Маргарет Олифант
The Two Marys
CHAPTER IV
ROBERT YORKE had gone to Canada about thirty years before the beginning of this history. He was then a robust young man of about twenty-five, a great athlete, and bringing from “home” all that science in cricket and other cognate sports which people out there are proud to think is the inheritance of every Englishman. He had begun in a very humble way, without introductions or recommendations of any sort – a thing which made the first steps of his course both slow and difficult; but besides being a gentleman, which is a thing never without effect, he was a young fellow of resolution and self-control, and there is no disadvantage in the world which will stand against those qualities. He made his way slowly, but very surely, always working upward. He was a man whom people could not fail to note wherever he went, a man who was loved and hated, or at least vehemently disliked: the mild approval of indifference never was his. Perhaps it might even be said that the majority of people disliked the man. He was not conciliatory. He was very silent, very reserved, so reserved that his wife even knew nothing about him, where he came from, who were his relations, or if he had any. On the other side of the Atlantic a man is permitted to be the son of his own actions. Where there are so many new people there are not the same researches into the antecedents of a candidate for social acceptance, as are common among us. He did not belong to a Canadian family, but was entirely a new man; and he was not enquired into. Any rash person who attempted to do so made little by his motion. Such anxious inquirers as ventured to put the question to him, whether he belonged to the Yorkes of Hardwicke, or any other great family of the name, were met with a stern and simple negative which made an end of them. “No,” he would say, with a perfectly blank countenance, and remain silent, defying further inquiry. When a man is married, then is the moment for investigations; but though Yorke married into a very good family, a family which had been settled in Canada for at least three generations – which is something like coming in with the Conqueror – he would seem to have successfully resisted all attempts to make him give an account of himself. He said shortly that he had “no relations” to the inquiries of his parents-in-law. It is not to be denied that they disliked this at first; but finding that no better was to be made of it, they reflected that it was rather a recommendation to a husband in some cases, and permitted the marriage. Mrs Yorke was about ten years younger than her husband, still a pretty woman, as she had a good right to be, having had neither cares nor troubles to deepen the genial lines, or engrave a single wrinkle on her pleasant countenance. She had never been required to think of anything beyond the needs of her household. Her mind was as fresh as her face. Though she was a great authority to her children, and knew exactly what to do in household emergencies, and how to take care of them all when anything was the matter with them – and even how to manage her husband when he had one of his bad colds – she had never had any harder intercourse with life. All went smoothly with her in its bigger affairs. She had everything that heart could desire – according to her position in life.
That position was very different in Canada from what it would have been at home. Here, in this old island, we ordinary folks, who modestly call ourselves ladies and gentlemen without aspiring to rank or greatness, are quite aware that we are out of the way of Princes and Princesses, and Secretaries of State. When we go to London, even if we may have arranged a royal entry into our special burgh, or been “of use” to a wandering Prince, it never occurs to us that the Princess will have heard of our arrival in town, and will forthwith ask us to tea. But on the other side of the Atlantic things are different, and to be in the best society, to be in the way of meeting, and even entertaining all the illustrious wanderers of the earth, it is not necessary to be very rich or great. Your position in life does not depend upon money, but upon many things that are little taken into account in more formal society – upon energy and civic services, and even sometimes upon that faculty of keeping in the front of affairs which many people who have no other merit possess, and which tells everywhere, more or less. The Yorkes were not overwhelmingly rich. He had not made a colossal fortune; but, on the other hand, his expenses were moderate. And without living at all splendidly, or with any ostentation of wealth, it was recognised that they were to be reckoned among the best people. They lived that kind of life which to many people appears, or did once appear, an ideal existence – a life of domestic comfort, of homely wealth, and family companionship: in which Cowper’s picture of the close-drawn curtains, the blazing fire, the hissing tea-urn was realised continually, with all the warm family adoration and mutual knowledge, and also, perhaps, something of the narrowness and sense of superior virtue which that ideal implies. The Yorkes living thus quite simply and domestically, parents and children together, had a position which people possessing six times their income, and living ten times as expensively, would not have had in England. They kept no more than one homely little carriage of all work, and were served in-doors by maidservants; but, notwithstanding, they were among “the best people,” and were not afraid to offer their simple hospitality, in happy ignorance of its want of splendour, to all the strangers who pleased them, and sometimes, among these, to very great people indeed.
