rest and recruit from the fatigue of
receiving company, and playing a becoming part in the academical
gaieties with which the summer term at St. Ambrose's closes, in order
to speak encouraging words to the poor crestfallen child. Miss
Vanhansen implored May to cross the herring-pond at her expense, and
have a good time among the Barbarian's relations in Ol' Virginny and
Kentuck. The girl who had played Alcestis wanted to inaugurate a
reading-party in which May should be coached all round every day.
Failing this, the same adventurous spirit would get up a series of
Greek plays in London drawing-rooms, with Miss Millar's assistance;
and so far as she herself was concerned, she would never be contented
till Miss Millar played Admetus to her Alcestis. A large deputation of
blue-stockinged maidens from Thirlwall Hall escorted May to the
railway station, and more than one was relieved to find that she was
going first to join her sisters in London instead of carrying the
mortification of her failure straight to her country-town home.

It might be the deferring of an ordeal, and yet it was with a white
face, as abashed and well-nigh as scared as if she had committed a
crime, that May awaited Annie in the drawing-room to which the
probationers' friends were free at St. Ebbe's. The consciousness had
come too late of having wasted the little money her father had to spare
on sentimental self-indulgence and the gratification of her own feelings
instead of employing it as it was meant to be employed, in controlling
herself and doing her duty, so as to acquire fitting arms for the battle
of life.

It was this horrible comprehension which made her wistful eyes grow
distended and fixed in their sense of guilt and disgrace. She might have
committed a forgery, and be come to tell Annie what she had done. May
was essentially one-idea'd at this period of her life, and she had dwelt
on the fact of her failure and exaggerated its importance, like the most
egotistical of human beings, till it filled her imagination and blotted
out every other consideration.

Annie, in the full career of a busy professional morning, snatched a
moment between two important engagements to see her sister.

May looked with imploring, fascinated eyes at Annie in her nurse's gown
and cap. The younger girl had some faint inkling of Annie's earlier
experience in the life of an hospital; yet there she was as fresh and
fair and bright as ever--a thousand times cooler and happier-looking
than her visitor.

"Here you are, May," Annie was saying in glad greeting, as she held her
sister by the two shoulders, after she had kissed her; "and I declare
you have grown since you went to St. Ambrose's. Oh, you incorrigible
girl, when you were so much the tallest of us before you went there."

May could only make one answer with parched lips, faltering tongue, and
eyes dry under their heavy cloud of grief, "Annie, I have failed in my
examination!"

Annie started in surprise, while her face fell for a second. "What a
pity!" she could not help exclaiming. "Father will be----" She broke off
in the middle of the sentence. "Don't fret about it," she added, quickly
taking another look into May's face; "that will do no good, and it is
not very much after all. I cannot stay another minute now, May," she
went on to tell the bewildered girl in the most matter-of-fact tone, so
that May was in danger of feeling half-offended at finding her
tribulation taken so cavalierly--"just like Annie!"

"You must wait for me," Annie was saying further. "There is a poor
fellow--a patient of mine--who is to have his arm amputated this
morning, and I must be with him when it is done."

"Oh dear!" cried May, completely taken aback, "that is dreadful. Will he
die, Annie? Will he die?" forgetting all her own high-strung woes, the
product of an advanced stage of civilization, in heart-felt, human
sympathy with the most primitive of all trials--bodily suffering and
loss.

"Not if we can help it, please God," said Annie emphatically. Then an
inspiration came to her as she gazed on the girl's white quivering face.
"You have been working too hard, 'little May'; you shake your head like
a tragedy queen. Then you've been worrying too much, which is a great
deal worse. I shall take you in hand, but I can't stay to talk about it.
Just you think how little my poor fellow would mind not passing an
examination, in comparison with the loss of an arm--fortunately it is
the left one. He is a printer who got his arm crushed under one of the
great rollers, and he has a wife and five little children dependent on
their bread-winner."

Annie was gone, leaving May suddenly transported out of herself, and
plunged into the trials of her neighbours, the awfully near, common
life-and-death trials, of which she had known so little. Her own seemed
to sink into insignificance beside them. St. Ambrose's and its
intellectual lists and wordy contests, even its lofty abstruse
thoughts--excellent things in their way, without which the unlettered
world would become rude, sordid and narrow--faded into the background.
She forgot everything but the poor man passing through a mortal crisis,
with Annie able to succour him in his need, and his wife and children
waiting to hear whether the end were life or death.

May held her breath, and watched, prayed, and waited in her turn, with
no thought left for the news she had brought to town, and was to carry
to Redcross. What did it signify if only the poor man lived when May
herself was well and strong, and all her dear friends were in health,
and likely to be spared to her.

