A Houseful of Girls

S >> Sarah Tytler >> A Houseful of Girls

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

Miss Franklin did not desire to dispossess Annie of the post which, in
spite of every remonstrance, she was holding latterly almost night and
day. Miss Franklin had no faculty for nursing, and small experience to
guide her. She was rather a nervous woman in her impulsiveness, and
after one look at what was like the mask of Tom Robinson, utterly
incapable of recognizing her or communicating with her, she was so much
overcome that she was fain to retire to another room and submit to be
gently ministered to by Dora.

Miss Franklin was only too thankful to be suffered to stay there in the
background. It did not strike her as odd that nobody in the house except
the other patients should go to sleep that night when her cousin was
hovering between life and death--nearer death than life. Neither had the
outspoken, kind-hearted gentlewoman any particular application of her
speech in her mind when she said sorrowfully--"Dear! dear! how grieved
he would be if he knew how worn out you were, Miss Dora. He thought
that his coming to the hospital would not only serve as a precedent, it
would be the simplest, safest, least troublesome plan where he himself
was concerned, though if he would have let me, I should have been only
too glad to have turned my back on 'Robinson's' for a time, and done
what I could for him. There is enough difference in our ages, and I have
known him all his life, in addition to our being connections if not near
relations, so that nobody need have found fault. Not that I pretend for
a moment that I could have done what your sister is doing--that is
something quite wonderful in every respect" (and here Miss Franklin did
draw up her bountiful figure, and fix the rather small eyes, sunk a
little in her full cheeks, pointedly on Dora). "I dare say he liked to
have her about him to the last, so long as he was sensible of her
presence. Men are extraordinary creatures--that I should say that now,
oh! my poor dear cousin Tom."

After she had recovered from her outburst of grief, and was sipping the
tea which Dora had made for her, she turned again to her companion. "You
look like a ghost yourself, Miss Dora. Will you not lie down in your
bedroom and trust me? I shall sit here and bring you word the moment I
hear that a change has come;" and at the ill-omened phrase poor Miss
Franklin's well-bred, distinct enunciation got all blurred and
faltering. In fact she shrank a good deal from the ordeal she was
magnanimously proposing for herself. As it happened she had never
undergone anything like it before, though she had reached middle age. It
was not easy for her to contemplate sitting there all alone through the
dreary small hours, knowing that Tom Robinson's spirit--the spirit of
the best friend she had ever known--was passing away without word or
sign in the adjoining room. It was a relief to her when Dora Millar,
looking as if she had been sitting up in turn with every patient in the
ward, as pale as a moonbeam and as weak as water, yet shook her head
decisively against any suggestion of her retiring to rest.

There was a strong contrast between the couple who were to wait together
for death or the morning. Miss Franklin herself might be on the eve of
dying--but so long as she lived and went through the mundane process of
dressing, she must dress exceedingly well. She was a good, kind woman
all the same, and this night she bore a sore heart under her carefully
contrived and nicely put on garments.

Poor young Dora, on the contrary, looked all limp and forlorn. The
gingham morning-gown she had not changed was huddled on her, and
crumpled about her. Her neglected hair was pushed back from her little
white face. Annie in her nurse's spotless apron and cap looked a
hundred times trimmer, and was altogether a more cheerful object. It was
as if the whole world had come to an end for Dora, and she had ceased to
notice trifles. Almost the first words Miss Franklin had said to her
when the visitor began to recover from the shock she had undergone,
were--

"Excuse me, Miss Dora, the lace at your throat is coming undone--let me
put it right for you; and an end of your hair has fallen down. I may
fasten it up, may I not?"

A delicate, exhausted girl was no great support for a woman under the
circumstances, still she was better than nobody. She was company in
one form, like the domestic cat, when no more available associate is
to be found. Besides, in the middle of their dissimilarity, Miss
Franklin had a natural liking for Dora Millar, and had always excepted
her from the grudge which the elder woman was inclined to feel against
one member of the Millar family. "A nice, well-meaning, gentle girl,"
Miss Franklin mentally classed Dora. "The most quiet and ladylike of
them all." She was a great improvement, in Miss Franklin's estimation,
on that too bright and restless Annie, whom everybody cried up as a
beauty. She had found, Miss Franklin was creditably informed, a fine
vent for her dictatorial imperious temper as a nurse. Yet she, Miss
Franklin, ought not to find fault with Annie Millar at this time, when
Dr. Capes had said her treatment of the fever patients, with dear Tom
among them, was admirable; though, by one of the mysterious decrees of
Providence, she might not be permitted to succeed in his case. And she
was now ministering to his last wants as she, Barbara Franklin,
arrived at mature age, with all the will, had neither the skill nor
the courage to minister, much as she owed him, so long as he had other
service. She was a captious, vindictive wretch to pick holes in Miss
Millar's armour, when she was striving so hard to atone to him for any
injury she had ever done him by delivering him from the jaws of death,
or at least smoothing his path to the grave.

