A Houseful of Girls

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More than one man among the passers-by, glancing at Tom Robinson
surrounded by a group of pretty girls, the two prettiest evidently
making much of him and hanging on his words, called him in their minds
"lucky dog," and speculated on the nature of the attraction.

"'_Prope'ty, prope'ty, prope'ty_,'" no doubt. It was disgraceful to see
how mercenary even quite young women were getting.

Tom received the ovation, at which, by the bye, he was a little taken
aback and puzzled, quietly and in a matter-of-fact way, as he received
most things. He had had the pleasure of seeing Dr. and Mrs. Millar
lately; indeed, he had availed himself of the privileges of an old
friend to call on them at once in their new quarters, he told Annie, and
he had found them, by their own account, fairly well and comfortable,
though the Doctor was still dead lame.

Tom did not tell either Annie, or any one else interested in the
information, that he had spent the last few days pushing the circulation
of a subscription list, which he had headed with the promise of a
handsome sum. It was to provide a testimonial not altogether inadequate
to mark the esteem in which the townspeople held their old Doctor for
his many virtues, and their sympathy with him in his misfortunes. A
liberal offering on the town's part might do something to relieve the
adversity which had befallen a fellow-townsman. The talk a little time
ago had been of presenting Dr. Millar with a new brougham and horse,
which, as they would have had to be maintained at the charge of a man
who had just put down his old brougham as beyond his diminished income,
was rather an illogical method of serving him. However, his complete
breakdown, with the sale of his practice, had at once knocked that idea
on the head, and had given its motive a much wider application. If the
little Doctor were to submit to accept help, it must be commensurate
with the dignity of Redcross and the county, and with his own
professional status and merit.

Tom Robinson looked at the girls as two of them looked at him. "It is
tiring weather," he suggested hesitatingly; "is it wise of you to walk
out in the heat?"

"Oh! Mr. Robinson," cried May effusively, "we are so tired--just dead
beat--though Annie there does not like me to talk slang--but it is so
expressive, don't you think so? It is not to-day only, but yesterday and
the day before, we have been hunting for situations, and have not found
them yet. Do you know, Dora and I are going to take situations
immediately if we can get them?"

His face changed, and he knit his brow involuntarily.

"What a magpie it is!" said Annie, impatiently. "But, of course, you
have heard all about the turn father's affairs have taken since this bad
rheumatic attack, which he does not believe he can shake off. It need
not be any secret that my sisters are looking out for situations."

He did not answer; he was prevented by the painful consciousness that
Dora appeared ready to sink into the ground.

"Won't you avail yourself of my arm, Miss Dora? Won't you let me see you
home?" he proposed hurriedly.

She could not refuse; indeed, she was only too thankful for the offered
support, though she murmured a protest against troubling him and taking
him out of his way. And she could not altogether conceal how put out as
well as weary she was, so that the little hand, which just touched his
coat-sleeve, fluttered on its resting-place like a newly-caught bird.

He hailed a cab, and wished to put them all into it.

"I dare say it would be better," said Annie, glancing at Dora's white
face, with the new trick of quivering which the lips had acquired. As
the cab was driving up, she gave Tom Robinson their address--"17, Little
St. Ebbe's Street," with the amount of the fare, looking at him almost
fiercely while she took the money from her purse. "Will you be good
enough to direct the man and pay him for us?" she said, and he dared not
dispute her will.

But when he yielded, she seemed to think his friendliness and power of
comprehension deserved something better than they had got. "Will you
come with us?" Annie invited him; and when she softened, it was always
in such a bright frank way that it was hard to resist her. "We'll be
very pleased to give you a cup of tea at Dora's lodging--at least we can
do that for you, and it may be acceptable on such an oppressive
afternoon."

He, a guest at a lodging of Dora Millar's: it sounded odd enough!

"Do come, Mr. Robinson," his friend May was imploring, while Dora,
sensible that something was due from her as the ostensible mistress of
the lodging, echoed shyly, without raising her eyes to his face, "Yes,
come, please."

Did she remember the last time she gave him tea in the drawing-room of
the Old Doctor's House, where they were not likely to meet again? How
awkward they found the _tete-a-tete_. How they shrank from their hands
touching, while he reproached her for aiding and abetting May in trying
to shirk going to St. Ambrose's; and she had borne his reproaches and
admitted the reasonableness of his arguments, with all the meek candour
of Dora, while still making a last stand for May.