While their children were young it had been several times proposed that Mr and Mrs Yorke should go “home” on a visit, to see England, and the ways of the old world. Mrs Yorke in particular, who had never been in England in her life, had been much excited by the idea of going “home;” but many things came in the way. Sometimes the drawback was on her side, in the shape of babies, or other natural impediments of a young mother’s career; and sometimes on his, in claims of business. Indeed, it had been generally remarked by all the friends of the family that Yorke himself never showed any great inclination to go home. After it had all been settled over and over again that they were to go, it came to be a foregone conclusion with all observers that something would certainly come in the way to change all the plans. Yet nobody could say that Yorke was to blame; the accidents that detained and deterred them were perfectly natural, and so far as could be seen, quite unavoidable. After the two elder girls grew up matters became more pressing, for while Mrs Yorke, with her children always on her mind, very easily accepted any excuse for giving up an expedition which must have carried her away from them, Grace and Milly had no such reasons to hold them back, and clamoured for the tour in which they themselves were to have a share.
What it was which at last decided their father to this journey, nobody knew. He was no more explanatory upon this matter than upon so many others. All he did was to announce one evening, coming back from his business, that he thought if they could get ready to start by next mail he really would be able to go. There was reality, and there was meaning in his tone. This time nobody said, “You will see: nothing will come of it.” From the very beginning everything was different this time. He went at once and inquired about berths in the steamers; he inquired after the outfits, the preparations which the ladies had to make, warning them that they could get all the new fashions in London – “or in Paris,” he added, seeing the smile of scorn upon the girls’ faces. But by this time Mrs Yorke had become more reluctant than ever to leave her little children, and encounter all the troubles of a long voyage. She had grown a little stout, not more than was becoming, all her friends said, though people who did not take any interest in her good looks were perhaps less flattering; and with this increased fulness there had come an increased disinclination to budge. She made a thousand excuses. Reginald was a little delicate. Lenny was just at that crisis in his education when, if he was not kept up to his work, something dreadful might happen. (“And mamma thinks she can keep him up to his work!” the girls said aside, with incredulous laughter; for, indeed, she was always the first to find out that he had a headache, and that health was of far more importance than any examination.) Then little Mary, the baby, had not yet got all her teeth. “And how a woman could find it in her heart to leave a baby teething – when everybody knows convulsions may come on at any moment,” Mrs Yorke protested she did not know. The end was that two days before the day of sailing, she announced point-blank that it was impossible. She could not do it. Home! why this was home, where they had all been born. She was very glad that the girls should go, who had the energy: but she had not the energy; and the little ones wanted her. All the bystanders, breaking out into accustomed smiles, declared that they knew it from the beginning. When it was not one thing it was another. When it was not Robert Yorke who could not leave his office, it was Louisa who could not leave her nursery – everybody knew from the first mention of the plan that it never would be carried out.
But this conclusion, though so often justified, was not infallible. On hearing, in an outburst of despair from the girls, mamma’s resolution, Mr Yorke stood stoutly to his colours. It was very unfortunate that mamma should feel so, but in that case he must go without her, he said; and he believed that he could take care of Grace and Milly, so as not to lose the passage money altogether. Mrs Yorke was very thankful to consent to the compromise. She was not of an anxious mind; everything had gone well in her family up to this time; there had been no losses, no accidents; there was no tradition of misfortune in the household, such as chills the hearts of some; and she saw them go with a cheerful countenance. The wind blew rather strong the first night, nothing to hurt, only a quarter of a gale; and she shuddered, and was thankful she was not with them. “Robert is an excellent sailor, and the girls are young. They were never at sea before; they will take pleasure in being a little ill as a new experience. But I cannot bear it, it puts me out altogether. I am thankful I am not with them,” she said; and so settled herself quite quietly with her nursery tea-party to wait till the travellers should return; which would be “such an amusement.”
