CHAPTER XIV
“No, Mannering,” said Dr. Roland, “I can’t say that you may go back to the Museum in a week. I don’t know when you will be up to going. I should think you had a good right to a long holiday after working there for so many years.”
“Not so many years,” said Mr. Mannering, “since the long break which you know of, Roland.”
“In the interest of science,” cried the doctor.
The patient shook his head with a melancholy smile. “Not in my own at least,” he said.
“Well, it is unnecessary to discuss that question. Back you cannot go, my good fellow, till you have recovered your strength to a very different point from that you are at now. You can’t go till after you’ve had a change. At present you’re nothing but a bundle of tendencies ready to develop into anything bad that’s going. That must be stopped in the first place, and you must have sea air, or mountain air, or country air, whichever you fancy. I won’t be dogmatic about the kind, but the thing you must have.”
“Impossible, impossible, impossible!” Mannering had begun to cry out while the other was speaking. “Why, man, you’re raving,” he said. “I—so accustomed to the air of Bloomsbury, and that especially fine sort which is to be had at the Museum, that I couldn’t breathe any other—I to have mountain air or sea air or country air! Nonsense! Any of them would stifle me in a couple of days.”
“You will have your say, of course. And you are a great scientific gent, I’m aware; but you know as little about your own health and what it wants as this child with her message. Well, Janie, what is it, you constant bother? Mr. Mannering? Take it to Miss Bethune, or wait till Miss Dora comes back.”
“Please, sir, the gentleman is waiting, and he says he won’t go till he’s pyed.”
“You little ass!” said the doctor. “What do you mean by coming with your ridiculous stories here?”
Mannering stretched out his thin hand and took the paper. “You see,” he said, with a faint laugh, “how right I was when I said I would have nothing to do with your changes of air. It is all that my pay will do to settle my bills, and no overplus for such vanities.”
“Nonsense, Mannering! The money will be forthcoming when it is known to be necessary.”
“From what quarter, I should be glad to hear? Do you think the Museum will grant me a premium for staying away, for being of no use? Not very likely! I shall not be left in the lurch; they will grant me three months’ holiday, or even six months’ holiday, and my salary as usual. But we shall have to reduce our expenses, Dora and I, and to live as quietly as possible, instead of going off like millionaires to revel upon fresh tipples of fancy air. No, no, nothing of the kind. And, besides, I don’t believe in them. I have made myself, as the French say, to the air of Bloomsbury, and in that I shall live or die.”
“You don’t speak at all, my dear fellow, like the man of sense you are,” said the doctor. “Fortunately, I can carry things with a high hand. When I open my mouth let no patient venture to contradict. You are going away to the country now. If you don’t conform to my rules, I am not at all sure I may not go further, and ordain that there is to be no work for six months, a winter on the Riviera, and so forth. I have got all these pains and penalties in my hand.”
“Better and better,” said Mannering, “a palace to live in, and a chef to cook for us, and our dinner off gold plate every day.”
“There is no telling what I may do if you put me to it,” Dr. Roland said, with a laugh. “But seriously, if it were my last word, you must get out of London. Nothing that you can do or say will save you from that.”
“We shall see,” said Mr. Mannering. “The sovereign power of an empty purse does great wonders. But here is Dora back, and without the big book, I am glad to see. What did Fiddler say?”
“I will tell you afterwards, father,” said Dora, developing suddenly a little proper pride.
“Nonsense! You can tell me now—that he had two or three people in his pocket who would have bought it willingly if he had not reserved it for me, and that it was a book that nobody wanted, and would be a drug on his hands.”
“Oh, father, how clever you are! That was exactly what he said: and I did not point out that he was contradicting himself, for fear it should make him angry. But he did not mind me. He said he could trust Mr. Mannering of the Museum; he was quite sure he should get paid; and he is sending it back by one of the young men, because it was too heavy for me.”
“My poor little girl! I ought to have known it would be too heavy for you.”
“Oh, never mind,” said Dora. “I only carried it half the way. It was getting very heavy indeed, I will not deny, when I met Mr. Gordon, and he carried it for me to Fiddler’s shop.”
“Who is Mr. Gordon?” said Mr. Mannering, raising his head.
“He is a friend of Miss Bethune’s,” said Dora, with something of hesitation in her voice which struck her father’s ear.