The seasons had gone on till the late summer was merging into the early
autumn. It was the beginning of August, when the days are already not so
long as they have been; but, to make up for it, the lengthening nights
are balmier than they ever were, and the soft dusk remains full of
summer scents and sounds.

It was on such a night that you might imagine a young man, dying long
before his time, and yet after he has reached full manhood, and touched
the crown of bodily and mental vigour, without ever feeling the tide on
its turn.

The night was so warm that the windows of the room in which Dora and
Miss Franklin sat were wide open. There was a lamp lit within, but it
did not render the darkness without so great as to hide the outlines of
trees in the nearest garden, and even the dim shape of a bed of late
flowering, tall white lilies. Their heavy fragrance was on the air; and
if ever there is a fragrance which is solemn and tender like the love of
the dying and the memory of the dead, it is the all-pervading scent of
lilies.

Annie Millar could never have been so good a listener as Dora was when
Miss Franklin, constitutionally loquacious, relieved her distress, and
got rid of the dragging hours, by indulging in a long and affectionate
oration on Tom Robinson, the man who, not so many yards from them, was
lying as indifferent to praise and blame as when he first entered this
wonderful world, with all its joys and sorrows, from which he was ready
to depart.

"You know, he is not really my cousin," the womanly confidence began;
"the tie between us hardly counts--it is only that Mr. Robinson's
first wife was my mother's sister. But I always called Mr. Charles
Robinson and his second wife uncle and aunt. I might well do it, for
they were a good uncle and aunt to me. I should have known few
pleasures when I was growing up, and long afterwards, if it had not
been for them. The Robinsons used to go away trips every summer to
Devonshire and Derbyshire, the Yorkshire moors, the Cumberland lakes,
Scotland, the Black Forest, Switzerland, and they always took me to
see the world, and spend my summer holidays with them. How generous
and kind they were in their friendliness! Tom was usually of the
party--first as a child, then as a growing boy; but child or boy, such
a nice manly little fellow, so much thought of, yet not at all spoilt.
He was fond of reading, yet full of quiet fun, and in either light
never in anybody's way. He was so considerate of his mother and me,
and so helpful to us. The cows he has driven away! the horses going at
large he has kept off! the bulls he has held at bay! I confess I am
not brave in proportion to my size. I am very timid in such matters,
and, strange to say, Aunt Robinson, though a country-woman born and
bred, was as great a coward as I where farm animals were in question;
but we always knew ourselves safe when Tom was at hand, and he never
laughed at us more than we could stand."

"I can understand," said Dora faintly. "He once helped us--May and
me--when a strange dog attacked Tray; and now Tray is running about with
May full of life and health, while his champion is----" She could not
say the words.

Miss Franklin looked at her approvingly, even went so far as to stroke
one of the cold trembling hands lying nerveless in Dora's lap. "You will
allow me to say that you are a dear, tender-hearted girl, Miss Dora. You
could have appreciated my cousin Tom. What a tower of strength he was to
me when I felt I was getting middle-aged, and my system of teaching was
becoming old-fashioned. I had been in so many homes belonging to other
people, with never a home of my own, for upwards of thirty years, since
my poor father and mother both died before I was twenty. I do not say
that I was not for the most part well enough treated, because I hope I
did my best, and I believe I generally gave satisfaction. I had my happy
hours like other people. But it was all getting so stale, flat, and
unprofitable--I suppose because I was growing weary of it all, and
longing for a change. You see I had not quite come to the age when we
cease to want changes, and are resigned just to go on as we are to the
end. In reality I could see no end, except the poorest of poor lodgings
and the most pinching straits, with the very little money I had saved.
(My dear, even finishing governesses can save so little now-a-days.) Or
perhaps there was the chance of my being taken into some charitable
institution. You will admit it was not a cheerful prospect."