This is how it happened that Mr Yorke and his daughters came to England without her. The girls lamented her withdrawal loudly; but Yorke himself said little. He made a half confidence to her the evening before they left. “To tell the truth,” he said, “it is something I saw in the English papers that decided me, something about some property.”
“What property?” said Mrs Yorke, to whom, as she had six children, the question of property was by no means uninteresting; but he only said, “It may come to nothing. I will tell you all about it when I come back.” She had curiosity enough after he was gone to send to the office for the old newspapers, and to examine them carefully to see if she could find any clue to this mysterious speech; but she could not. And she was an easy-going soul, and found it not in the least impossible to wait for the information until he should come home.
Thus the father and daughters crossed the Atlantic, justifying her easy confidence in the invariable good fortune of the family by having a most prosperous voyage. And nothing could be more bright than the cheerful assault with which the two girls on that first morning took possession of London and all its associations. They had a delightful morning, but not a very cheerful night. As, however, the girls were both alive to the thought that a cold generally (“very often,” said Milly; “almost always,” cried Grace, more confidently still) goes off, when proper precautions are taken, in the night – they consoled themselves. To-morrow is always a new day.
CHAPTER V
THE girls knew nothing more till next morning. There was no reason why they should be alarmed. After all a cold is no such great matter. When they went to bed they went to sleep, as is natural at their age, and heard nothing more till they were up and dressed, having almost forgotten their father’s illness altogether. Before, however, they were quite ready to leave their room, something occurred which startled them greatly. There was a knock at the door, in which of itself there was an alarming sound. Mystery and meaning were in it far beyond the sound of an ordinary knock. When one of them rushed to open it, a woman came in of imposing appearance. She did not speak to them at the door, as the servants of the hotel did, but came in even without being asked. Importance was in her look, in her rustling silk dress and lofty cap, in her soft and almost stately step.
“My dear young ladies,” she said, “you must not be alarmed;” and with this came in, and with her hand behind her shut the door. Naturally the girls’ imagination immediately leapt at things terrible – bad news from Canada, a summons home.
“What is the matter? Is it a telegram?” they cried with one breath.
“Oh, no, it is no telegram; fortunately, the poor gentleman is in his own comfortable room, where he will be seen to as comfortably as if he were at home. He said you were not to be alarmed.”
“We are thoroughly alarmed now,” said Grace; “tell us the truth at once.”
“Your poor papa, my dear young ladies, is very poorly,” said their visitor. “I am the manageress of this hotel. He rang his bell in the night, and we sent for a doctor; everything has been done that could have been done. I made the mustard with my own hands for his poultice. We are always ready in our great way of business for everything that can be required. I had the Foil de Rigolette ready, but he preferred mustard. Everything was done that could be done.”
The two girls instinctively had drawn together, and caught each other by the arm in mutual support. “Oh, tell us, tell us,” they cried; “is papa – ” and then their lips refused to fashion the other dreadful word that leapt to them. The manageress was satisfied with the effect she had produced. Instead of the fresh and cheerful girls to whom she had introduced herself, two woebegone and colourless ghosts stood before her trembling with dismay and terror.
Then she nodded her head encouragingly. “A little better – yes, a little better. We have made as much progress, the medical gentleman says, as can be expected in such a sharp attack. Mustard chest and back have eased the breathing, and though he does not wish it to be concealed from you that it is a very sharp attack – ”
Milly dropped her sister’s arm, and, sinking down upon a chair, fell a-weeping in mingled excitement and terror and relief. Grace stood still, holding by the table for support, very pale, and with trembling lips.
“You have not told us what it is. He had a bad cold.”