He went with the girls as if he were in a dream; but he was not left to
dream in Dora's very plain lodging, where Annie and not the mistress of
the lodging poured out tea, and May insisted on helping him to bread
and butter. He saw Rose, too, who had been awaiting the return of her
sisters. It sent another pang to his brotherly heart to discover that
Rose also was subdued and well-nigh careworn. She still wrinkled her
forehead and crumpled up her nose, but it was no longer in the old saucy
way; it was under her share of the heavy burden of trouble which had
fallen on these dauntless girls and might end by crushing them.

May was not to be kept from the immense solace of making a clean breast
to her former ally of her stupid dawdling and trifling, and the
retribution which had at once befallen her. "Did father tell you, Mr.
Robinson, that I have failed in my examination?" she began plaintively.
"Yes, I have, and it was all my own fault. I was too silly; I would not
pull myself together and work hard from the first. Now it will never be
in my power to go back to St. Ambrose's. I'll not be able to atone for
my folly by showing that everybody was not wrong when it was believed
that I might be a fair scholar, win a scholarship, and rise to be
classical mistress in a girls' school." At the announcement of the
disastrous failure, by her own deed, of all the ambitious plans for her,
May threatened to break down, springing up and turning away, her
shoulders heaving in a paroxysm of mortification and grief.

Tom Robinson used to say, afterwards, that he never witnessed a
prettier sight than the manner in which the three other girls rallied
round their poor "little May," from Annie downwards. They took off her
hat, pulled off her gloves, smoothed her ruffled hair, patted her
tear-stained cheeks, seated her in an arm-chair, brought her tea, and
made her drink it, bidding her not be too disheartened. They pledged
themselves--even Dora pledged herself stoutly--that, if it rested with
them, and they were young and strong, they would find work of one kind
or another--May should go back to St. Ambrose's some day and vindicate
her scholarliness. Father and mother and all of them would be proud of
her.

It rendered the man doubly indignant from that day when he heard
scoffers say that there could be no true friendship between women, and
that the relation of sisters existed simply for the growth of rivalry
and jealousy.

May was still shaking her head disconsolately, and reminding him, "Ah,
Mr. Robinson, it would have been better if you had let me stay at home
and go into your shop, like Phyllis Carey. I might have done some good
there, though you may not believe it, and only feel glad that you got
rid of me."

Then he took her in hand, and administered his consolation. "Nonsense,
Miss May," he said, with sufficient peremptoriness for a man who had
been rather accustomed to efface himself in these girls' presence, "you
were not to be suffered to hide your light under a bushel. I wonder to
hear you--I thought you had more pluck and perseverance. How many times
do you think the young fellows at St. Ambrose's are turned back and have
to try again? If I passed in my first exam, it was by the merest fluke,
as three-fourths of the men will tell you they pass. As for my degree,
I had the common sense and modesty to put off taking it to the last
moment, and to stay up two different vacations, 'sapping' like a
Scotchman, before I ventured to undergo the test. You don't mean to say
you are too proud to do at Rome as the Romans do, that your genius will
brook no rejection, and declines to grapple with an obstacle? I'll tell
you what your father proposes for you, and let me say that I believe it
would do him a world of good--now that he has been forced to give up his
patients, and is confined to his chair. He has not lost heart and faith
in your powers--of course not. He is thinking quite eagerly of brushing
up his classics in his enforced leisure, and himself becoming your coach
for the next six months. I need not say that any small assistance I can
offer is heartily at your service also."

"Oh!" said May, with wistful brown eyes and a long-drawn sigh, "you are
a great deal too good to me, all of you. I don't deserve it. It would
only be too much happiness for me to have father and you to coach
me--but I know we could not afford it."

"Wait and see," said Tom succinctly.

"If I got that situation," said Dora timidly, "I might do something to
help May: I mean the one where the lady said she would take me into
consideration, but we thought it would not do, because I should have to
go out to Jamaica. On second thoughts, I am not sure that I'd mind so
very much going. The lady seemed to consider I might be able to do what
she required, and I should only be away for a year or two, since the
family are coming back then. The salary was very good."