Dr. Roland looked very straight before him, taking care to make no comment, and not to meet Dora’s eye. There was a tacit understanding between them now on several subjects, which the invalid felt vaguely, but could not explain to himself. Fortunately, however, it had not even occurred to him that there was anything more remarkable in the fact of a young man, met at hazard, carrying Dora’s book for her, than if the civility had been shown to himself.
“You see,” he said, “it is painful to have to make you aware of all my indiscretions, Roland. What has a man to do with rare editions, who has a small income and an only child like mine? The only thing is,” he added, with a short laugh, “they should bring their price when they come to the hammer,—that has always been my consolation.”
“They are not coming to the hammer just yet,” said the doctor. He possessed himself furtively, but carelessly, of the piece of paper on the table—the bill which, as Janie said, was wanted by a gentleman waiting downstairs. “You just manage to get over this thing, Mannering,” he said, in an ingratiating tone, “and I’ll promise you a long bill of health and plenty of time to make up all your lost way. You don’t live in the same house with a doctor for nothing. I have been waiting for this for a long time. I could have told Vereker exactly what course it would take if he hadn’t been an ass, as all these successful men are. He did take a hint or two in spite of himself; for a profession is too much for a man, it gives a certain fictitious sense in some cases, even when he is an ass. Well, Mannering, of course I couldn’t prophesy what the end would be. You might have succumbed. With your habits, I thought it not unlikely.”
“You cold-blooded practitioner! And what do you mean by my habits? I’m not a toper or a reveller by night.”
“You are almost worse. You are a man of the Museum, drinking in bad air night and day, and never moving from your books when you can help it. It was ten to one against you; but some of you smoke-dried, gas-scented fellows have the devil’s own constitution, and you’ve pulled through.”
“Yes,” said Mannering, holding up his thin hand to the light, and thrusting forth a long spindle-shank of a leg, “I’ve pulled through—as much as is left of me. It isn’t a great deal to brag of.”
“Having done that, with proper care I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a long spell of health before you—as much health as a man can expect who despises all the laws of nature—and attain a very respectable age before you die.”
“Here’s promises!” said Mannering. He paused and laughed, and then added in a lower tone: “Do you think that’s so very desirable, after all?”
“Most men like it,” said the doctor; “or, at least, think they do. And for you, who have Dora to think of–”
“Yes, there’s Dora,” the patient said as if to himself.
“That being the case, you are not your own property, don’t you see? You have got to take care of yourself, whether you will or not. You have got to make life livable, now that it’s handed back to you. It’s a responsibility, like another. Having had it handed back to you, as I say, and being comparatively a young man—what are you, fifty?”
“Thereabout; not what you would call the flower of youth.”
“But a very practical, not disagreeable age—good for a great deal yet, if you treat it fairly; but, mind you, capable of giving you a great deal of annoyance, a great deal of trouble, if you don’t.”
“No more before the child,” said Mannering hastily. “We must cut our coat according to our cloth, but she need not be in all our secrets. What! turtle-soup again? Am I to be made an alderman of in spite of myself? No more of this, Hal, if you love me,” he said, shaking his gaunt head at the doctor, who was already disappearing downstairs.
Dr. Roland turned back to nod encouragingly to Dora, and to say: “All right, my dear; keep it up!” But his countenance changed as he turned away again, and when he had knocked and been admitted at Miss Bethune’s door, it was with a melancholy face, and a look of the greatest despondency, that he flung himself into the nearest chair.
“It will be all of no use,” he cried,—“of no use, if we can’t manage means and possibilities to pack them off somewhere. He will not hear of it! Wants to go back to the Museum next week—in July!—and to go on in Bloomsbury all the year, as if he had not been within a straw’s breadth of his life.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Miss Bethune, shaking her head.
“He ought to go to the country now,” said the doctor, “then to the sea, and before the coming on of winter go abroad. That’s the only programme for him. He ought to be a year away. Then he might come back to the Museum like a giant refreshed, and probably write some book, or make some discovery, or do some scientific business, that would crown him with glory, and cover all the expenses; but the obstinate beast will not see it. Upon my word!” cried Dr. Roland, “I wish there could be made a decree that only women should have the big illnesses; they have such faith in a doctor’s word, and such a scorn of possibilities: it always does them good to order them something that can’t be done, and then do it in face of everything—that’s what I should like for the good of the race.”
