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.”
Dr Brewer still did not meet Grace’s anxious gaze, which would have read his face in a moment. “You are very young,” he said, “to have had such a — responsibility upon you. You have been very brave hitherto, and you will not break down now. I am afraid, indeed, that I shall have to telegraph to your mother — very soon now.”
It was his tone more than what he said which disturbed Milly in her happy confidence. She turned round suddenly and looked with an awful inquiry, not at him but at Grace. Grace for her part, trembling, had grasped Dr Brewer by the arm. “Doctor!” she said in a strange, stifled voice. She could not say any more.
He covered her soft little thin hand with his and patted it gently. “My poor dear children,” he said, “my poor children! how can I tell you — —” His voice was broken. It told all he had to say without the aid of any words. How could he put it into words? For a moment it seemed to the doctor as if the man’s death must be his fault, and that they would have a right to upbraid him for letting their father die. He sat there with his head drooped and with his heart full of sympathetic anguish, not knowing what might happen next.
Milly gave a great cry. She had not feared all this time, and just now she had been happy and triumphant in the thought that danger was over. She cried out and threw herself suddenly on the ground at the doctor’s feet. “Oh, no, no!” she cried. “Oh, don’t let it be. Don’t let it be! Doctor, think of us poor girls; think of mamma and all the children; doctor, doctor!” said Milly, her voice rising louder and louder in her despair.
Grace had not said anything. She stood, her face all quivering with anguish, her eyes fixed upon him. She seemed to take up the last quivering note of Milly’s cry— “Is there no hope?” she said.
The doctor shook his head. He laid his hand tenderly upon poor Milly’s hair — every line of his face was working. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice trembling. “You have been very courageous, very good hitherto — and now there is one last effort before you. You at least will stand by him to the end. You will not make it worse, but better for him, Grace.”
The girl tried to speak two or three times before the words would come. When she found utterance at last what she said was scarcely intelligible. It was, “And Milly too.”
“It would be better, far better, that she should lie down and try to rest. I will give her something; but you — you must come with me, Grace.”
“And Milly too,” the girl said again, as if these were the only words she was capable of. She gathered up her sister from where she lay at the doctor’s feet, and whispered to her, smoothing away her disordered hair. Milly was not able to stand. She leaned her weight upon her sister; her pretty hair fell about her face, all wild and distorted with crying. She wanted to get down again to the floor to kneel at the doctor’s feet. “He could do something still if he were to try. Oh, Gracie, Gracie! think of us two miserable girls, and mamma, and all the children. He could do something if he were to try.”
“Milly! we have got to stand by him — to keep up his heart — —”
“I cannot stand — I cannot stand, I think I will die. Oh, doctor, doctor! do something, find out something! Couldn’t you do something if you were to try?”
“Milly, am I to go alone — the last time — to papa?”
“Put our blood into him,” cried Milly, holding up her small white wrists. “They do that sometimes. Take mine — oh, every drop! — and Grace’s too. Doctor, doctor! you could do something if you were to try.”
For weeks after, this cry rang in the good doctor’s ears. They both caught at the idea; even Grace, who had command of herself. How easy it seemed! — to take the young blood out of their veins and pour it, like new life, into his. Sometimes it is done in stories — why not, why not, in actual life? Their voices ran into a kind of clamour, imploring him. It was long before the impression made by this scene left the doctor’s mind and recollection. Nevertheless, that night both the girls stood by their father’s bedside quietly enough, making no scene, watching eagerly for any last word he might have to say to them. But how few of the dying have any last words to say! He opened his eyes, and smiled vaguely twice or thrice, as though all had been quite happy and simple around him — he had gone out of the region in which anxieties dwell. Perhaps he did not remember that he was leaving them helpless among strangers — or if he knew, the ebb of the wave had caught him and he could feel nothing but the last floating out to sea, the sound of the waters, the tide of the new life.
Left to themselves in such circumstances, the poor girls had no alternative but to be crushed altogether, or to rise into heroic fortitude; and happily Grace had strength enough for that better part. She dressed herself, when the dreadful morning came, in the only black frock her wardrobe contained, with the composure of a creature braced by the worst that could happen, and knowing now that whatever might come, nothing so terrible could fall on her again. The shock, instead of prostrating her as it did her sister, seemed to rally all her forces, and clear and strengthen every faculty. She had scarcely slept, notwithstanding the calming dose which the doctor in his pity had insisted upon administering to both. It procured for poor little Milly some hours of feverish unconsciousness, but with Grace it acted on the mind, not the body, numbing the pain but giving an unnatural and vivid force to all her faculties. Her brain seemed to be beset by thoughts; and first among them was a yearning sympathy and pity for her mother. The sudden shock of a curtly worded telegram would be so novel, so terrible, to that happy woman, who never all her life had known what great sorrow was, that her young daughter shuddered at the thought.
