A House in Bloomsbury

CHAPTER III

There was one remarkable thing in Dora Mannering’s life which I have omitted to mention, which is, that she was in the habit of receiving periodically, though at very uncertain intervals, out of that vast but vague universe surrounding England, which we call generally “abroad,” a box. No one knew where it came from, or who it came from; at least, no light was ever thrown to Dora upon that mystery. It was despatched now from one place, now from another; and not a name, or a card, or a scrap of paper was ever found to identify the sender.

This box contained always a store of delights for the recipient, who, though she was in a manner monarch of all she surveyed, was without many of the more familiar pleasures of childhood. It had contained toys and pretty knick-knacks of many quaint foreign kinds when she was quite a child; but as she grew older, the mind of her unknown friend seemed to follow her growth with the strangest certainty of what would please these advancing youthful years.

The foundation of the box, if that word may be employed, was always a store of the daintiest underclothing, delicately made, which followed Dora’s needs and growth, growing longer as she grew taller; so that underneath her frocks, which were not always lovely, the texture, form, and colour being chiefly decided by the dressmaker who had “made” for her as long as she could remember, Dora was clothed like a princess; and thus accustomed from her childhood to the most delicate and dainty accessories—fine linen, fine wool, silk stockings, handkerchiefs good enough for any fine lady. Her father had not, at first, liked to see these fine things; he had pushed them away when she spread them out to show him her treasures, and turned his back upon her, bidding her carry off her trumpery.

It was so seldom, so very seldom, that Mr. Mannering had an objection to anything done by Dora, that this little exhibition of temper had an extraordinary effect; but the interval between one arrival and another was long enough to sweep any such recollection out of the mind of a child; and as she grew older, more intelligent to note what he meant, and, above all, more curious about everything that happened, he had changed his tone. But he had a look which Dora classified in her own mind as “the face father puts on when my box comes".

This is a sort of thing which imprints itself very clearly upon the mind of the juvenile spectator and critic. Dora knew it as well as she knew the clothes her father wore, or the unchanging habits of his life, though she did not for a long time attempt to explain to herself what it meant. It was a look of intent self-restraint, of a stoical repression. He submitted to having the different contents of the box exhibited to him without a smile on his face or the least manifestation of sympathy—he who sympathised with every sentiment which breathed across his child’s facile spirit. He wound himself up to submit to the ordeal, it seemed, with the blank look of an unwilling spectator, who has not a word of admiration for anything, and, indeed, hates the sight he cannot refuse to see.

“Who can send them, father? oh, who can send them? Who is it that remembers me like this, and that I’m growing, and what I must want, and everything? I was only a child when the last one came. You must know—you must know, father! How could any one know about me and not know you—or care for me?” Dora cried, with a little moisture springing to her eyes.

“I have already told you I don’t know anything about it,” said Mr. Mannering, oh, with such a shut-up face! closing the shutters upon his eyes and drawing down all the blinds, as Dora said.

“Well, but suppose you don’t know, you must guess; you must imagine who it could be. No one could know me, and not know you. I am not a stranger that you have nothing to do with. You must know who is likely to take so much thought about your daughter. Why, she knows my little name! There is ‘Dora’ on my handkerchiefs.”

He turned away with a short laugh. “You seem to have found out a great deal for yourself. How do you know it is ‘she’? It might be some old friend of mine who knew that my only child was Dora—and perhaps that I was not a man to think of a girl’s wants.”

“It may be an old friend of yours, father. It must be, for who would know about me but a friend of yours? But how could it be a man? It couldn’t be a man! A man could never work ‘Dora’–”

“You little simpleton! He would go to a shop and order it to be worked. I daresay it is Wallace, who is out in South America.”

Such a practical suggestion made Dora pause; but it was not at all an agreeable idea. “Mr. Wallace! an old, selfish, dried-up –” Then with a cry of triumph she added: “But they came long, long before he went to South America. No—I know one thing—that it is a lady. No one but a lady could tell what a girl wants. You don’t, father, though you know me through and through; and how could any other man? But I suppose you have had friends ladies as well as men?”

His closed-up lips melted a little. “Not many,” he said; then they shut up fast again. “It may be,” he said reluctantly, with a face from which all feeling was shut out, which looked like wood, “a friend—of your mother’s.”

“Oh, of mamma’s!” The girl’s countenance lit up; she threw back her head and her waving hair, conveying to the man who shrank from her look the impression as of a thing with wings. He had been of opinion that she had never thought upon this subject, never considered the side of life thus entirely shut out from her experience, and had wondered even while rejoicing at her insensibility. But when he saw the light on her face he shrank, drawing back into himself. “Oh,” cried Dora, “a friend of my mother’s! Oh, father, she must have died long, long ago, that I never remember her. Oh, tell me, who can this friend be?”