When Annie came in again with a cheerful face, and said, "He has stood
it wonderfully; there is every prospect of his making a speedy
recovery," May's face too cleared till for the moment it was almost
radiant. She acquiesced, with responsive animation, in Annie's
arrangement that since she, Annie, had got leave of absence for the
rest of the day she would put on her walking-dress, and she and May
too would go and pick up Rose at Mr. St. Foy's class-rooms; and what
was to hinder all the three from having an expedition together in the
fine summer weather to Hampton Court, or Kew, or the Crystal Palace,
thus celebrating May's visit to town, and making the most of Annie's
holiday? It would be like dear old times of primrose hunting, blue-bell
gathering, maying, and nutting down at Redcross before the cares and
troubles of the world had taken hold of the girls. Annie had already
sent on May's luggage to Welby Square, to which May would return with
Rose. Annie excluded herself carefully from this part of the programme,
with a kind of unapproachable haughtiness which had three strains of
stubbornness and one strain of fiery youthful anger in its composition,
while it was a complete enigma to May. But all she cared to know was
that she was going with her own two sisters for an entire afternoon's
delightful excursion. In the morning she had felt that she could never
have the heart to be happy again. Even yet she would not be quite happy;
she would be very much affronted when she was telling Annie and Rose the
particulars of her, May's, silliness and selfishness; how she had given
herself up to moping, and then how she had played herself--first with
the St. Ambrose gaieties, and later with the Greek play, instead of
setting about her work methodically and diligently. Annie would,
perhaps, tell her a few home-truths, and Rose would crumple up her
nose, shake her head, and look superhumanly wise--Rose who in the
old days had been more thoughtless than May.

Still she deserved it all a thousand times over, and it would be a
relief to have disburdened herself of the sorry tale.

Her own sisters would defend her from every other assailant. They would
feel for her, seek to reassure her, even make much of her, as they were
doing by taking her away with them this afternoon. May was very sensible
that a burden was lifted off her back.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DORA IS THE NEXT MESSENGER WITH BAD TIDINGS.

There is a curious feeling abroad in the world, that no two things
happen alike on two days, or in two weeks, or months, running. If there
has been a railway accident on Monday, there will certainly not be
another of the same kind at the same place on Tuesday. Apart from the
fresh precautions sure to be taken, it is not at all likely, in the
chapter of accidents, that a facsimile will occur where the original has
preceded it so recently. On a similar principle, if a man has been
killed or badly injured by a fall from a horse, it goes against public
opinion that his son or his brother should also be thus injured. If the
singular repetition does take place, people will speak of it with bated
breath, as of a fate or doom hanging over the family, and therefore
bound to repeat itself again and again on the old lines. All this is in
spite of the fact that there is such a word as "coincidence" in the
language, and that there is hardly one of us who cannot remember
several startling coincidences in the course of his or her history.

Annie Millar had an experience of the kind at this time. It was on the
20th of June that May arrived unannounced at St. Ebbe's to recount her
lost battle. On the 21st Dora appeared, in a like unlooked-for manner,
to divulge her sorrowful news.

Annie was much more troubled by the spectacle of Dora standing alone in
the middle of the hospital drawing-room, pale and agitated, than she had
been by the discovery of May in that very condition the day before.
Annie's own colour died away while she ran forward and caught Dora's
hand. "What is it, Dora? Has anything happened to father or mother?--yet
if there had, you would not have left them and come up to town by
yourself. Why are you here? Tell me quickly, for it is killing me to
keep me in suspense."

"Don't be alarmed," entreated Dora's soft voice. "Father sent me up for
the express purpose that you might not be alarmed when you heard. I must
have managed badly to frighten you. I assure you nothing has happened,
at least nothing very particular, only,--well, father is very rheumatic,
and the warm weather has done him no good. He has not been out of the
house for a month, though we did not mention it in our letters, always
hoping that by the next time we wrote he would be better. But he has not
left his room till he contrived to go in the cab yesterday. Oh! Annie,
he has sold his business to Dr. Capes. He--father--said it was no use to
protract the struggle, it was only doing more mischief; he would never
be able, at his age, to go about again so as to act fairly by his
patients. He has given up everything to the bank's creditors, and will
pass through the bankruptcy court. He bade me tell you that he could see
no other way, and he was afraid Rose or you might read his name in the
_Gazette_ without being prepared for it."

"Father ill, old, and a bankrupt!" Annie's cry was bitter. "It is hard
after his long life of honourable industry. I can never forgive Mr.
Carey."

"Hush! hush! Annie, you must not say that. Nothing would grieve father
more. Nobody has suffered like the Careys. Besides, father always says
that he alone was to blame for buying the bank shares. He did it of his
own free-will, just that he might grow richer in the idlest manner
possible for him to do so. Dr. Capes has taken our house, the Old
Doctor's House too, and father and mother went into apartments--those
over Robarts the book-seller's--yesterday, till they could look about
them." Dora was crying quietly all the time she was speaking, and at the
same time she was breaking off to say with pathetic resigned trust like
her mother's, "But only think, Annie dear, how much worse it might have
been! What a great deal we have to be thankful for. Look at poor Mr.
Carey sitting paralyzed, and quite childish; and do you know the sad
news arrived last night that poor poor Colonel Russell is dead? He had a
sun-stroke, and died within twelve hours; he has not been three months
at his new post. Dear father has all his senses, and he says himself he
may live for years and years."