“That is how it always begins,” said the manageress; “but you will have the consolation of knowing that it has been taken in time, and that everything has been done. I was called up at once, and I have given him my best attention. I always say I am half a doctor myself. Yes, it is congestion of the lungs; but you must not be alarmed – indeed you must not be alarmed, my dear young ladies; there’s no reason to suppose that he won’t recover – ”
“Recover!” they both cried together like a lamentable echo, turning towards her four beseeching eyes, as if she held in her hand the issues of fate.
“And do well – and do well,” she said hastily. “That’s what I meant. Go and take some breakfast, and fortify yourselves like good dears; and when the doctor comes, we’ll see. You can ask him; and if the sight of you wouldn’t agitate your poor papa – ”
Why should it agitate him? Why should it not be the most natural thing in the world to see them by his bedside? That this should not have been his first thought was beyond measure extraordinary to the girls; but they yielded to the wonderful, appalling argument after a little. If it would agitate him, if it might hurt him, whatever it might cost them, they must stay away. There could not be any question about that. After a while they went, sick-hearted and miserable, into the sitting-room where their breakfast was laid, and where, the one persuading the other, they swallowed each a cup of tea. Then they sat down to wait the coming of the doctor. They had a long time to wait. It was a bright morning after the rain, and they sat at the window and watched all the comings and goings in the dingy London street. Opposite to them was a tall house with a balcony, filling up all the horizon; and the tradesmen’s carts jostled up and down for an hour or two, and lugubrious organ-grinders stopped underneath, encouraged by the sight of the two faces, possible listeners, which appeared at their window. And thus the first of the morning passed, and hansom cabs began to rattle about, depositing, with loud clang and hum, now young men and now old, at the different doors; and the stream of passers-by quickened; and postmen and telegraph boys came and went with sharp rattles of knocking; and quick footsteps beating up and down the street. The girls were not always at the window: now one, now another would go to the door of the sick-room and listen to the sounds inside. And sometimes the door would be opened, and something asked for, which Grace or Milly, far more rapid than any waiter, would rush to get. “Just the same, just the same,” was all the nurse could say to them. They began to feel as if they were entirely dependent upon this woman, and that in her hand was the decision of all.
When the doctor appeared at last he was so rapid and so hurried that it was all they could do to get him to pause to speak to them as he left the room. “No better; but I did not expect it,” he said. “No worse: these things must take their course.”
“But we are his daughters,” cried Grace. “Is it possible that you will shut us out from his bedside? Whenever he has been ill, we have always nursed him. Oh, why must we be kept out now?”
“Always nursed him?” said the doctor; “that is well thought of. Step in here. Do you mean to say that he has had this before?”
“What is it?” said Grace. “He has had bad colds, very bad colds. Mamma was always anxious when he had one of his colds.”
“And mamma told us above all things that we must not allow him to catch cold,” cried Milly. “Oh, how badly we must have managed! but how could we know? and what could we do? And it was only the second night.”
The doctor was quick-witted and sympathetic; but naturally he thought of his patient as a case, and not as a man. “Not to allow him to catch cold! that’s easier said than done,” he said with a half-smile, shaking his head. “I thought there must be delicacy of the chest to begin with; all that could not have been done in one day.”
“No, no, there was no delicacy; he was always well and strong – always strong,” the girls cried, emulating and supplementing each other. They poured upon him instantly a hundred examples of their father’s robustness. He had never been ill in his life, except with a cold, and everybody has colds. He never took any special care. Mamma was anxious, but then mamma was always anxious about us all, though we are known to be the healthiest family! To all these eager explanations Doctor Brewer listened with that half-smile, shaking his head; but he was interested. From looking at this matter as only a case, he began to realise the human creatures involved in it, and to perceive that the man who was ill was the head of an anxious, probably dependent family, and that these two pale, frightened, eager girls, with their young beauty all obscured by this cloud of pale terror and confusion, were his children. He began to look at them with a certain tenderness of pity.
“You are very young,” he said at last, when they gave him time to speak. “I think you had better telegraph at once for your mother.”