“I can’t say much for the good of the race,” said Miss Bethune; “but you’d easily find some poor wretch of a woman that would do it for the sake of some ungrateful brute of a man.”
“Ah, we haven’t come to that yet,” said the doctor regretfully; “the vicarious principle has not gone so far. If it had I daresay there would be plenty of poor wretches ready to bear their neighbours’ woes for a consideration. The simple rules of supply and demand would be enough to provide us proxies without any stronger sentiment: but philosophising won’t do us any good; it won’t coin money, or if it could, would not drop it into his pocket, which after all is the chief difficulty. He is not to be taken in any longer by your fictions about friendly offerings and cheap purchases. Here is a bill which that little anæmic nuisance Janie brought in, with word that a gentleman was ‘wyaiting’ for the payment.”
“We’ll send for the gentleman, and settle it,” said Miss Bethune quietly, “and then it can’t come up to shame us again.”
The gentleman sent for turned up slowly, and came in with reluctance, keeping his face as much as possible averted. He was, however, too easily recognisable to make this contrivance available.
“Why, Hesketh, have you taken service with Fortnum and Mason?” the doctor cried.
“I’m in a trade protection office, sir,” said Hesketh. “I collect bills for parties.” He spoke with his eyes fixed on a distant corner, avoiding as much as possible every glance.
“In a trade protection office? And you mean to tell me that Fortnum and Mason, before even the season is over, collect their bills in this way?”
“They don’t have not to say so many customers in Bloomsbury, sir,” said the young man, with that quickly-conceived impudence which is so powerful a weapon, and so congenial to his race.
“Confound their insolence! I have a good mind to go myself and give them a bit of my mind,” cried Dr. Roland. “Bloomsbury has more sense, it seems, than I gave it credit for, and your pampered tradesman more impudence.”
“I would just do that,” said Miss Bethune. “And will it be long since you took to this trade protection, young man?—for Gilchrist brought me word you were ill in your bed not a week ago.”
“A man can’t stay in bed, when ’e has a wife to support, and with no ’ealth to speak of,” Hesketh replied, with a little bravado; but he was very pale, and wiped the unwholesome dews from his forehead.
“Anæmia, body and soul,” said the doctor to the lady, in an undertone.
“You’ll come to his grandfather again in a moment,” said the lady to the doctor. “Now, my lad, you shall just listen to me. Put down this moment your trade protections, and all your devices. Did you not hear, by Gilchrist, that we were meaning to give you a new chance? Not for your sake, but for your wife’s, though she probably is just tarred with the same stick. We were meaning to set you up in a little shop in a quiet suburb.”
Here the young fellow made a grimace, but recollected himself, and said no word.
“Eh!” cried Miss Bethune, “that wouldn’t serve your purposes, my fine gentleman?”
“I never said so,” said the young man. “It’s awfully kind of you. Still, as I’ve got a place on my own hook, as it were—not that we mightn’t combine the two, my wife and I. She ain’t a bad saleswoman,” he added, with condescension. “We was in the same house of business before we was married—not that beastly old shop where they do nothing but take away the young gentlemen’s and young ladies’ characters. It’s as true as life what I say. Ask any one that has ever been there.”
“Anæmia,” said Miss Bethune, to the doctor, aside, “would not be proof enough, if there were facts on the other hand.”
“I always mistrust facts,” the doctor replied.
“Here is your money,” she resumed. “Write me out the receipt, or rather, put your name to it. Now mind this, I will help you if you’re meaning to do well; but if I find out anything wrong in this, or hear that you’re in bed again to-morrow, and not fit to lift your head–”
“No man can answer for his health,” said young Hesketh solemnly. “I may be bad, I may be dead to-morrow, for anything I can tell.”
“That is true.”
“And my poor wife a widder, and the poor baby not born.”
“In these circumstances,” said Dr. Roland, “we’ll forgive her for what wasn’t her fault, and look after her. But that’s not likely, unless you are fool enough to let yourself be run over, or something of that sort, going out from here.”
“Which I won’t, sir, if I can help it.”