"No, it was not," said Dora, in dreary abstraction.

"As I said," resumed Miss Franklin, "I had been in so many schoolrooms;
I had seen so many pupils grow up, go out into the world, and settle in
life, leaving me behind, so that when they came back on visits to their
old homes, they were prepared to pity and patronize me. I could not
continue cudgelling my poor brains until I had not an original thought
in my head, and all to keep up such acquirements as I had, and preserve
a place among younger, better equipped girls, certain to outstrip me
eventually."

"I suppose so," acquiesced Dora mechanically.

"Then poor dear Tom came to see me, and I told him what I was
thinking. He got me to pay a visit to Redcross, and made a new opening
for me. I may say without self-conceit that I was always considered to
have a good taste in dress. I know it was a question which had never
failed to interest me, to which I could not help giving a great deal
of attention--making a study of it, as it were. Tom insisted that I
could be of the greatest use to him, and was worth a liberal salary,
which I was not likely to lose. And there was a comfortable refined
nest, which I could line for myself, awaiting me in the pleasant rooms
he had looked out for me."

"I know, Miss Franklin," said Dora, with a faint smile; "you told
Phyllis Carey, and she told May, who repeated it to me. But I thought
it might be a relief to you to speak of it again."

"Yes," cried the eager woman; "and it has all answered so well--the
duties not too heavy, and really agreeable to me; the young women and
men, under Tom's influence, no doubt, perfectly nice and respectful; and
within the last six months, dear little Phyllis like a daughter or niece
to me. I thought always I should be able to do something in return for
him one day, yet with all the will in the world I have been able to do
nothing until it has come to this;" and poor Miss Franklin sobbed
bitterly under the burden of her unrequited obligations, and beneath the
dove's neck cluster of feathers in her bonnet.

It was for Dora in her turn to seek to soothe and compose her companion.
"I am sure you have been of the greatest service to him, and that he has
enjoyed the near neighbourhood of an old friend--his mother's friend.
Oh! think what a comfort it will be to you to have that to look back
upon," finished Dora, in a voice trembling as much as Miss Franklin's.

Miss Franklin sat up, instinctively put her bonnet straight, wiped her
eyes with her embroidered handkerchief, and gazed pensively into the
empty air.

"God's ways are not as our ways," she said; "and certainly we are told
that we are not to look for our reward in this world. Still one would
have expected--one would have liked that it had not been so hard all
through for Tom--not merely to have been denied the desire of his heart,
but to have had to endure in his last moments to be set aside, to lie
still and look on at what is going to happen."

Dora sat mystified; but she had not the spirit left to seek an
explanation.

Miss Franklin was not aware that an explanation was needed. "I know,"
she added, "how kind and attentive your sister has been to Tom, and I
understand nothing can exceed the interest Dr. Ironside has taken in my
cousin, while he has made the most unremitting efforts to save him;
still you will grant that so long as my poor Tom was conscious, it must
have been very, very trying for him to see the terms these two were on.
I don't listen much to gossip"--the speaker declared, in a parenthesis,
with a little air of dignity and reserve even at that moment--"but it is
the talk of the town that he has followed her down from London, and that
they are to be married as soon as the epidemic is past. Nobody can say
anything against it. They are well matched. They will be a fine-looking
couple," she struggled to acknowledge with becoming politeness and
impartiality.

"This is the first time I have heard of it, I can say with truth," said
Dora wearily, without so much as a smile at the characteristic report.
She thought the mention of it most unsuitable at such a season. The very
word marriage smote her. "And even if it were so, what could it have
signified to Mr. Tom Robinson?" she was about to add naively, when a
light flashed upon her. She had often wondered how much Miss Franklin,
"Robinson's," the whole town, knew of what had taken place eighteen
months ago. She saw now that however little the lady might care for
gossip, a distorted version of the truth in which she was interested had
reached her. Either there had been a very natural mistake on the part of
some of the local newsmongers, or Miss Franklin herself had fallen into
the error. The belle of the Millar family and not Dora had been believed
to be the object of Tom Robinson's pursuit. The blunder had been
perpetuated in Miss Franklin's case by the good feeling and good
breeding which would keep her from discussing Tom Robinson's affairs
with her neighbours more than she could help, and would prevent her
attempting such a cross-examination of the man himself as might have
elicited the truth.