Dora go out to Jamaica to help May, or any one else! Not though he had
to fling cheques in at the windows, and squeeze Bank of England notes
through the keyholes, to prevent it.

"Hester Jennings says she would not be very much surprised if she heard
of a buyer for my tulip picture; but I don't know," said Rose
doubtfully, glancing at the picture, which was on an adjoining table.

"May I look at it?" asked Tom Robinson, jumping up with alacrity,
probably to make a diversion in the conversation from the obnoxious
topic of Dora's problematical voyage to Jamaica. He had seen Rose's work
at Redcross, and he could give it as his honest opinion that she had
made a great advance in her art, though he did not profess to be a
judge. He said, however, that he had a friend, an old St. Ambrose crony,
who was an artist. They had happened to be together in Rome at a later
date, had been a good deal thrown on each other's company there, and had
continued to keep up a friendly intercourse. He requested permission for
his friend to call and look at the little picture. He might be of use to
Rose in disposing of it; he was always ready to help a fellow-artist.
Tom supposed the Millars had heard his friend's name, it was pretty well
known; indeed they might have seen him, for Pemberton and Lady Mary, his
wife, had spent a few days with Tom at Redcross, and had been in church
on the Sunday during their visit, the summer before last.

In spite of the obligations of good breeding, the Millars looked at each
other in open-mouthed astonishment. Certainly they had heard of
Pemberton the distinguished landscape painter, and they had been told
that he had married into the peerage, as Aunt Penny had married into the
county. The girls also remembered perfectly the quiet-looking young
couple who had been noticed walking about with Tom Robinson the July
before last. People had wondered languidly who the strangers could
be--whether they were cousins far removed on Tom's father's side of the
house, since they did not quite answer to the style of his mother's
yeomen kindred. But it was an effort to the provincial mind to identify
the unobtrusive-looking pair with the Pembertons, to realize that Mr.
Pemberton and his Lady Mary had actually come and stayed the better part
of a week with Tom Robinson. They could hardly have been ignorant of
"Robinson's," whose master was only received into the upper-class houses
of the town on a species of sufferance.

The peerage must have unique rules by which to frame its standards.
There was the Hon. Victoria, Mrs. Carey's niece by marriage, who, when
Carey's Bank was in full bloom, would hardly be seen in the streets of
Redcross, and scarcely deigned to acknowledge her own aunt-in-law. As to
the familiarity of staying a night in the Bank House, she would never
have dreamt of it. In this respect she did little credit to the teaching
of her old governess, Miss Franklin, who had shown herself a philosopher
in her own person. Perhaps, when it came to stooping at all, the peerage
felt it might as soon, and with a still more gracious and graceful
effect, bend low as bend slightly. Perhaps in the peerage, as in every
other class, there are all sorts and conditions of mind and heart.

A little clue might have been supplied to account for the eccentricity
of the Pembertons, and to lessen the shock of their conduct to the
Millars, if the latter had been made acquainted with one circumstance.
About the time of the stay of the artist and his wife in Rome, where he
had been only too glad to run up against a favourite old college chum,
when the three had been making a long excursion in company beyond the
Campagna, Pemberton had been suddenly attacked in a remote little town
with a violent illness.

His poor young wife would have been utterly frightened and forlorn had
it not been for the moral courage and untiring good offices of the third
person in the company--Tom Robinson.

Tom did not appear conscious of the sensation he had created by the
mention of his friend. He arranged when Mr. Pemberton should come and
view Rose's picture to suit Rose's convenience, and not that of the
famous and courted artist. Then he explained in all sincerity, before he
took his leave, that he, Tom Robinson, was very sorry he could not have
the pleasure of bringing Pemberton and introducing him personally,
because a business engagement called the master of "Robinson's" back to
Redcross early next morning.

The party he left were quite silent and still for a moment after he had
gone, till what she had heard of Mr. Pemberton went to Rose's head to
such a degree that she rose, whirled round on tiptoe, and caused her
spread-out frock to perform the feat which children call "making a
cheese."

"Won't it be delicious to know Mr. Pemberton and get his advice--perhaps
one day presume to ask him how he does his hay-fields and orchards? What
will Hester Jennings say! I say, we'll have Hester to meet him; she will
come for such a painter though the whole peerage would not get her to
budge an inch. I wish we could tone her down a little bit, but he must
just swallow her whole. She is good and clever enough to be permitted
that rugged line of her own. Oh! but isn't Tom Robinson a trump? I
_will_ be slangy, Annie--as May says, it is so expressive."