“And no great loss, either,” the doctor said in his undertone. He watched the payment grimly, and noticed that the young man’s hand shook in signing the receipt. What was the meaning of it? He sat for a moment in silence, while Hesketh’s steps, quickening as he went farther off, were heard going downstairs and towards the door. “I wish I were as sure that money would find its way to the pockets of Fortnum and Mason, as I am that yonder down-looking hound had a criminal grandfather,” he said.
“Well, there is the receipt, anyhow. Will you go and inquire?”
“To what good? There would be a great fuss, and the young fool would get into prison probably; whereas we may still hope that it is all right, and that he has turned over a new leaf.”
“I should not be content without being at the bottom of it,” said Miss Bethune; and then, after a pause: “There is another thing. The lady from South America that was here has been taken ill, Dr. Roland.”
“Ah, so!” cried the doctor. “I should like to go and see her.”
“You are not wanted to go and see her. It is I—which you will be surprised at—that is wanted, or, rather, Dora with me. I have had an anxious pleader here, imploring me by all that I hold dear. You will say that is not much, doctor.”
“I will say nothing of the kind. But I have little confidence in that lady from South America, or her young man.”
“The young man is just as fine a young fellow! Doubt as you like, there is no deceit about him; a countenance like the day, and eyes that meet you fair, look at him as you please. Doctor,” said Miss Bethune, faltering a little, “I have taken a great notion into my head that he may turn out to be a near relation of my own.”
“A relation of yours?” cried Dr. Roland, suppressing a whistle of astonishment. “My thoughts were going a very different way.”
“I know, and your thoughts are justified. The lady did not conceal that she was Mrs. Mannering’s sister: but the one thing does not hinder the other.”
“It would be a very curious coincidence—stranger, even, than usual.”
“Everything that’s strange is usual,” cried Miss Bethune vehemently. “It is we that have no eyes to see.”
“Perhaps,” said the doctor, who loved a paradox. “I tell you what,” he added briskly, “let me go and see this lady. I am very suspicious about her. I should like to make her out a little before risking it for Dora, even with you.”
“You think, perhaps, you would make it out better than I should,” said Miss Bethune, with some scorn. “Well, there is no saying. You would, no doubt, make out what is the matter with her, which is always the first thing that interests you.”
“It explains most things, when you know how to read it,” the doctor said; but in this point his opponent did not give in to him, it is hardly necessary to say. She was very much interested about Dora, but she was still more interested in the question which moved her own heart so deeply. The lady from South America might be in command of many facts on that point; and prudence seemed to argue that it was best to see and understand a little more about her first, before taking Dora, without her father’s knowledge, to a stranger who made such a claim upon her.
“Though if it is her mother’s sister, I don’t know who could have a stronger claim upon her,” said Miss Bethune.
“Provided her mother had a sister,” the doctor said.
CHAPTER XV
Miss Bethune set out accordingly, without saying anything further, to see the invalid. She took nobody into her confidence, not even Gilchrist, who had much offended her mistress by her scepticism. Much as she was interested in every unusual chain of circumstances, and much more still in anything happening to Dora Mannering, there was a still stronger impulse of personal feeling in her present expedition. It had gone to her head like wine; her eyes shone, and there was a nervous energy in every line of her tall figure in its middle-aged boniness and hardness. She walked quickly, pushing her way forward when there was any crowd with an unconscious movement, as of a strong swimmer dividing the waves. Her mind was tracing out every line of the supposed process of events known to herself alone. It was her own story, and such a strange one as occurs seldom in the almost endless variety of strange stories that are about the world—a story of secret marriage, secret birth, and sudden overwhelming calamity. She had as a young woman given herself foolishly and hastily to an adventurer: for she was an heiress, if she continued to please an old uncle who had her fate in his hands. The news of the unexpected approach of this old man brought the sudden crisis. The husband, who had been near her in the profound quiet of the country, fled, taking with him the child, and after that no more. The marriage was altogether unknown, except to Gilchrist, and a couple of old servants in the small secluded country-house where the strange little tragedy had taken place; and the young wife, who had never borne her husband’s name, came to life again after a long illness, to find every trace of her piteous story, and of the fate of the man for whom she had risked so much, and the child whom she had scarcely seen, obliterated. The agony through which she had lived in that first period of dismay and despair, the wild secret inquiries set on foot with so little knowledge of how to do anything of the kind, chiefly by means of the good and devoted Gilchrist, who, however, knew still less even than her mistress the way to do it—the long, monotonous years of living with the old uncle to whom that forlorn young woman in her secret anguish had to be nurse and companion; the dreadful freedom afterwards, when the fortune was hers, and the liberty so long desired—but still no clue, no knowledge whether the child on whom she had set her passionate heart existed or not. The hero, the husband, existed no longer in her imagination. That first year of furtive fatal intercourse had revealed him in his true colours as an adventurer, whose aim had been her fortune. But why had he not revealed himself when that fortune was secure? Why had he not brought back the child who would have secured his hold over her whatever had happened? These questions had been discussed between Miss Bethune and her maid, till there was no longer any contingency, any combination of things or theories possible, which had not been torn to pieces between them, with reasonings sometimes as acute as mother’s wit could make them, sometimes as foolish as ignorance and inexperience suggested.