"I hope so," said Annie fervently; but it is doubtful whether she fully
appreciated the blessings of her lot at that moment. She busied herself
for a few minutes with Dora, her nurse's instinct as well as her
affection telling her that Dora must be seen to first. Annie took off
Dora's hat and jacket, seated her in the easiest chair, would hear
nothing more till she--Annie--had learnt when Dora had breakfasted, and
then rung for a basin of soup and made her swallow it. "Now, Dora," she
said, sitting down by her sister, "tell me all there is to tell. What
have father and mother to live upon? We must think and act for them
now."

Dora explained as well as she was able, since, like her mother, she had
no great head for business. In addition to the sum given for the
good-will of Dr. Millar's practice, and for his house and furniture,
which was to be paid over to the liquidators of the bank's debts, (in
return for which the debtor would get a discharge from farther
obligations,) a small percentage was to be allowed to him from his
successor's fees.

"I am afraid it will be very small," Dora made the despondent remark,
"because, though all his former patients are fond of father, they got to
see he was breaking up, and did not like to send for him during the
night, or at odd hours. Mother and I did what we could, going round for
him and inquiring after his patients; but, as he said, such a make-shift
could not last. We were always hearing of more families calling in Dr.
Capes or Mr. Newton. Father declared he could not blame them; he would
have done the same in their place, and that every dog must have his
day."

"That was like father," said Annie, looking up with a fleeting sparkle
in her eyes.

"Then we thought," went on Dora, "father and mother might have part of
mother's money, since you have always said you did not need it, while
Rose is getting paid for her work, and there is hardly any doubt"
(brightening up,) "but that 'little May' will take the scholarship.
She was working so hard to pass her examination when she wrote last,
that she was quite out of spirits about her chances, which father says
is always the way with the best men when they are going in for an
examination that they are safe to win. He supposes it will be still
more so with women. He tells mother that he will not mind taking help
from her, where her money is concerned, when he can no longer stir from
his chair--not to say to earn a fee, but to save his life. He has taken
so much more help from her in other ways during all their married life,
that this in addition will not count."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE UNEMPLOYED--A FAMILIAR FACE.

A lodging was found near the Hospital for Dora, who was to stay in town
and look out for a situation; and for the next week, a week of hot
summer weather, Annie, relieved from her hospital work, because it was
her first holiday time, went to and fro, spending as little as possible
on omnibus fares, with Dora and May in her train, in search of
employment for them. People were beginning to leave town, and the time
did not seem propitious. When was it ever propitious for such a pursuit
where women are concerned? Even under Annie's able guidance, with the
spirit which she could summon to her aid in all difficulties, the
intentional and unintentional rebuffs which the two girl candidates,
particularly Dora, got from agents and principals in connection with
ladies in want of useful companions and nursery-governesses were
innumerable. The swarms of needy, greedy applicants for similar
situations whom the Millars were perpetually encountering in their
rounds, were enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail, and to sink
the most sanguine nature into the depths of despondency.

Dora Millar was not constitutionally sanguine, and she grew more and
more nervous and dispirited as the fruitless efforts went on. Her little
figure drooped, her eyes had a dejected expression, her lips quivered
pathetically without any provocation. Annie was compelled to use strong
language. "The idiots!" she exclaimed, _apropos_ of the last persons who
had found Dora too young or too old, not strong enough looking, or not
lively enough looking ("not as if she could stand a large amount of
bullying and worrying," Annie read between the lines). "What a chance
they are letting slip through their fingers of getting the most
unexacting, contented creature in the world to minister to their
tiresome wants. They will never see her like again; serve them right for
their blindness."

One particularly glaring, airless afternoon, the three sisters were
toiling back to Dora's lodging, with the London pavement like heated
iron under the feet of the crowds that trod it, and the cloudless sky,
in which the sun blazed a ball of fire, like glowing brass over their
heads. Then as the Millars turned a corner and looked longingly at the
trees in a square with their leaves already yellowing and shrivelling,
May uttered a little shriek of delight and darted forward to greet a
familiar figure and face in the stream of strangers. What did it signify
that the figure was insignificant by comparison, and the face with
nothing distinguished in its pallor, under its red beard and
moustache?--"a little foxy-headed fellow," any sharp-tongued bystander
might have called him. It was a well-known face where all the others
were drearily unknown, a Redcross face in London, the face of a man who
might have shown himself an enemy, yet had proved a friend in need; and
though there had been presented to the girls the bearing of a Jupiter
and the lineaments of an Adonis, they could not have hailed him with
greater gladness. If anybody hung back in the general acclamation it was
Dora, for Annie did not say a word to rebuke May; she was too anxious to
hear the last news of her father.

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