A House in Bloomsbury

CHAPTER XII

Young Gordon left the house in Bloomsbury after he had delivered the message which was the object of his visit, but which he had forgotten in the amusement of seeing Dora, and the interest of these new scenes which had so suddenly opened up in his life. His object had been to beg that Miss Bethune would visit the lady for whom it had been his previous object to obtain an entrance into the house in which Dora was. Mrs. Bristow was ill, and could not go again, and she wanted to see Dora’s friend, who could bring Dora herself, accepting the new acquaintance for the sake of the child on whom her heart was set, but whom for some occult reason she would not call to her in the more natural way. Gordon did not believe in occult reasons. He had no mind for mysteries; and was fully convinced that whatever quarrel there might have been, no man would be so ridiculously vindictive as to keep his child apart from a relation, her mother’s sister, who was so anxious to see her.

But he was the kindest-hearted youth in the world, and though he smiled at these mysteries he yet respected them in the woman who had been everything to him in his early life, his guardian’s wife, whom he also called aunt in the absence of any other suitable title. She liked that sort of thing—to make mountains of molehills, and to get over them with great expenditure of strategy and sentiment, when he was persuaded she might have marched straight forward and found no difficulty. But it was her way, and it had always been his business to see that she had her way and was crossed by nobody. He was so accustomed to her in all her weaknesses that he accepted them simply as the course of nature. Even her illness did not alarm or trouble him. She had been delicate since ever he could remember. From the time when he entered upon those duties of son or nephew which dated so far back in his life, he had always been used to make excuses to her visitors on account of her delicacy, her broken health, her inability to bear the effects of the hot climate. This was her habit, as it was the habit of some women to ride and of some to drive; and as it was the habit of her household to accept whatever she did as the only things for her to do, he had been brought up frankly in that faith.

His own life, too, had always appeared very simple and natural to Harry, though perhaps it scarcely seemed so to the spectator. His childhood had been passed with his father, who was more or less of an adventurer, and who had accustomed his son to ups and downs which he was too young to heed, having always his wants attended to, and somebody to play with, whatever happened. Then he had been transferred to the house of his guardian on a footing which he was too young to inquire into, which was indeed the simple footing of a son, receiving everything from his new parents, as he had received everything from his old. To find on his guardian’s death that he had nothing, that no provision was made for him, was something of a shock; as had been the discovery on his twenty-first birthday that his guardian was simply his benefactor, and had no trust in respect to him. It came over Harry like a cloud on both occasions that he had no profession, no way of making his own living; and that a state of dependence like that in which he had been brought up could not continue. But the worst time in the world to break the link which had subsisted so long, or to take from his aunt, as he called her, the companion upon whom she leant for everything, was at the moment when her husband was gone, and there was nobody else except a maid to take care of her helplessness. He could not do this; he was as much bound to her, to provide for all her wants, and see that she missed nothing of her wonted comforts; nay, almost more than if he had been really her son. If it had not been for his easy nature, the light heart which goes with perfect health, great simplicity of mind, and a thoroughly generous disposition, young Gordon had enough of uncertainty in his life to have made him very serious, if not unhappy. But, as a matter of fact, he was neither. He took the days as they came, as only those can do who are to that manner born. When he thought on the subject, he said to himself that should the worst come to the worst, a young fellow of his age, with the use of his hands and a head on his shoulders, could surely find something to do, and that he would not mind what it was.

This was very easy to say, and Gordon was not at all aware what the real difficulties are in finding something to do. But had he known better, it would have done him no good; and his ignorance, combined as it was with constant occupations of one kind or another, was a kind of bliss. There was a hope, too, in his mind, that merely being in England would mend matters. It must open some mode of independence for him. Mrs. Bristow would settle somewhere, buy a “place,” an estate, as it had always been the dream of her husband to do, and so give him occupation. Something would come of it that would settle the question for him; the mere certainty in his mind of this cleared away all clouds, and made the natural brightness of his temperature more assured than ever.

This young man had no education to speak of. He had read innumerable books, which do not count for very much in that way. He had, however, been brought up in what was supposed “the best” of society, and he had the advantage of that, which is no small advantage. He was at his ease in consequence, wherever he went, not supposing that any one looked down on him, or that he could be refused admittance anywhere. As he walked back with his heart at ease—full of an amused pleasure in the thought of Dora, whom he had known for years, and who had been, though he had never till to-day seen her, a sort of little playfellow in his life—walking westward from the seriousness of Bloomsbury, through the long line of Oxford Street, and across Hyde Park to the great hotel in which Mrs. Bristow had established herself, the young man, though he had not a penny, and was a mere colonial, to say the best of him, felt himself returning to a more congenial atmosphere, the region of ease and leisure, and beautiful surroundings, to which he had been born. He had not any feature of the man of fashion, yet he belonged instinctively to the jeunesse dorée wherever he went. He went along, swinging his cane, with a relief in his mind to be delivered from the narrow and noisy streets. He had been accustomed all his life to luxury, though of a different kind from that of London, and he smiled at the primness and respectability of Bloomsbury by instinct, though he had no right to do so. He recognised the difference of the traffic in Piccadilly, and distinguished between that great thoroughfare and the other with purely intuitive discrimination. Belgravia was narrow and formal to the Southerner, but yet it was different. All these intuitions were in him, he could not tell how.