They had roamed all over the world in an anxious quest after the fugitives who had disappeared so completely into the darkness. What wind drifted them to Bloomsbury it would be too long to inquire. The wife of one furtive and troubled year, the mother of one anxious but heavenly week, had long, long ago settled into the angular, middle-aged unmarried lady of Mrs. Simcox’s first floor. She had dropped all her former friends, all the people who knew about her. And those people who once knew her by her Christian name, and as they thought every incident in her life, in reality knew nothing, not a syllable of the brief romance and tragedy which formed its centre. She had developed, they all thought, into one of those eccentrics who are so often to be found in the loneliness of solitary life, odd as were all the Bethunes, with something added that was especially her own. By intervals an old friend would appear to visit her, marvelling much at the London lodging in which the mistress of more than one old comfortable house had chosen to bury herself. But the Bethunes were all queer, these visitors said; there was a bee in their bonnet, there was a screw loose somewhere. It is astonishing the number of Scotch families of whom this is said to account for everything their descendants may think or do.
This was the woman who marched along the hot July streets with the same vibration of impulse and energy which had on several occasions led her half over the world. She had been disappointed a thousand times, but never given up hope; and each new will-o’-the-wisp which had led her astray had been welcomed with the same strong confidence, the same ever-living hope. Few of them, she acknowledged to herself now, had possessed half the likelihood of this; and every new point of certitude grew and expanded within her as she proceeded on her way. The same age, the same name (more or less), a likeness which Gilchrist, fool that she was, would not see; and then the story, proving everything of the mother who was alive but unknown.
Could anything be more certain? Miss Bethune’s progress through the streets was more like that of a bird on the wing, with that floating movement which is so full at once of strength and of repose, and wings ever ready for a swift coup to increase the impulse and clear the way, than of a pedestrian walking along a hot pavement. A strange coincidence! Yes, it would be a very strange coincidence if her own very unusual story and that of the poor Mannerings should thus be twined together. But why should it not be so? Truth is stranger than fiction. The most marvellous combinations happen every day. The stranger things are, the more likely they are to happen. This was what she kept saying to herself as she hurried upon her way.
She was received in the darkened room, in the hot atmosphere perfumed and damped by the spray of some essence, where at first Miss Bethune felt she could scarcely breathe. When she was brought in, in the gleam of light made by the opened door, there was a little scream of eagerness from the bed at the other end of the long room, and then a cry: “But Dora? Where is Dora? It is Dora, Dora, I want!” in a voice of disappointment and irritation close to tears.
“You must not be vexed that I came first by myself,” Miss Bethune said. “To bring Dora without her father’s knowledge is a strong step.”
“But I have a right—I have a right!” cried the sick woman. “Nobody—not even he—could deny me a sight of her. I’ve hungered for years for a sight of her, and now that I am free I am going to die.”
“No, no! don’t say that,” said Miss Bethune, with the natural instinct of denying that conclusion. “You must not let your heart go down, for that is the worst of all.”
“It is perhaps the best, too,” said the patient. “What could I have done? Always longing for her, never able to have her except by stealth, frightened always that she would find out, or that he should find out. Oh, no, it’s better as it is. Now I can provide for my dear, and nobody to say a word. Now I can show her how I love her. And she will not judge me. A child like that doesn’t judge. She will learn to pity her poor, poor – Oh, why didn’t you bring me my Dora? I may not live another day.”
