A Houseful of Girls by Sarah Tytler (simple ebook reader .txt) 📕

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.

[379]"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[380] 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[381] 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.

[382]

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[383] 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.

In a moment Annie saw what Rose had seen[384] some time ago, but had not taken it upon her to put in so many words for Annie's benefit. It was of this moment she had, by an unerring instinct, stood in mortal terror, from the first dawn of her acquaintance with Harry Ironside, to the afternoon when he had succeeded in getting an introduction to her in the matron's room at St. Ebbe's, soon after the scene in the operating theatre. Then he had bowed low, muttered a few words in confused greeting, and looked at her with all his man's heart in his eyes; and she had felt by a sure, swift intuition, that, as she valued her dearly held personal freedom and her allegiance to her family, there must be war to the knife between her and this self-willed young man. She must, as discretion is the better part of valour, flee from him, while refusing to own, even to herself, any more humiliating reason for the flight than her duty, the honour of St. Ebbe's, and the folly of Rose in playing into his hands.

Now Annie was caught, and had to listen to him whether she would or not, while she and not he quaked with fright and agitation. For he stood before her, like a conqueror already, in the little room with its shelves of phials, which they had all to themselves, where burly farmers and iron-gray corn-factors would soon be thronging in the course of transacting their every-day business.

[385]But presently she forgot all about herself in the interest of the tale he had to tell, and told well in his newly-found courage and coolness, in his personal modesty and professional enthusiasm. He had just taken his degree as she knew. He and his sister Kate had inherited a competence from their parents. He might look about him till he found a lucrative and agreeable country practice in a choice neighbourhood, where he could command good society and a little hunting, shooting, and fishing in their seasons. Or he might be on the watch for a West End London practice, which, while affording him all the interests and amusements of town, ought to bring him speedily into notice, and raise him, step by step, to the height of his profession. He had begun his medical career by thinking of both these eventualities as desirable, each in its kind, and had gone on cherishing a leaning to the first, till—he must say it—her example and influence had inspired him with greater ardour in the cause of science and of humanity. He had made inquiries and had heard of a post—in fact he had got the refusing of it—in connection with a new settlement, a fresh attempt to plant a colony where the climate was favourable on one of the great African rivers. His income at first would be small, and he must take his share of the hardships and labours of those who aimed at being more than gold-diggers[386] or miners in the diamond-fields—that is, pioneers of civilization. The prospect, so far as it referred to scientific investigations, and to a large increase to accredited stores of knowledge, was simply splendid. Farther, he was assured of the sympathy and support of the leading men among the colonists, since they had already, to their credit, sought his co-operation. Those of them who were in the van—on the spot—had gone so far as to lay the foundation of an hospital, in addition to a church, to deal alike with black men and white, to labour for their spiritual and physical healing in common. He had almost made up his mind to take the post, but he wished to ask her opinion and advice first.

She was tempted to say she was no authority, but her truthfulness forbade the subterfuge. She could not meet his grave blue eyes and put him off with an evasive answer. She spoke bravely and wisely.

"I think it would be most right and honourable for you to go. With your ability and training you might furnish invaluable aid to a young colony; while it would be like another college course for you, with nature for your teacher. Any young man of spirit and philanthropy, with love for his calling, might well covet the chance. If the colony flourish, you and your profession, and the hospital you speak of, will flourish with it, and have as fine[387] a future before you as you can desire. If the scheme fail, you can but return to England; and you will not have lost the time which a young man can well spare. For you will bring back all you have gained from a far wider sphere of usefulness, and from a fresher experience than you could ever hope to secure by staying at home. But if what you really want," Annie corrected herself, with a twinkle in her eyes and a curl of her lips, in the midst of her earnestness, "is the shortest and safest road to growing well-to-do within the briefest space of time, you had better adopt the latter alternative. If I had been a man and a