“For mamma?” their faces were pale before, but this suggestion withdrew from them every tinge of colour.
“She is the best nurse he can have; she ought to be here to take care of you in any case. Give me her address, and I will telegraph. She ought to know at once.”
“Doctor!” said Grace, separating herself from her sister, “oh, let us know at once. Is it so serious? is it dangerous? I am not very young, and I am the eldest, and have had a great deal of experience. Mamma could not be here for nearly a fortnight; and think what a thing it would be, the long voyage alone, and the fear of what she might find when she came, and no news – no news for ten days or more – for she might not have so good a passage as we had. And then she has never been used to travel, or do anything by herself. Oh, doctor, do you think – do you think that it is so serious as that?”
“Where is your mother?” he said.
“In Canada,” they both cried in one breath.
Dr Brewer began to be more interested than was at all justifiable in what was after all only one case out of a hundred. “Poor children! poor children!” he said. They stood with their faces intent upon him, four great brown eyes, with the eyelids curved and puckered over them in deep arches of anxiety and terror, appealing as if to a god who could kill and make alive. He was overcome by this passionate trouble and suspense. He put out his hand (he had children of his own) and touched lightly with a soothing touch the nearest shoulder. “You must not be frightened,” he said. “I see you are brave girls; you will do your duty. No; if she is so far away as that, we will not frighten your mother to-day – not to-day.”
“You think he is very ill?” they said, searching his face as if it were full of secret folds and hieroglyphics which searching could find out.
“He has a sharp attack. Come, one of you shall go, one at a time, and be at hand if anything is wanted. I sent him a nurse last night, whom I happened to be able to lay my hand upon. She will want a rest occasionally. If you will obey orders exactly, and call her whenever you are at a loss – one at a time.”
“Milly is not strong – not so very strong,” cried Grace; “let it be me. I nursed them all when we had scarlet fever: and I never cry nor break down.”
“Oh, Grace! I should not cry if I were with papa,” cried Milly, with streaming eyes.
Dr Brewer almost cried too. He was tender-hearted, as so many doctors are, and then he had girls of his own. But he could not spend all his morning with these two pretty forlorn creatures, and their father, who was struggling for his life.
This went on for more than a week, during which there was to these poor girls neither night nor day, but all one confused languor and excitement and anxiety; the monotony of the sick-room, broken only by now and then a terrified consultation with nurse and doctor, or between themselves, as to what was to be done. During all this time they defended their mother from the telegram with which the doctor had threatened her. The more they thought of it the more impossible it seemed that she should be summoned upon such a journey at a moment’s notice and kept, during all its course, in the terrible anxiety which was inevitable if once she knew what was hanging over them. After the first days Dr Brewer himself did not urge it. He said to himself that all would be settled one way or other before the poor woman could come: and that the girls, poor things! must bear it as they could if matters came to the worst.
Meanwhile, as the dreary days went on, the sick-room, in its stillness and monotony, became the scene of one of those hand-to-hand struggles with death in which there is all the terrible force of a tragedy to those who are aware of the conclusion which is drawing nigh; but it is seldom that the persons who are most interested are aware of this. And Grace and Milly were too young and inexperienced to realise more than that papa was no better from morning to morning, from night to night. There was always one of them in the room with the nurse, and occasionally Mr Yorke was well enough to talk to them. But either he did not realise the seriousness of his own position, or the torpor of approaching death, and the self-absorption of weakness and suffering had begun to steal over him. He liked Grace to do what was needful for him, but smiled at poor little Milly, bidding her run away and amuse herself. “You ought to be doing something. You ought to be taking advantage of your opportunities. Who knows if you will ever be in London again?” he said, once or twice, with that strange forgetfulness of all the circumstances which bewildered the girls; but either he had nothing important to say, or, in the languor of his illness, he deferred the saying of it, preferring to turn his face to the wall and escape from all consideration of what was coming. Once only this silence was broken; but not to much purpose. He had asked for something to drink; and as Grace raised him – she could do this now as easily as if he had been a child – he caught and was touched by the look of anxiety on her face.