As soon as she got up she began to write to her, while Milly still tossed and moaned in her unquiet sleep. Grace’s letter was such as no poet, save one of the highest genius, could have written. It was love and not she that composed it. It was a history of all the last days, tender and distinct as a picture. Every word that she said led up to the terrible news at the end, imperceptibly, gradually, as it is the art of tragedy to do, so that the reader should perceive the inevitable and feel it coming without the horror of a sudden shock. When her sister woke she read this letter to her, and they wept over it together. It was almost as new to Milly as it would be to her mother, for she had not realised the slow constant progress of the days to this event, nor had Grace herself done so, till she had begun to put it down upon paper. When the doctor came in the morning the letter was all ready, put up and addressed; and then it was that Grace insisted no telegram should be sent.
“Mamma has never had any trouble all her life. He always did everything. Nothing dreadful has ever happened to us. The children have been ill, but they always got better. We never were afraid of anything. If this were flung at mamma like a shot — like a blow — it might kill her too.”
“Yes, it might kill her too,” Milly murmured, turning to the doctor her large strained eyes.
“But, my dear children, somebody must come to you at once; you can’t be left here alone. Your mother will be strengthened to bear it as you are, and for your sake. Somebody must come to you at once.”
“O Gracie!” murmured Milly, looking at her sister with beseeching eyes.
“Why?” said Grace steadily. “That is just what I cannot see. Nobody could wish mamma to come now. What good would it do? It would be dreadful for her; — and to him — to him! — —”
Here, brave as she was, she had to stop, and could not say any more.
“Of course,” said the doctor softly, “your father is beyond all need. He is safe now, whatever happens; but you — what can you do? Somebody must come at once to take care of you, to take you home.”
Once more Milly’s eyes travelled from Grace to the doctor, and back again. To have some one to take care of them sounded to Milly the only thing that was left on earth to desire.
“No one,” said Grace, wondering at her own calm, “could be here for a fortnight; and the first days will be the worst. After that things will be easier. Don’t you see, everything that can happen will have happened then; and why should some one — for it could not be mamma now, Milly; it would not be mamma: why should some one be disturbed and made uncomfortable, and forced to start at a moment’s notice, only to take care of us? I can take care of Milly, and we can go home.” Another pause till the tears were swallowed somehow. “It will be less hard, on the whole, to go home by ourselves, than with any one else.”
The doctor was struck by this argument. He looked at them anxiously, fragile as they were, looking like shadows of girls after the long anxiety and strain of these ten days.
“Do you think,” he said, doubtful, “that you are able for it?”
“Able!” said Grace with the petulance of grief. “What is there to be able for now? We have borne the worst. If it had been a week ago, and I had known what was coming, I should have said, No, we were not able. But now!” the girl cried with a kind of disdain, “now we have suffered all that can be suffered, doctor. We can never lose our father again.”
Here Milly broke out into hysterical cries.
“Oh, papa, papa! Oh, Grace! What shall we do? What shall we do?”
Grace took her sister into her arms standing by the bedside, while the other sat up, her hair hanging about her, her face distraught with a passion of grief over which she had no control. The tears rained from Grace’s eyes, but she stood firm as a rock.
“We must bear it,” she said; “we must bear it, Milly. We cannot have that to bear again. We will not make it harder for mamma.”
This scene upset the kind doctor for the day; he could not give his attention to the other cases which awaited him for thinking of this heartrending picture. And as for the nurse, whose services were imperatively demanded for another “case” — she could not bear to take leave of them at all, but stole away as if she had done them a wrong.
“How could any woman with a heart in her bosom leave them in their trouble?” she said, sobbing, to the doctor; “but I am not a woman, I am only a nurse — —”
“And there is a life to be preserved,” the doctor said. The woman, after all, was only a woman, petulant and unreasonable.
“We are all fools and know nothing. We could not save this life,” she said, “though there were no complications.”
Dr Brewer, too, felt a little ashamed. What was the good of him? He had done everything that his science was capable of, but that had been nothing. Old Death, the oldest of practitioners and the most experienced, had laughed at him, and out of his very hands had taken the prey.
