Dumps – A Plain Girl
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But, indeed, I was learning that myself for the first time that day, for the carriages that drew softly up over the straw in the street to look at the bulletin on the door might have told me what the great world thought of him; and the boys who came up each moment to glance at the solemn message might have told me what his scholars thought of him; and many poor people whom he had helped were seen crossing the street to glance at the writing. I stood fascinated behind the window-curtain, where I could see without being seen, and it seemed to me that all these people were repeating in a marvellous fashion the true meaning of my father’s life. To me he had hardly ever been a true father in any sense; but these people had regarded him as a great light, as a teacher, as one whom they must ever respect.
“He will be a loss to the world,” said Alex – “a great, great loss to the world!”
“There will be his life in all the papers,” said Charley; and then the two poor boys put their arms round each other and burst into sobs. I sobbed with them, and wished for old Hannah. And hardly had the wish come to me before she entered the room very quietly and stood beside us; and when she saw us all crying she said, “Oh, you poor dears – you poor dears!” and she sobbed and cried herself. Really it was quite dreadful. I hardly knew how to bear my pain.
But when Mrs Grant came down just in the dusk of the evening, and entered the room very quietly and sat down near us, I went up to her.
“May I see father?” I asked.
She looked at me, and then said:
“Dumps, if he gets worse, if the doctor on his next visit says there is no hope, then you shall see him. The doctor is coming here at eight o’clock with Dr Robinson, the very greatest authority in London. If he gives no hope you must all see him to say good-bye; but not otherwise, for any excitement is bad for him now.”
“I don’t think I should excite father,” I said.
Perhaps there was reproach in my tones, but I did not mean it.
Then my step-mother went away.
“She will feel it awfully; she is just devoted to him,” said Alex.
Part 2, Chapter XIII
Waiting to be Called
We sat on and on in the dusk. After a time Hannah went away. We scarcely noticed her when she got up. She stooped and kissed us, and said, “Poor children!” and it seemed to me as she left the room as though she were our old nurse back again, caring for us as she used to do when we were motherless and too young to see after ourselves. But she went, and she had scarcely disappeared through the door before we forgot her, we were so absorbed waiting for the message which might come to us any moment from upstairs.
Hannah had not been gone ten minutes before we heard a carriage with a pair of horses dash up to the door. It stopped. We heard the muffled thud of the wheels on the thick straw outside, and we heard the door of the carriage being opened, and two men got out. They were not kept waiting an instant at the door. Muriel, our parlour-maid, must have been expecting them. We heard them enter, and they went upstairs quite softly, making little sound on the thick carpets.
Then there was silence. Alex clasped my hand and squeezed it very hard; and as to Charley, he rumpled up his hair and finally buried his head in my lap and began to sob afresh. I was glad to be with them both; I felt very close to them. All else was forgotten except the two boys who belonged to me, who were my very, very own, and the father who might be dying upstairs.
By-and-by the doctors went away; the carriage disappeared, and there was silence again in the house, only the muffled sound of carts and carriages going over the street outside; but nobody came near us.
“It looks bad,” said Alex.
He raised his face. The room was quite dark. Muriel had not come in to turn on the gas or to build up the fire. We were glad she had not done so. We thought it kind of her. A piece of coal fell into a great chasm of red now, and broke into a flame, and I saw Alex’s face; it was ghastly white.
“It is quite awful, isn’t it?” he said.
“She certainly said she would come down if there was no hope,” I said.
“But oughtn’t she to let us know, Dumps?”
“She would certainly come if she could,” I answered.
After a time my cramped limbs compelled me to rise. I stood up, and the two boys looked at me reflectively.
“Where are you going, Rachel? Where are you going?”
“I can’t stand it any longer,” I said. “I am his daughter, and you are his sons, and I think we ought to be there. I do – I do.”
“No,” said Alex firmly; “I am not going against her. She has managed him all along. It would be frightfully unkind to do anything to risk giving him a start or anything of that sort. She said she’d bring us to him if it were necessary. I am not going to stir.”
“Will you come, Charley?” I said.
“No; I’ll stick to Alex,” he responded.
He went closer to his brother as he spoke, and flung his arm round him with all the abandon of one who was altogether carried out of himself.
I did not speak. I felt alone again, outside my brothers and their love; but just because I was so alone I thought more than ever of my father. I had rushed away from Paris to be in time; I would see him again. I left the room and crept softly upstairs. All day long I had been wearing my travelling-boots; it did not seem worth while to take them off; nobody had given me a thought. For the first time since my step-mother came I had been neglected in our now comfortable home.
When I reached the landing where the great, desolate room which had been made so comfortable by my step-mother was situated, I took off my shoes and stood very quiet. I saw that the door of my father’s room was slightly ajar. Inside there was the flickering light of a fire – not a very big fire; there was a screen round the bed. I felt more and more a keen and passionate desire to enter the room. I could bear it no longer. I crept inside the door and round by the screen. Then I saw that the room had been changed since I had noticed it last. The great four-poster was removed, and a man was lying on a little iron bedstead drawn out almost into the middle of the room. There was a woman seated close to him. She sat very still; she did not seem to move. The man also, who was lying on his back, was motionless. A wild terror seized me. Was he dead? Oh! I feared death at that moment, but still that impulse, uncontrollable, growing stronger each moment, compelled me forward, and still more forward, and at last I came very near the woman. She roused herself when she saw me. There was no reproach of any sort on her face. It was very white, but her eyes had never looked sweeter.
Just for an instant I wondered if she would rise and take me by the hand and lead me from the room; but, instead of that, she held out her hand to me and drew me close, and motioned to me to kneel by the bed. I did kneel. I heard the quick breathing, and noticed the cadaverous, worn face, the dark lashes lying on the cheeks, the hair tossed back from the lofty and magnificent brow. Something seemed to clutch at my heart; then my step-mother’s voice sounded in my ears:
“You and I will watch by him together.”
After that I felt that nothing really mattered; and I knew also that the barrier between my step-mother’s heart and mine had vanished. I looked at her; my eyes were full; I took her hand and, stooping, kissed it several times. Then she too dropped on her knees, and we remained motionless together.
All night long we knelt by the Professor’s side, and all night long he slept. It was about five in the morning when he opened his eyes. Dr Robinson was standing by the other side of the bed; he was holding his hand and feeling his pulse.
“Come,” said the doctor in a cheerful tone, “you have had a famous sleep. You are better; and now you must take this;” and he put a strong restorative between my father’s white lips.
“Take me away —mother!” I said.
I could not contain myself. She led me as far as the door. I do not think she said a word; but she herself returned to the room. I rushed up to my own room, and there I flung myself on my bed and cried as though my very heart would break.
Oh, shadow, shadow of my own mother, were you really angry with me then? Or did you, in the light of God’s Presence, understand too well what love really meant ever to be angry any more? For everything that was not love, that was not gratitude towards the new mother who had come into my life, had vanished for ever and ever while I knelt that night by my father’s bedside.
By-and-by, in the course of that day, I kissed her and told her something of what I felt. She understood, as I think she always did understand even my thoughts before they were uttered.
And so I turned over a new page in life, and my father was spared to us after all.
The End.