"Yes, yes," chimed in May enthusiastically, in reference to the man and
not to the slang. "I have known it ever since he came up like a
lion--why do you laugh, Rose?--and rescued Tray--don't you remember,
Dora?--from that horrid brute of a collie. Tray bit him--Mr. Robinson, I
mean--not knowing that he was his best friend, and he only laughed. He
was so kind about my wishing to go into his shop, like Phyllis Carey,
though he would not take me. I think it must be a privilege, as Miss
Franklin tells Phyllis, to serve him. She says all the nice people in
the shop have the greatest regard for him."

"I am so sorry and ashamed that I ever drew caricatures of him," said
Rose, in pensive penitence. "I think, whenever I am able, I must paint
his portrait, as I see him now, to make up for it."

"And ask him to have it hung above the oak staircase in the shop,"
suggested Annie, a little satirically. But she added immediately,
"Though it broke no bones to dwell on his lack of height and his foxy
complexion, I am rather sorry now that I did it, because I have ceased
to think that these objectionable details deserved to be made of any
consequence. On the contrary, I own to the infatuation of beginning to
see that there is something fine in them. I suppose I shall be calling
Tom Robinson's hair golden, or tawny, or chestnut soon, and his inches
the proper height for a man. It is true," broke off Annie, with sudden,
unaccountable perversity, "I do hate great lumbering flaxen-haired
giants." She blushed furiously after she had indulged in the last
digression, and hastened to resume the main thread of the conversation.
"As for Tom Robinson's having little to say, I declare that my present
impression is that he says quite enough, and very much to the purpose
too. It was so nice and like a gentleman of him not to propose
immediately to buy Rose's picture when she talked rashly of her anxiety
that it should find a purchaser."

"I don't think Cyril Carey, with all his airs, would have shown so much
delicacy in the old days," said Rose.

"Or that Ned Hewett, though Ned has such a kind heart, would have been
able to avoid blundering into some such offer," remarked May.

There was one person who remained absolutely silent while the others
sang Tom Robinson's praises, and it might be her silence which called
her sisters' attention to her.

"I wonder what you would have, Dora?" said Rose, with several shades of
superciliousness in her voice and in her lifted-up nose.

"I cannot understand how you could be such a cruel, hard-hearted girl,"
May actually reproached her devoted slave.

"There is such a thing as being too particular," Annie had the coolness
to say. "I am sure I do not go in for indiscriminate marriages or for
falling in love," she added with lofty decision. "It has always been a
mystery to me what poor Fanny Russell could see to care for, or to do
anything save laugh at, in Cyril Carey. I hope the elderly 'competition
wallah,' or commissioner, or whatever he is, whom she is going to marry,
has more sense as well as more money. For her marriage was arranged,
though the news had not reached England, mother writes, before the
tidings of Colonel Russell's death came. But when a man who can act as
Tom Robinson has acted crosses a woman's path and pays her the
compliment of asking her to be his wife, I do think she should be
careful what she answers."

Dora stared as if she were losing her senses. Were they laughing at her
still? Could they be in earnest? If so, how was it possible for them to
be so flagrantly inconsistent and unjust? She could only utter a single
exclamation. But as the worm will turn, the exclamation was emphatic and
indignant enough. "Well!" she cried, in utter amazement and incipient
rebellion. "Well!" and she returned the challenging gaze of the circle
with a counter-challenge, before which all eyes except Annie's fell.

Annie had the audacity to look Dora in the face and echo the "Well!"
nay, to say further, "You never heard of anything so disgraceful as for
us to turn upon you and find fault with you for refusing Tom Robinson,
when all the time it was we who laughed at him, and scouted his shop,
keeping you up to the point of dismissing him without delay? Quite true,
Dora, dear; but then it was you, and not _us_, whom he was proposing to
marry! and a girl old enough to receive such a proposal should have the
wit to judge for herself--should she not? She ought to cultivate the
penetration to look beneath the surface in so important a matter, and
then fewer lamentable mistakes would be made. However, nobody could
expect you to put force on your inclinations, and he does not bear you
malice."