The girls never knew what happened till the funeral was over; and yet it troubled them in the midst of their distress that there was nobody to ask to it, no train of mourners to do honour to their father. They went themselves, following the lonely coffin, and the doctor, half ashamed, half astonished at his own emotion, went with them, to see the stranger buried. He had sent the introductory letter to the Colonial office, accompanied by a statement of the circumstances; but the Minister was up to his eyes in parliamentary work, and his aides knew nothing about Mr Robert Yorke of Quebec. The landlord, out of respect for what had happened in his own house — though at first he had been very angry that any one should have taken such a liberty as to die in his house at the beginning of the season — followed at a little distance. He came by himself in the second mourning coach which the undertakers felt to be necessary, and in which it was well there should be some one for the sake of respectability. Notwithstanding all that had been said and done, it did not seem to the girls that they had ever realised what had happened till they came back that dreary afternoon, and sat down hand in hand in their sitting-room, the door closed upon all things, the murk evening closing in, and nothing to look forward to now — nothing to think of but their own desolation. They “broke down;” what could they do else? But when there are two to break down, it is inevitable that one of the two must see the vanity of tears and make an effort to check them.
“We cannot go on like this,” Grace said. “We will only kill ourselves too; that will not be any comfort for mamma. In the first place, we must find out whether there was anything that — papa wanted done while he was in England. Yes! I mean to talk of him,” she said, “just as if he were in Canada, as if he were next door; he must not be banished from his own because he is dead. Mamma will never let him be forgotten and put aside. We must accustom ourselves to talk about him. Perhaps there was something he wanted done. Do you recollect, Milly? he went away by himself that night?”
“Oh, Grace,” cried her sister, “whoever they are, I hate those people. They were the cause of it. He would never have caught cold but for — —”
“Hush,” said Grace, “we must not hate anybody. I should like to go and ask about them; they must have been old — friends.”
It was at this moment that the waiter came in — the waiter who had always been so kind to them. He came in with a countenance regulated to the occasion.
“Young ladies,” he said, “here’s a gentleman below inquiring for a party as has come from Canada. It’s not a name as ever I heard before. Mr Crosthwaite, he’s asking for. I said as I did not like to disturb you such a day; but if so be as you might have heard speak of the name — from Canada.”
Grief is irritable, and Grace turned upon the questioner with quick resentment. “Oh, how can you come and ask us?” she cried. “Is there nobody in your house to be disturbed but my sister and me?”
“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said the waiter, “I hope I’m not unfeeling. Nobody could have felt more — if it ain’t disrespectful to say so — according to their station in life. If it hadn’t a been that the manageress is that cantankerous about a death in the house I’d have followed the poor gentleman willingly to his last ‘ome, and never grudged no trouble; but when a gentleman comes to me and asks for a party as arrived from Canada a fortnight ago — —”
The two girls looked at each other. Was this, perhaps, the clue for which they were looking? They felt that it was wrong and a breach of the decorum of their sorrow that they should see any one on this day: but if, perhaps, this might be the clue they sought. “Arrived from Canada — a fortnight ago?” it seemed years — but they gulped down that thought. “We did so, you know,” said Grace, “but that is not our name. I know no one of that name. Did you say —— ?”
“I told him all as had happened, miss,” said the sympathetic waiter who brought the message, “and the gentleman was very sorry. He’s a feeling gentleman, whoever he is. He said, ‘Poor young ladies!’ as feeling as I could have done it myself; but he’s very anxious about this name Crosthwaite, or whatever it is. I said you was very considerate, and that if you could help him I made sure I might ask you. He would have liked to speak to any one as was from Canada,” the waiter said.
Again the girls looked at each other. Any one from Canada! Perhaps, though they did not know any Crosthwaites, they might know the gentleman who was inquiring for them; and even the sight of some one from home would be a kind of consolation. Grace, with a look, consulted Milly, who had no counsel to give, but only appealed back again to Grace with her beautiful eyes. Then the elder sister said, tremblingly, “We are not fit to see any one; but if he thinks it will help him you may let him come up-stairs.” She said this with a sigh of what she felt to be extreme reluctance; but yet even the vaguest hope of an unknown friend and of some succour in their trouble gave a new turn to their thoughts.
In a few minutes the door opened again and the visitor came in. The girls were sitting together at one side of the table, two faint candles throwing a white light upon each white face. They looked small and young, almost childish, in their black dresses, and there was an anxious look upon the two little wan girlish countenances. The stranger came in with some diffidence. They could scarcely make out his face, but they saw at once that it was somebody unknown; and the look of expectation faded at once out of their eyes. They looked at each other with a piteous mutual disappointment.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I fear this is an intrusion for which there is no excuse. I am looking for a gentleman who has been long in Canada — Robert Leonard Crosthwaite was his name: but I have some reason to suppose — —”
“We never heard the name,” said Grace. “We are very sorry. We came from Quebec. Canada is a large place. It might be in another part.”