"Oh! I know now what you mean," cried Dora, on the impulse of the
moment, "and you were altogether wrong. He has been spared such misery
--nobody could have been so barbarous as to inflict it on him, if it had
been as you suppose."

Miss Franklin was sensitive and imaginative on dress, but she was not
imaginative or even very observant with regard to anything else. She
understood Dora's protest to refer to an actual engagement between Dr.
Harry Ironside and Miss Millar.

"Well, well," she said a little dryly, "people do exaggerate. Matters
may not have gone quite so far, and I can only trust that he, Tom, has
not been sensible of what is in the air, though I have always understood
love, while it is said to be blind in one sense, is very sharp-sighted
in another. I believe every one else sees where the land lies. I saw it
myself so far as the gentleman was concerned--he could not keep his eyes
off her, though I was not five minutes in their company, and I was full
of my poor cousin Tom. I am sure I hope they may be happy," gulping down
the hope. "Tom would have wished it, quite apart from her having done
her duty by him, at the cost of some pain to herself, no doubt; while
Dr. Ironside has been more than kind, which nobody had any call to
expect. He must be a very fine young man, likely to win what he fancies.
Every woman is entitled to her choice, and most people would applaud
your sister's choice. The thing that puzzles me--you will forgive me for
mentioning it just this once, for where is the good of discussion
now?--is that as, I have been told, she did not meet Dr. Ironside till
she went to her London hospital, how, when she had got no opportunity of
contrasting the two men, when she had not even seen one of them, she
could yet be so set against Tom's proposal, knowing him to be the man he
is--was, alas! I should say. Why was she so very hard to poor Tom?"

"Oh, don't say that," besought Dora, in much agitation. "Don't bring
that forward at this moment."

But Miss Franklin, in the strength of her family affections, felt that
she owed it to the manes of Tom Robinson to express to the disdainful
damsel's sister a candid opinion that he had been summarily and severely
dealt with. "I was not in his confidence, but I could tell that
something was going to happen, and that he was very much cut up when it
all came to nothing."

"Oh, don't say that," repeated Dora, clasping her hands over her eyes,
and weeping behind them. "What good can it do except to inflict needless
torture?"

"I don't mean to reproach _you_," said Miss Franklin, a little
bewildered, but still very hot and sore. "You had nothing to do with it,
and I am sure you could not have been so heartless. Forgive me for the
reflection on your sister, who is so much thought of, whom everybody is
praising, with reason, for what she has done in nursing the sick and
poor. But young girls ought to be more careful. I don't mean to say that
she trifled with my cousin Tom--I have no right to say that--simply that
she never gave him a thought. Tom was surely deserving of a thought,"
cried Miss Franklin indignantly. "Dr. Ironside may be all very well--I
have nothing to say against him--quite the reverse. Tom is not to be
compared to him in personal appearance, and the one is a professional
man, while the other thought fit to continue a linen-draper like his
good father before him; but that is by no means to infer that Miss
Millar has chosen the better husband of the two. Girls are so
foolish--they play with fire, and never look or take it into account
where and whom it may burn. Tom Robinson deserved more respectful
treatment in Redcross. He has never been like himself since. I used to
hear him whistling and humming tunes to himself as he worked in the
office--there is no more of that, or of his hearty interest in
everything."

"Miss Franklin, it is you who are pitiless to say this to me to-night,"
panted Dora, rising against the inhumanity, and totally forgetting that
the speaker did not hold the clue which would have told her how her
words scourged her listener.

"I am not blaming _you_, Miss Dora," said the accuser again, more
bitterly than she had yet spoken. For she was in her heart accusing Dora
Millar of affectation in pretending not to be able to hear a word
against her sister, and in declining to listen to the pardonable
utterance of a reproach directed against what Miss Franklin called in
her heart Annie Millar's arrogance and callousness. Tom Robinson's
cousin was provoked, not pacified.

"I dare say Tom would never have had this wretched fever but for the
blow he got then," she was tempted to persist; "or if he had caught it,
he would have thrown it off without any harm done. I can bear witness to
his sound constitution to begin with. Everybody knows how disappointment
and mortification lower the system, and he was never over careful of
himself. I cannot quite understand why he took the cool rebuff he
received so much to heart; but he did so, and you see the consequence."

