A Houseful of Girls

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CHAPTER II.

THE "COUP DE GRACE."

The crisis had come. Dr. Millar had granted a final formal interview,
not without some agitation on the father's part, to the still more
agitated suitor; and after assuring him of the paternal good-will, had
turned him over to the daughter--the whole being done with a sorrowful
prescience, shared by the unfortunate young man, of what the answer
would be.

Poor Dora was hardly less to be pitied, for she had to be brought up to
the supreme effort of dealing the _coup de grace_. Nobody could do it
for her, even her mother told her that severely, in order to brace the
girlish nerves, when Dora gave way to the first cowardly instinct of
seeking to shirk the ordeal. If a girl was old enough to receive an
offer of marriage, she was old enough to answer it for herself in
person. It was the least return she could make for the high compliment
which had been paid to her, to see the man and tell him with her own
lips that she would have nothing to say to the honest heart and liberal
hand, for he had hinted at generous settlements, which he had been only
too eager to lay at her feet.

It was little use even for mild Dora to protest that she had not
wished for such a compliment, and had done nothing to provoke it, so
that the reckless compliment-payer was but receiving his deserts in an
unconditional refusal. It did not make the step easier for her. It was
no joke to her, whatever it might be to her hard-hearted young sisters.

To tell the truth, Rose and May, aye, even Annie, took much lively
diversion, as Dora guessed, in secretly watching the entire proceeding.
The sisters found out the hour of the compulsory interview. They
covertly looked out for the arrival of the commonplace wooer--anything
save their idea of a lover and hero. They keenly took note of him from
an upper window as he walked with a certain studied composure, yet with
a blankness of aspect, through the shrubbery. They even deigned--Annie
as well as Rose and May--surreptitiously to inspect the poor wretch
between the bannisters of the staircase, as he ran desperately up the
stairs, thrusting one hand through his foxy hair and carrying his hat
in the other, and vanished into the drawing-room.

After this brutal behaviour on the part of a trio of English girls, one
must show a little moderation in condemning the cruel conduct of the
Roman dames, who contemplated with zest the deadly contests of the
gladiators in the arena; at least the gladiators were strangers and
barbarians, not fellow-townsmen and near relations.

As for the present victim, he was happily unconscious of any spectator
beyond Bella the house-maid, but he felt relieved to be delivered from
her compassionate stare. He had an instinctive sense that she knew as
well as he did what he had come there for, and was pitying him--an
inference in which he was quite correct. For Bella was older than the
unseen "chorus" on the landing, who did not think of pitying him. She
had seen more of the world, and was better acquainted with its cares
and troubles. She called him in her own mind "the poor young gent!" It
occurred to her as it did not occur to the others, that he might take
to bad ways and be a lost man, like Jem Wade the carpenter, after her
pretty, flighty sister Lotty had given him the sack. Nothing less than
that might be the end of this day's work.

But such a way of looking on a lover and his woes was far from the
thoughts of Bella's young mistresses. On the contrary, they had
difficulty in restraining merry little titters, though Annie did take
herself to task and murmur "For shame!" when Rose made a solemn, stupid
face like what she considered Tom Robinson's on this occasion.

To do the girls justice, however, they did not laugh when Dora, who had
been with her mother, came slowly across the lobby and followed the
visitor into the drawing-room in order to administer the _coup de
grace_. It might have been a veritable dagger-thrust to be dealt by a
weak little shrinking hand, with the owner's head turned and face
averted--such a white, grieved, frightened girl's face it was.

Her companions' eyes were opened, for the instant a fellow-feeling smote
them. This was no light jest or piece of child's play; it might be their
turn next. Oh! who would not be sorry for Dora to have to inflict real
pain and bitter disappointment, to be condemned to kill a man's faith
in woman, perhaps, certainly to murder his peace and happiness for the
present, to extinguish the sweetest, brightest dream of his early
manhood, for he would never have another quite so tender and radiant?
Would Dora ever be quite the same again after she had done so hard a
thing?