“He had been a very long time out of England. He came back only a few weeks ago. We were sure — we thought we were sure — that he came to this hotel.”
The girls both shook their heads. “If there had been any other Canadian person here we must have heard. They would have come to us,” said Grace, with a sob only half concealed.
“It is very important,” said the young man. “There is property concerned, and the comfort of several people. Everybody thought he was dead. It will upset the arrangements of a family — and make those poor who were well off,” he said in an undertone, to himself, rather than to them.
The girls looked at him with interest. There seemed a story involved, and that gave them a sensation that, if not pleasure, was, at least, relief from the pressure of their own continuously painful thoughts. Milly even ventured a little “Oh!” of wistful interest. Then he went on hastily —
“Pardon me: I ought not to disturb you. You can give me no clue? This gentleman must have arrived about the same time as I hear you did. I know — I know how painfully your time has been occupied. I am ashamed to trouble you: but do you not think you could give me a clue — —”
“We never heard the name,” said Grace. “We could write home and ask, but that would not be of much use. We are going back,” she added with an explanatoriness which perhaps was not necessary, “as soon as — —” But here her little strength broke down, and she could not say any more.
“I beg your pardon, I beg a thousand pardons,” the young man cried. “Forgive me for intruding upon you.” And he turned with a respectful bow; and opened the door; but when he had done this he turned again and looked at them once more. “You will excuse me,” he said in a voice which was full of emotion, “but I have a mother. If she could be of any use to you — —”
Here the girls, being so weeping-ripe, again lost their self-control altogether. Milly began to sob audibly, throwing herself upon her sister’s shoulder, and the tears dropped heavily one by one from Grace’s eyes. She put one arm round poor Milly, and turned, with a tremulous smile through her tears, to the stranger.
“Thank you for being so kind,” she said. “You are very kind; but we are not quite so miserable as perhaps you think. We have got our mother too. We are waiting till she tells us what to do.”
He said nothing but “Oh!” and stood for a moment uncertain, not knowing what to say. But what could a stranger say? He was obliged to turn again and go away, after a great many fumblings with the door.
Next morning they began, sadly, the necessary work of putting away their father’s papers and his little personal possessions. In his writing-book there was a letter half written to their mother, which they put aside carefully as a sacred thing, not looking, for love, at his last words. But on one of the pages of the blotting-book they found once more the address which had excited their curiosity before, “3 Grove Road, Hampstead,” written obliquely across the page. It was repeated on a scrap of paper which marked his place in the book which they remembered he had been reading, and on which, besides, there were some jottings of dates and names which they did not understand. These were— “Left July ‘45 —— U. A. died ‘55 —— due with interest for 20 years —— .” The word “interest” discouraged the girls; it must be something about business, they thought. This perpetually recurring address, however, bewildered them. They went on with their sad occupation without saying much to each other, but when they sat down to rest and to take the food which their youthful appetites began to demand, notwithstanding their trouble, Grace suddenly broke the silence.
“It must be some old friend, who lives there,” she said.
Milly made no reply in words, but she looked up with instant response and comprehension.
“I think,” said Grace, “we ought to go and see who it is. It might be a relation. It might be some one who would stand by us: we are so very lonely here. It might be some — lady. I think we should go — directly — as soon as you are ready, Milly.”
“Oh, I am ready,” Milly said, starting up. The new idea gave them a little spring and energy. They almost ran to put on their little crape bonnets and their out-door jackets — which had been made for them at the pleasure of the dressmaker, hastily summoned and allowed to work her will — and which were heavy and laden with crape. They were like monuments of woe, from head to foot, in these garments; their two little pale faces, so white and so small, looking out with increased pallor from their heavy black. Milly had a good deal of gold and a good deal of curl in her light brown hair, which shone out with double force from these gloomy surroundings, like a protest of nature. Grace’s locks were darker and smoother. She was the least pretty of the two, but her eyes were larger and more expressive than those fawn eyes of Milly’s, which at present wore but one look, that of startled wistfulness and pleading — an entreaty to all the world to be pitiful. They went off upon their new mission, however, with a little consolation in the relief of the novelty, stealing quietly downstairs that nobody might come out upon them to ask questions or offer help.