"Spare me! spare me!" cried Dora passionately. "Don't say I have killed
him, or I shall die myself, perhaps it is the best thing I can do."

Before Miss Franklin could do more than stare aghast, with a horrified
inkling of the real facts of the case, and the tremendous mess she had
got into, there was the sound of the soft opening of a door in the near
distance, and a step rapidly approaching.

The two women who had been upbraiding each other were mute in an
instant, first held their breaths, then sprang up and clung to each
other, partners in sorrow, with teeth beginning to chatter, and eyes to
grow large and wild. What had they been doing in the name of a gentle
and manly soul, in the face of the awful news on its way, the majesty of
Death investing the house?

It was only Annie, looking perfectly collected, nay, a trifle elated.
"He is the least shade better--we both think so; and the slightest
improvement means so much at this stage--the right crisis, I believe. He
has been really sleeping. He swallows with less difficulty. He has
roused himself ever so little, but he is fearfully faint and weak. We
cannot get him to take more stimulants than we have been giving him. I
am afraid there is no toilet-vinegar in the house. I came to see if
either of you had a smelling-bottle, which might revive him."

All that Miss Franklin could do was to shake her head. She was so
thankful, yet she felt so guilty, so ashamed of herself.

Dora fumbled nervously in her pocket and gave Annie something, which she
carried off in triumph. Miss Franklin sat down again and cried afresh
between trembling joy and lively vexation. "Oh, won't it be a mercy, for
which we can never praise our Maker too much, if dear Tom gets over his
illness after all?" she managed to say; but she could do no more--even
that lame speech was made awkwardly. To apologize for the heinous
offence she had committed would be a greater enormity than the offence
itself.

But when Miss Franklin had time to think it over afterwards, she was
under the impression that Dora Millar had forgotten all about their
altercation. She sat there with hands clasped, lips parted, and brimming
eyes half raised to Heaven, as if in instinctive acknowledgment of a
thousand piteous prayers in the act of being answered by Him who counts
the stars and calls them by name, and heals the broken in heart. Miss
Franklin's account of Dora's look was that, for a moment, she was
positively frightened at the dear girl, Dora seemed so near another
world at that moment, and as likely as not to be holding communication
with it. Even Tom Robinson could not have been nearer when he was more
than half way across the border-land.

CHAPTER XXII.

A SHRED OF HOPE.

Tom Robinson's recovery continued a matter of fear and trembling for a
week longer before it became merely a process of time. But no sooner was
it clearly established to the initiated, and only likely to be
endangered by some unforeseen accident, than Annie Millar, in her
delight, lost sight of her former tactics, and called on Dr. Harry
Ironside to rejoice with her on their success.

"We have been permitted to pull him through. Oh, isn't it glorious? I
know we ought, as we are miserable sinners, to go down on our knees and
give God the thanks, and I hope we do with all my heart; but I also want
to sing and dance--don't you, Dr. Ironside?"

Nobody could imagine that Dr. Harry Ironside was indifferent to the
wonderful recovery, which was such a credit to his skill, of the man
whom he had nursed as if Tom Robinson had been his brother; but Dr.
Harry forgot all about his patient at that moment when he saw his
opportunity and seized it.

He had never had a faint heart, young as he was, but he had been dealing
with an exceedingly coy and high-spirited mistress. However, even she
had not been able to defy the effect of the last month of incessant
intercourse, of being engrossed in common with one object of interest,
when both had hung, as it were, on a man's failing breath, and were
indissolubly linked while it lasted. In the light of its fitful rising
and falling, its feeble fluttering, the terrible moments when it
appeared to stop and die away, how small and vain was every other
consideration! But their joint work was done by God's help, as they had
hardly dared to hope for a time, and now it was Harry's innings.

"I have something to say to you, Miss Millar. I have wished to say it
for a long time. You will not refuse to hear me?"

They were alone together in the little side-room, empty but for its
hospital stores, where they had so often consulted, with and without Dr.
Capes, on the condition of the ward. There was no longer any fluster of
doubt and hesitation in his manner. He stood there in his young comely
manhood, prepared to put his fate to the test, claiming his right to do
so, and challenging her to deny his claim.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21