Annie pulled herself up and accused herself of getting absolutely
maudlin. The idea of Tom Robinson of "Robinson's," with his middle size,
matter-of-fact air, and foxy hair and moustache, entertaining such a
dream and relinquishing it with a pang of mortal anguish that would
leave a long sickening heart-ache behind! It was the infection of all
the silly love stories she had ever read which had received a kind of
spurious galvanic life from the very ordinary circumstance, the feather
in her cap, as so many girls would have regarded it, of Dora, having to
receive and refuse an offer of marriage. Why, she--Annie--and her
sisters, including Dora herself, had been much diverted by it, as well
as interested in it, until the dramatic crisis had somehow taken their
breath away also, and startled them by a glimpse of the other side of
the question. But though Annie strove to recover her equanimity, and
Rose tried to hum a tune softly as the girls still loitered behind the
bannisters, to see the end of the play, they said nothing more to each
other; a sort of shyness and shame had stolen over them. It was not
enough to make them run away, especially as each did not realize that
what she felt was common to all. Only their lips were chained
simultaneously, and they were disposed to turn aside their heads and
avert their eyes, like Dora when she killed her man.

The deed did not take long--not more than was necessary for him to plead
once or twice with small variation on the words, "Will you not think of
it, Dora? Can you not give it a little consideration? Perhaps if I were
to wait, and you were to try----"

And for Dora to answer with drooping head, panting breast, and still
less variety in her phrases, "Oh, no, no, Mr. Tom. Of course, I am very
much obliged to you for thinking a great deal more of me than I deserve.
But, indeed, indeed, it cannot be--you must give it up--this foolish
fancy. It is a great pity that you have wasted time on such an absurd
idea."

"Wasted time!" he repeated, with a little irony and a little pathos.
"Well, I don't think it wasted even at this moment--and--and the idea
does not seem so absurd to me; but I will not distress you by forcing my
wishes upon you when you are so averse to them. You will allow me to
continue your friend, Miss Dora?"

"Yes, oh yes," sighed Dora, who would have said anything, short of
agreeing to marry him, to get him to go away, "if you like, after what
has happened. I know I don't deserve your friendship; but, indeed, I
could not help it, Mr. Robinson. I never guessed till lately that you
thought of anything else, and then I would have stopped you, but I
could not."

"Don't blame yourself," he said with a faint smile, "I am not blaming
you. I shall count it a favour, an honour, if you will let me do
anything for you that I can."

"Thank you very much," she murmured humbly.

"Then you will accept a little mark of my friendly feelings?" He took a
small case from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, and drew from it a
valuable ring, holding it out to her.

They were the most beautiful rubies and sapphires she had ever seen. But
she would not touch it; she even put her hands behind her back in her
confusion and dismay. "I could not; I ought not. It is far too costly a
thing, I can see that at a glance. You must keep it; you will find some
far fitter girl to give it to."

He shook his head, hesitated, and then took an old-fashioned little
vinaigrette case, shaped like a tiny gold box, from the watch-chain at
which he wore it. "Will you accept this from me, then? It was my
mother's, and I should like you to have it."

"It's so good of you," the girl faltered. "I don't like to deprive you
of what was your mother's, but if you care that I should have it----"

"I do care," he said.

That last little episode was entirely between themselves. When she
quitted the room, not crying, but paler than before, she had the
vinaigrette case clasped tightly in her hand, while nobody except
Tom Robinson knew of the gift.

He let her go, and then he left the house. When he did so there was that
in his face which caused Rose Millar to cry under her breath, "Come
away. It is not fair to spy upon him. I'll never want to see anybody
refused again." As for "little May," she burst into tears, though the
principals had shed no tears.

"Hold your tongue, you little goose," remonstrated the disturbed Annie.
"He may hear you. School-girls like you and Rose should not meddle in
grown-up people's affairs."

"I thought I had left school after the Christmas holidays," said Rose,
interrogating the world in an abstract fashion. She was herself again on
the instant, carrying her funny little crumpled nose well in the air.

"It is dreadful," said May, with a half-suppressed sob, "and he was
so good-natured. He promised only last week to get Rose and me a
fox-terrier puppy."

"Oh, you selfish little creature! It is over the failure of the
prospective puppy and not over the sorrows of the rejected man you are
lamenting. Never mind, Maisie, I doubt if mother would have allowed us
to keep the puppy. As for Mr. Tom Robinson, he is cut up just now, of
course; but he will soon get over it. How long does it take a man to
forget, Annie? Anyhow, presently he will be busily directing his
attentions in another quarter, until the day may come, after he is
successful and triumphant, well pleased with himself and his choice,
when he will heartily thank Dora there for having administered to him
the cold bath of a rejection, so nipping his first raw aspirations in
the bud."