“Poor little Grace!” he said, when he was laid back again upon his pillow, “this is a curious way of enjoying London.” He had not much breath to talk, and had to pause between his words.
“Not at all, papa. Yes, it is dreadful for you to have to suffer, but for me quite natural, you being ill.”
Then he gave a feeble laugh. “Your mother – will not suppose – that we are engaged like this.”
“Milly has written to say you are not well.”
“Not well – that was right – not to make her anxious.” He laughed a little again. “But she will have to be told – some day: my poor Milly.” This was his wife’s name as well as his child’s.
“Yes, papa, when you are quite well again. She will not mind then; but don’t you think that it is best to say little till you are better? for she would be so anxious; and what would be the use of bringing her over, when you will be all right again before she could get here?”
“I shall be all right again,” he said, pausing upon each word. The smile had gone off his face. He seemed to weigh the words, and drop them one by one. Was he asking himself whether that would ever be, or only lingering for want of breath? “Remind me,” he said, “of the people I went to see: there is something I want – to tell you about. But I can’t – be troubled now,” and with that he turned once more, as he was so fond of doing, his face to the wall.
Thus the melancholy days went on. Grace had begun to feel something fatal in the air, but Milly had not yet gone farther than the fact that papa was very ill, and that it might be weeks before he was well again, when Dr Brewer came into their room after his nightly visit. They had been trying to eat something, which they simply acknowledged as a duty, but did not know how to get through. Their meals were the most dreadful moments of their day, the only things that marked its melancholy course. The doctor came in, not hurriedly, as he usually did. He drew a chair to the table and sat down beside them. “What are you having – tea? I never told you to take tea,” he said.
“It is so easy to take,” Milly pleaded, “far easier than anything else.”
“In the meantime you must have some wine,” he said, ringing the bell; “yes, yes, you must take it whether you like it or not. Now tell me a little about yourselves, as I have some time to myself to-night. My wife was talking of coming to see you. I have never heard anything about your friends in London. It is time to think of looking them up – ”
“That means papa is better,” said Milly. “I knew it from the first moment, as soon as I saw the doctor’s kind face.”
He turned his kind face away from them with a forced smile. He could not bear to meet their anxious eyes.
“But we have no friends – not to call friends,” said Grace, who was not quite so sure as Milly, and yet was so glad to take Milly’s opinion for this once. “We have letters to quantities of people, and some of them we have seen at home. There is Lord Conway,” she said with a little hesitation – “he once stayed at our house. It is a long time ago, but we thought – oh, we did not want him to ask us, especially since papa has been ill. It would be dreadful to have a long illness in a stranger’s house.”
“Lord Conway!” Dr Brewer said, bewildered.
“But we don’t know him, not as you know your friends,” Grace made haste to add; “we don’t know any one in that way. They are all people who have been in Canada, or the friends of people who have been in Canada.”
The doctor shook his head. “Do you mean that you know nobody, my poor dear children? You have no friends– people who really are acquainted with you, who would take a little trouble for you, whom you could have recourse to – ” Here he stopped, confused, feeling Grace’s eye upon him. “I thought you might have – relations even, on this side of the water,” he said.
“Whom we could have recourse to!” said Grace – “oh, doctor, tell us, tell us what you mean! Why should we want to have recourse to any one? That means more than ordinary words – ”
“He means – to show us some civility – to show us England – now that papa is going to get better,” said Milly, throwing back her head with a pretty movement of pleasure. But Dr Brewer did not raise his eyes. He could not face them, the one so anxious to divine his meaning, the other happy in her mistake. Milly was talkative and effusive in her joy. “Now we ought to telegraph to mamma,” she cried. “She will have got the first letter saying how ill papa was. It will be delightful to relieve her mind all in a moment – to tell her he is getting well, almost as soon as she knew that he was ill. We must telegraph to-morrow.”