He had shut himself up again more closely than ever—not only were there shutters at all the windows, but they were bolted and barred with iron. His face was more blank than any piece of wood. “I never knew much of her friends,” he said.

“Mother’s friends!” the girl cried, with a half shriek of reproachful wonder. And then she added quickly: “But think, father, think! You will remember somebody if you will only try.”

“Dora,” he said, “you don’t often try my patience, and you had better not begin now. I should like to throw all that trumpery out of the window, but I don’t, for I feel I have no right to deprive you of – Your mother’s friends were not mine. I don’t feel inclined to think as you bid me. The less one thinks the better—on some subjects. I must ask you to question me no more.”

“But, father –”

“I have said that I will be questioned no more.”

“It wasn’t a question,” said the girl, almost sullenly; and then she clasped her hands about his arm with a sudden impulse. “Father, if you don’t like it, I’ll put them all away. I’ll never think of them nor touch them again.”

The wooden look melted away, his features quivered for a moment. He stooped and kissed her on the forehead. “No,” he said, making an effort to keep his lips firmly set as before. “No; I have no right to do that. No; I don’t wish it. Keep them and wear them, and take pleasure in them; but don’t speak to me on the subject again.”

This conversation took place on the occasion of a very special novelty in the mysterious periodical present which she had just received, about which it was impossible to keep silence. The box—“my box,” as Dora had got to call it—contained, in addition to everything else, a dress, which was a thing that had never been sent before.

It was a white dress, made with great simplicity, as became Dora’s age, but also in a costly way, a semi-transparent white, the sort of stuff which could be drawn through a ring, as happens in fairy tales, and was certainly not to be bought in ordinary English shops. To receive anything so unexpected, so exciting, so beautiful, and not to speak of it, to exhibit it to some one, was impossible. Dora had not been able to restrain herself. She had carried it in her arms out of her room, and opened it out upon a sofa in the sitting-room for her father’s inspection. There are some things which we know beforehand will not please, and yet which we are compelled to do; and this was the consciousness in Dora’s mind, who, besides her delight in the gift, and her desire to be able to find out something about the donor, had also, it must be allowed, a burning desire to make discoveries as to that past of which she knew so little, which had seized upon her mind from the moment when she had found the portrait turned upon its face in the secret drawer of her father’s cabinet. As she withdrew now, again carrying in her arms the beautiful dress, there was in her mind, underneath a certain compunction for having disturbed her father, and sympathy with him so strong that she would actually have been capable of sacrificing her newly-acquired possessions, a satisfaction half-mischievous, half-affectionate, in the discoveries which she had made. They were certainly discoveries; sorry as she was to “upset father,” there was yet a consciousness in her mind that this time it had been worth the while.

The reader may not think any better of Dora for this confession; but there is something of the elf in most constitutions at fifteen, and she was not of course at all sensible at that age of the pain that might lie in souvenirs so ruthlessly stirred up. And she had indeed made something by them. Never, never again, she promised herself, would she worry father with questions; but so far as the present occasion went, she could scarcely be sorry, for had not she learned much—enough to give her imagination much employment? She carried away her discoveries with her, as she carried her dress, to realise them in the shelter of her own room. They seemed to throw a vivid light upon that past in which her own life was so much involved. She threw the dress upon her bed carelessly, these other new thoughts having momentarily taken the interest out of even so exciting a novelty as that; and arranged in shape and sequence what she had found out. Well, it was not so much, after all. What seemed most clear in it was that father had not been quite friends with mother, or at least with mother’s friends. Perhaps these friends had made mischief between them—perhaps she had cared for them more than for her husband; but surely that was not possible. And how strange, how strange it was that he should keep up such a feeling so long!

As Dora did not remember her mother, it was evident that she must have been dead many, many years. And yet her father still kept up his dislike to her friends! It threw a new light even upon him, whom she knew better than any one. Dora felt that she knew her father thoroughly, every thought that was in his mind; and yet here it would seem that she did not know him at all. So good a man, who was never hard with anybody, who forgave her, Dora, however naughty she might have been, as soon as she asked pardon; who forgave old Mr. Warrender for contradicting him about that orchid, the orchid that was called Manneringii, and which father had discovered, and therefore must know best; who forgave Mrs. Simcox when she swept the dust from the corners upon the herbarium and spoilt some of the specimens; and yet who in all these years had never forgiven the unknown persons, who were mother’s friends, some one of whom must be nice indeed, or she never would go on remembering Dora, and sending her such presents. What could he have against this unknown lady,—this nice, nice woman? And how was it possible that he should have kept it up in his mind, and never forgiven it, or forgotten all these years? It made Dora wonder, and feel, though she crushed the feeling firmly, that perhaps father was not so perfect as she had thought.