"No, no," insisted May; "you are so cynical, Rose, like everybody else
now-a-days, and I hate it. He can never be glad to have lost Dora."

"Don't you agree with me, Annie?" Rose maintained her point.

"Really, you seem to be so well informed on the subject yourself--though
I cannot think where you have got your experience, any more than your
slang, unless at second-hand"--said Annie sarcastically, "that my
opinion is of no importance."

"Now, don't be nasty and elder-sisterish," was Rose's quick rejoinder.

Though Dora shed no tears of contrition in public, Annie, who shared her
sister's room, heard her in the night crying softly.

"What ails you, Dora dear?" Annie sat up and asked sleepily. "What is
the matter? It can't be, no," rousing herself, "it can _not_ be--you
don't mean that you repent what you've done, and would swallow the shop,
foxy hair, and everything?"

"Oh, no," denied Dora, "but I didn't think a man would care like that;
such a queer, gray shade came over his face, though I durst hardly look
at him; and his hands which were--well, were holding mine for a second,
you know----"

"No, I don't know," interrupted Annie, smiling to herself; "but go on,
what about the hands?"

"They were as cold as ice."

"Very likely, it is only the month of April."

"And it is not above a year since he lost both his father and
mother--all the near relations he had."

"Poor man!" admitted Annie. "But you could not help that, and many men,
young men especially, seem to get on quite well without near relations."

There was a strain of hardness about pretty Annie, whether bred of that
cynicism in the air of which May had complained, whether it was an
integral part of Annie, or whether, as in the case of some valuable
kinds of timber, it was merely an indication of the closer grain, the
slower ripening, and the greater power of endurance of the moral fibre.

"Men are not like women." Annie was continuing her lecture. "I dare say
Tom Robinson will do very well--all the better, perhaps, because he has
no ambition, and is content to make money in the most humdrum way as a
tradesman."

Dora sat up in turn, like a white ghost in her place in her little bed,
seen by the dim light. She had the instinct which causes women to look
back upon the men who have made love or proposed to them, even though
the women have rejected the men--as in a sense their property, if not
their prey, so as not by any means to relish the men's depreciation at
the hands of other women. Then it becomes a point of honour alike with
the proudest and the meekest of her sex to stand up in his absence in
defence of the discarded swain.

"I don't know about ambition," began Dora hesitatingly, "but father says
Tom Robinson is not at all stupid; he took his degree with credit at
Cambridge, and was not plucked like poor Ned Hewett, or that fop, Cyril
Carey. Father says when he worked with Mr. Robinson in getting up the
bill to lay before Parliament for closing the old churchyard, he could
not have desired a more intelligent, diligent fellow-worker. All the
salesmen and women at 'Robinson's' have been well looked after, and are
superior to the other shop-people in the town, don't you know? There is
Miss Franklin at the head of both the millinery and mantua-making
departments; I am sure she looks and speaks, as well as dresses,
like a lady?"

"Yes, and everybody is civil to her, but nobody thinks of making
her acquaintance out of the shop, and she is wise enough to keep
to her proper sphere. They say she is a distant relation of Tom
Robinson's--you see he is not altogether destitute of kindred.
Why does the man not marry her? That would be a suitable match."

"Annie!" protested Dora, in nearly speechless indignation, and then she
recovered breath and words. "She's forty if she's a day; and she's as
fat as a pin-cushion, with her cheeks a mottled red all over."

"How can you make such unkind remarks on your neighbours' looks? _He_
is not an Adonis, I may be allowed to say; and I have noticed that
shopkeepers are apt to marry women older than themselves, women who
have been in the trade--to keep the business together, I suppose."

"At least, his father did not marry like that either in his first or in
his second marriage," retorted Dora; "for the first Mrs. Robinson was
the daughter of a curate, and the second of a farmer, and she was not
half his age, though she did not survive him long."

"As you please. What's Hecuba to me, or what am I to Hecuba?" demanded
Annie airily.

"Besides," Dora returned laboriously to the charge, "there are
shopkeepers and shopkeepers, as you must be aware, Annie. Father says
old Mr. Robinson was a man of independent ideas and original mind, and
had his own theories of trade."