Annie did not regard her share in the matter so cheerfully and lightly
when she was in the privacy of a ward of St. Ebbe's, where she had
begged to sit up with an unconscious patient, just to keep her hand in
and compose her feelings.

"What mischievous little wretches we were," she reflected, as she
deftly changed the wet cloth on the sick woman's hot forehead. "How
happy he might have made Dora, and how happy she might have made him!
She is so single-minded and tender-hearted, that she could hardly have
failed to see his merits, if we had given him the chance, let her
alone, and left the pair to themselves. Then, if the worst were to
come to the worst," and Annie frowned with anxiety and grief, as well
as with wholesome humiliation, "if poor father and mother cannot get
along, and none of us girls can help them effectually, his house might
have been their home, where he would never have let them feel other
than honoured guests. He would have been a son to them. But the
mischief is done, and there is no help for it. If Dora and he were an
ordinary couple, it might be mended; but now she will not look at him
when we none of us have a penny, because she refused him when we were
in comfortable circumstances; and he will not renew his suit with the
thought in his mind that it would look and feel to her as if any
favour he has magnanimously conferred on us, were a mere bribe to
compel her to listen to him. So, Annie Millar, this is a pretty kettle
of fish, of which you have been chief cook! There is the greater
reason for you to make up your mind from this moment to devote
yourself wholly to your family, and let nothing--_nothing_," she
protested with suspicious vehemence, "come between you and them."

"What is it, you poor soul?" the young nurse responded quickly to a
movement of the helpless ailing creature beside her. "Do you know there
is somebody here? Will it ease you to have your head raised on my arm,
do you think? You cannot hear or answer, but we'll try that, and then it
is just possible you may drop asleep." And for the rest of the watch
Annie was absorbed in care for her patient.

CHAPTER XX.

REDCROSS AGAIN.

Tom Robinson's subscription list attained the respectable sum-total of
two thousand pounds. Many of the subscribers were not only patients of
Dr. Millar, but creditors of the bank whose claims he had striven with
sturdy honesty to satisfy, till the task proved too hard for his years.

The little Doctor received the token of how greatly his courage and
staunchness in the fulfilment of his obligations had been respected,
with half pained, half pleased gratitude, and this was very much the
attitude of mind of his daughter Annie. The rest of his womankind, from
Mrs. Millar to May, only felt a glad surprise, and a soft, proud
thankfulness.

The relief from present difficulties was great, but of course the gift
did not obviate the necessity for the girls seeking work and wages. Even
May, when she ventured to hope that she might stay at home for a month
or two and be coached by her father and Tom Robinson in anticipation of
a more successful campaign at St. Ambrose's, was eagerly speculating
whether she might not become a coach in her turn. She was fain to earn a
little money by helping the very youngest of the Grammar School boys to
prepare their Latin grammar in the evenings, supposing she could get
them to sit still, and give over wishing her to play with them.

Mr. Pemberton had not only himself called on the Miss Millar who was the
artist, he had brought Lady Mary with him, and both husband and wife had
turned out the refined, thoroughly unassuming, kindly disposed couple
they had looked. They spoke warmly of Tom Robinson as their very good
friend, and went so far as to express enthusiasm for his beautiful old
shop. Mr. Pemberton did better than merely say a few words of languid,
indiscriminating praise of Rose's picture, and then bow himself out. He
examined the picture closely, and looked at her thoughtfully and
attentively out of the dark gray eyes, the only good feature in his
face. The next moment, to Hester Jennings's great edification, he
addressed Rose seriously as a member of the Guild of St. Luke--not an
amateur, "one of ourselves, so that you must not mind what I say to you,
Miss Millar." He first displayed a generous capacity for discovering
something good, whether it were to be found in the work of a tyro or of
a veteran. Next he took the trouble of pointing out the faults, and
urging their remedy, telling her the picture was worth the pains of
making it as true as possible, until Rose hung her head in blended pride
and humility.

What was more, he offered to enter into negotiations with a
picture-dealer on her behalf, and brought them to a triumphant
conclusion, making Rose happy with so fair a price as materially to
lighten the millstone of her resigned office at the Misses Stone's
hanging round her neck.

It was settled that May should go home and profit by the coaching which
awaited her at Redcross, taking the chance of finding some little boys
whose Latin grammar would be the better of her supervision.

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