And then there was this lady to think of—her mother’s friend, who had kept on all this time thinking of Dora. She would not have been more than a baby when this benefactress saw her last, since Dora did not remember either mother, or mother’s friend; yet she must recollect just how old Dora was, must have guessed just about how tall she was, and kept count how she had grown from one time to another. The beautiful dress was just almost long enough, almost fitted her in every way. It gave the girl a keen touch of pleasure to think that she was just a little taller and slighter than her unknown friend supposed her to be—but so near; the letting down of a hem, the narrowing of a seam, and it would be a perfect fit. How foolish father must be to think that Mr. Wallace, or any other man, would have thought of that! Her mother’s friend—what a kind friend, what a constant friend, though father did not like her!

It overawed Dora a little to think if ever this lady came home, what would happen? Of course, she would wish to see the girl whom she had remembered so long, whom she had befriended so constantly; and what if father would not permit it? It would be unkind, ungrateful, wrong; but what if father objected, if it made him unhappy? Dora did not see her way through this dreadful complication. It was sufficiently hard upon her, a girl at so early an age, to become the possessor of a beautiful dress like this, and have no one to show it to, to talk it over with; nobody even to tell her exactly how it fitted, to judge what was necessary for its perfection, as Dora herself, with no experience, and not even a good glass to see herself in, could scarcely do. To hide a secret of any kind in one’s being at fifteen is a difficult thing; but when that secret is a frock, a dress!—a robe, indeed, she felt it ought to be called, it was so exquisite, so poetical in its fineness and whiteness. Dora had no one to confide in; and if she had possessed a thousand confidants, would not have said a word to them which would seem to involve her father in any blame. She put her pretty dress away, however, with a great sense of discomfiture and downfall. Perhaps he would dislike to see her wear it, even if she had ever any need for a beautiful dress like that. But she never had any need. She never went anywhere, or saw anybody. A whole host of little grievances came up in the train of that greater one. She wondered if she were to spend all her life like this, without ever tasting those delights of society which she had read of, without ever knowing any one of her own age, without ever seeing people dance, or hearing them sing. As for performing in these ways herself, that had not come into Dora’s mind. She would like, she thought, to look on and see how they did it, for once, at least, in her life.

When she had come to this point, Dora, who was a girl full of natural sense, began to feel instinctively that she was not in a good way, and that it would be better to do something active to clear away the cobwebs. It was evening, however, and she did not know exactly what to do. To go back to the sitting-room where her father was reading, and to sit down also to read at his side, seemed an ordeal too much for her after the excitement of their previous talk; but it was what probably she would have been compelled to do, had she not heard a heavy step mounting the stairs, the sound of a knock at the door, and her father’s voice bidding some one enter.

She satisfied herself presently that it was the voice of one of Mr. Mannering’s chief friends, a colleague from the Museum, and that he was safe for a time not to remark her absence or to have urgent need for her. What now should Dora do? The openings of amusement were small. Mrs. Hesketh had been exhausted for the moment. It must be said that Dora was free of the whole house, and that she used her petites entrées in the most liberal and democratic fashion, thinking no scorn of going downstairs sometimes to the funny little room next to the kitchen, which Mrs. Simcox called the breakfast-room, and used as her own sanctum, the family centre where her grandchildren and herself found refuge out of the toils of the kitchen. The kitchen itself remained in the possession of Jane; and Jane, like her mistress, occasionally shared the patronage of Miss Dora. To-night perhaps she wanted solace of another kind from any which could be given her on the basement story. It is not often that a young person in search of entertainment or sympathy has all the gradations of the social system to choose from. The first floor represented the aristocracy in the establishment at Bloomsbury. It was occupied by a Scotch lady, a certain Miss Bethune, a somewhat harsh-featured and angular person, hiding a gentle heart under a grim exterior; but a little intolerant in her moods, and not always sure to respond to overtures of friendship; with a maid not much less unlike the usual denizens of Bloomsbury than herself, but beaming with redness and good humour, and one of Dora’s chief worshippers in the house. When the girl felt that her needs required the sympathy of a person of the highest, i.e., her own class, she went either boldly or with strategy to the drawing-room floor. She had thus the power of drawing upon the fellowship of her kind in whatever way the temper of the time adapted it best for her.