"I have nothing to say against it, especially at this hour of the night,
or morning," said Annie, professing to strangle a yawn; "only that I do
not think a linen-draper's business, however large and well-conducted,
is exactly the career of a gentleman, a man of fair ability and
education. He might leave it to any respectable well-disposed tradesman.
However, if you are going to exalt Tom Robinson, with his shop, into a
patriot and philanthropist cherishing a noble scheme for the public
good, and all that kind of thing, do it if you like, nobody will hinder
you. Call him back if you care to, I dare say it is still possible if
you are willing to make the concession. But oh, Dora!" appealed Annie,
who had talked herself wide awake by this time, "don't forget the loss
of position involved in really keeping a shop, however eccentric and
meritorious a man's intentions may be. Why, he had better become a
stonemason or a ploughman, if he is to do the thing at all; far better a
gamekeeper or a soldier in time of war, the plunge would be deeper but
more picturesque. Think of the entire breaking with the county with
which we have a right to hold ourselves connected, not merely because
father's patients are willing to take us up and make quite a fuss about
us sometimes, but because his Aunt Penny married and was welcomed into
that set. You have not yourself alone to consider, remember, Dora; you
might not mind, but you have the rest of us to think of, some of whom
would mind very much."

"You need have no anxiety about the matter," said poor Dora hotly and
huffily. "I am not going to marry Tom Robinson; you know I have refused
him this very afternoon."

But Annie was determined to empty out her whole budget of warnings.
"Even professional people like father, all our friends and
acquaintances, our relations on both sides of the house would begin to
drop us, and fight shy of us. What people that had any pretensions to
being gentle-folks would care to be mixed up with our brother-in-law the
linen-draper? And it is not as if the temptation were great; I cannot
see wherein the attraction lies; but instead of letting it beset you,
please don't lose sight of the three hundred and sixty-five days to be
spent every year in Tom Robinson's silent company. Think of the three
hundred and sixty-five breakfasts, dinners, and suppers to be eaten
opposite his mute figure."

"Stop, Annie," Dora cried energetically: "you know as well as I do that
I could never face such a thing, that I never dreamt of it. Only loving
a man could make it possible for a girl to give up her family in order
to belong to him; and even if there had been no 'Robinson's' to shock
you, I do not care the least little bit for poor Tom Robinson; yet
surely for that very reason," protested Dora with a sudden revulsion of
feeling, "I am at liberty to pity him."

"If you will take my advice, Dora," said shrewd Annie, sinking back on
her pillow as a sign that the untimely discussion ought to come to an
end, "you will get rid of your pity as quickly as you can. It is not
your pity which he seeks--very likely he would rage like a bear, for as
quiet as he can look, at the mere mention of it. But it strikes me that
it is not safe for either of you."

CHAPTER III.

THE HEADS OF THE HOUSE LOOK GRAVE.

"It is a thousand pities," said Dr. Millar, holding a consultation with
his wife, while he sipped his glass of sherry and ate his biscuit,
before retiring for the night, after his last round among the patients
in greatest need of his visits.

In spite of his daughter Dora's preference for tall men, the Doctor was
short and rather stout. He ought to have looked comfortable, he had the
physique and air of a comfortable man, but a certain harassed, careworn
expression was beginning to settle down on the spectacled face which had
once been round, rosy, and very comely. He was at least twenty years
older than his wife. The old-fashioned practice had prevailed in the
old-fashioned town, of elderly men, whether bachelors or widowers,
ending by marrying for the first or the second time women a score or
more years their juniors. Indeed, Dr. Millar was hard upon seventy,
though he had till recent bad times carried his years so well that he
had looked ten years younger than his actual age.

Mrs. Millar also began to look worried as a rule, though she had more of
the woman's faculty of putting the best face on things, both in public
and in private. She was a tall woman, who had enjoyed the advantages of
what was called "an elegant figure" in her youth. Now she was large and
heavy, with a mixture of unconscious stateliness and wistful
motherliness in her gait and gestures. Like Dr. Millar, she ought to
have seemed at least easy-minded, but circumstances were becoming more
and more against the happy condition, of which a pervading atmosphere of
content and cheerfulness should have been the outward expression.