In the darkness, to which her eyes gradually became accustomed, Miss Bethune consulted silently with a look the attendant by the bed; and receiving from her the slight, scarcely distinguishable, answer of a shake of the head, took the sufferer’s hand, and pressed it in her own.
“I will bring her,” she said, “to-night, if you wish it, or to-morrow. I give you my word. If you think of yourself like that, whether you are right or not, I am not the one to disappoint you. To-night, if you wish it.”
“Oh, to-night, to-night! I’ll surely live till to-night,” the poor woman cried.
“And many nights more, if you will only keep quite quiet, ma’am. It depends upon yourself,” said the maid.
“They always tell you,” said Mrs. Bristow, “to keep quiet, as if that was the easiest thing to do. I might get up and walk all the long way to see my child; but to be quiet without her—that is what is impossible—and knowing that perhaps I may never see her again!”
“You shall—you shall,” said Miss Bethune soothingly. “But you have a child, and a good child—a son, or as like a son as possible.”
“I a son? Oh, no, no—none but Dora! No one I love but Dora.” The poor lady paused then with a sob, and said in a changed voice: “You mean Harry Gordon? Oh, it is easy to see you are not a mother. He is very good—oh, very good. He was adopted by Mr. Bristow. Oh,” she cried, with a long crying breath, “Mr. Bristow ought to have done something for Harry. He ought to—I always said so. I did not want to have everything left to me.”
She wrung her thin hands, and a convulsive sob came out of the darkness.
“Ma’am,” said the maid, “I must send this lady away, and put a stop to everything, if you get agitated like this.”
“I’ll be quite calm, Miller—quite calm,” the patient cried, putting out her hand and clutching Miss Bethune’s dress.
“To keep her calm I will talk to her of this other subject,” said Miss Bethune, with an injured tone in her voice. She held her head high, elevating her spare figure, as if in disdain. “Let us forget Dora for the moment,” she said, “and speak of this young man that has only been a son to you for the most of his life, only given you his affection and his services and everything a child could do—but is nothing, of course, in comparison with a little girl you know nothing about, who is your niece in blood.”
“Oh, my niece, my niece!” the poor lady murmured under her breath.
“Tell me something about this Harry Gordon; it will let your mind down from the more exciting subject,” said Miss Bethune, still with great dignity, as if of an offended person. “He has lived with you for years. He has shared your secrets.”
“I have talked to him about Dora,” she faltered.
“But yet,” said the stern questioner, more and more severely, “it does not seem you have cared anything about him all these years?”
“Oh, don’t say that! I have always been fond of him, always—always! He will never say I have not been kind to him,” the invalid cried.
“Kind?” cried Miss Bethune, with an indignation and scorn which nothing could exceed. Then she added more gently, but with still the injured tone in her voice: “Will you tell me something about him? It will calm you down. I take an interest in the young man. He is like somebody I once knew, and his name recalls–”
“Perhaps you knew his father?” said Mrs. Bristow.
“Perhaps. I would like to hear more particulars. He tells me his mother is living.”
“The father was very foolish to tell him. Mr. Bristow always said so. It was on his deathbed. I suppose,” cried the poor lady, with a deep sigh, “that on your deathbed you feel that you must tell everything. Oh, I’ve been silent, silent, so long! I feel that too. She is not a mother that it would ever be good for him to find. Mr. Bristow wished him never to come back to England, only for that. He said better be ignorant—better know nothing.”
“And why was the poor mother so easily condemned?”
“You would be shocked—you an unmarried lady—if I told you the story. She left him just after the boy was born. She fell from one degradation to another. He sent her money as long as he could keep any trace of her. Poor, poor man!”
“And his friends took everything for gospel that this man said?”
“He was an honest man. Why should he tell Mr. Bristow a lie? I said it was to be kept from poor Harry. It would only make him miserable. But there was no doubt about the truth of it—oh, none.”
“I tell you,” cried Miss Bethune, “that there is every doubt of it. His mother was a poor deceived girl, that was abandoned, deserted, left to bear her misery as she could.”
“Did you know his mother?” said the patient, showing out of the darkness the gleam of eyes widened by astonishment.