The man and woman were not cut out, so to speak, for adversity. They had
not been seasoned to it in their younger days. On the contrary, they had
been cradled for many years in the lap--if not of luxury, of fair
middle-class prosperity. It was a few tolerably rough jolts which had
shaken them from their cradle. Still the trouble was more in
apprehension than in reality. As yet it had not caused the sufferers to
change any one of the domestic habits which had grown second nature to
them. It had not induced them to darken the sunny sky over their young
daughters' heads with a shadow of the clouds which were already looming
black on the parents' horizon. It may be said at once, that Dr. and Mrs.
Millar, though they were reckoned clever, sensible people enough by
their contemporaries, had softer hearts than they had hard heads. They
had not been used to painful self-denial and stern discipline, either
where they themselves or their children were concerned.

The couple were sitting now together in the dining-room with its solidly
handsome furniture, Russian leather and walnut wood, bits of family
plate on the sideboard, bronze chimney-piece ornaments, and good
engravings on the walls. Husband and wife had spent the last part of the
evening there, for four-and-twenty years, every night they were in
Redcross, when the Doctor was not kept out late, or when the couple were
not abroad in company, or seeing company at home. Dr. Millar, in his
slightly old-fashioned professional black coat and white tie, was
leaning back in his easy-chair sipping his sherry, and occasionally
drumming lightly on the table near him with these fine long sensitive
fingers which were a born doctor's fingers.

Mrs. Millar wore a demi-toilet in the shape of an expensive cashmere and
silk gown--not an evening dress, but an approach to it, as became the
wife of one of the leading professional men in Redcross, connected with
the county to boot. Her lace cap was a costly trifle of its kind, but
it had an awkward habit--the odder in a woman who was neat to formality
in the other details of her dress--of slipping to one side, or tilting
forwards or backwards on the brown hair, still abundant and just
streaked with gray; so that one or other of her daughters was constantly
calling Mrs. Millar's cap to order and setting it right. She was sitting
in an arm-chair, opposite her husband. Mechanically she put one daintily
slippered, very neat foot, considering the weight it helped to carry,
beyond her skirts, and stretched it towards the fire. There was still a
good fire blazing in the steel grate, though the spring was well
advanced, the weather was not more than chilly, and the hour was late.
It was as if coals were not a marketable commodity and a serious item in
the expenses of an embarrassed household. She held up a Japanese fan
between her face and the fire, from mere custom, for she had ceased to
pay much heed to the exigencies of a florid complexion.

"It's a thousand pities," repeated the little Doctor, looking quite
portentously regretful and oppressed. "It is not only that Tom Robinson
is an excellent fellow and would have made Dora the best of
husbands--given her a safe and happy home, and all that sort of thing;
but in case of anything happening, I am convinced he would have been as
good as a brother to the other girls, and a son to you. A man like him
is a stay and support to a household of helpless women."

"But nothing is going to happen, Jonathan," said Mrs. Millar, with an
involuntary nervous quiver which sent her cap hovering over one eyebrow.
"At least nothing worse than we know. Your practice is not so lucrative
as it used to be; how can it, in these bad times, with so many poor
young fellows of doctors settling here and there and everywhere in
Redcross and the villages around, starving themselves out, while they
impoverish their seniors? Nothing more than that, except the little
trouble at Carey's Bank."

"Quite enough too, Maria, quite enough," commented the Doctor deep down
in his throat, prolonging the words a little as if he were chanting the
refrain of a dismal song; "and when a man is my age and has plenty of
the young rivals you refer to, it is high time he should be looking out
for something happening. A family of girls, too. God help me! If they
had been four boys, who might have made their own way in the world, and
provided for you among them, I could have faced it better." He struck
the table again, with spasmodic force this time.

"Now, Jonathan, you will wake up the house. This is not like you,"
remonstrated his wife--all the more energetically that her heart sank
while she spoke. "I should not have expected you to give way in this
manner." She gave a quick push back to her unruly cap. "I am sure there
is no occasion for it. We are in no worse position than we were last
year, even the year before that."

"Save that I am growing older every year," he said grimly, "and the
affairs of the bank are not mending, as I hoped they might."

"Can't you sell out?" she suggested breathlessly, as she clasped her
hands on her knees.

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