He went back to his aunt with the pleasure of having something to say which he knew would please her. Dora, as has been said, had been their secret between them for many years. He had helped to think of toys and pretty trifles to send her, and the boxes had been the subject of many a consultation, calling forth tears from Mrs. Bristow, but pure fun to the young man, who thought of the unknown recipient as of a little sister whom he had never seen. He meant to please the kind woman who had been a mother to him, by telling her about Dora, how pretty she was, how tall, how full of character, delightful and amusing to behold, how she was half angry with him for knowing so much of her, half pleased, how she flashed from fun to seriousness, from kindness to quick indignation, and on the whole disapproved of him, but only in a way that was amusing, that he was not afraid of. Thus he went in cheerful, and intent upon making the invalid cheerful too.

A hotel is a hotel all the world over, a place essentially vulgar, commonplace, venal, the travesty of a human home. This one, however, was as stately as it could be, with a certain size about the building, big stairs, big rooms, at the end of one of which he found his patroness lying, in an elaborate dressing-gown, on a large sofa, with the vague figure of a maid floating about in the semi-darkness. The London sun in April is not generally violent; but all the blinds were down, the curtains half drawn over the windows, and the room so deeply shadowed that even young Gordon’s sharp eyes coming out of the keen daylight did not preserve him from knocking against one piece of furniture after another as he made his way to the patient’s side.

“Well, Harry dear, is she coming?” a faint voice said.

“I hope so, aunt. She was sorry to know you were ill. I told her you were quite used to being ill, and always patient over it. Are things going any better to-day?”

“They will never be better, Harry.”

“Don’t say that. They have been worse a great many times, and then things have always come round a little.”

“He doesn’t believe me, Miller. That is what comes of health like mine; nobody will believe that I am worse now than I have ever been before.” Gordon patted the thin hand that lay on the bed. He had heard these words many times, and he was not alarmed by them.

“This lady is rather a character,” he said; “she will amuse you. She is Scotch, and she is rather strong-minded, and–”

“I never could bear strong-minded women,” cried the patient with some energy. “But what do I care whether she is Scotch or Spanish, or what she is? Besides that, she has helped me already, and all I want is Dora. Oh, Harry, did you see Dora?—my Dora, my little girl! And so tall, and so well grown, and so sweet! And to think that I cannot have her, cannot see her, now that I am going to die!”

“Why shouldn’t you have her?” he said in his calm voice. “Her father is better; and no man, however unreasonable, would prevent her coming to see her own relation. You don’t understand, dear aunt. You won’t believe that people are all very like each other, not so cruel and hard-hearted as you suppose. You would not be unkind to a sick person, why should he?”

“Oh, it’s different—very different!” the sick woman said.

“Why should it be different? A quarrel that is a dozen years old could never be so bitter as that.”

“It is you who don’t understand. I did him harm—oh, such harm! Never, never could he forgive me! I never want him to hear my name. And to ask Dora from him—oh no, no! Don’t do it, Harry—not if I was at my last breath!”

“If you ever did him harm as you say—though I don’t believe you ever did any one harm—that is why you cannot forgive him. Aunt, you may be sure he has forgiven you.”

“I—I—forgive? Oh, never, never had I anything to forgive—never! I—oh if you only knew!”

“I wouldn’t say anything to excite her, Mr. Harry,” said the maid. “She isn’t so well, really; she’s very bad, as true as can be. I’ve sent for the doctor.”

“Yes, tell him!” cried the poor lady eagerly; “tell him that you have never seen me so ill. Tell him, Miller, that I’m very bad, and going to die!”

“We’ll wait and hear what the doctor says, ma’am,” said the maid cautiously.

“But Dora, Harry—oh, bring her, bring her! How am I to die without my Dora? Oh, bring her! Ask this lady—I don’t mind her being strong-minded or anything, if she will bring my child. Harry, you must steal her away, if he will not let her come. I have a right to her. It is—it is her duty to come to me when I am going to die!”

“Don’t excite her, sir, for goodness’ sake; promise anything,” whispered the maid.

“I will, aunt. I’ll run away with her. I’ll have a carriage with a couple of ruffians to wait round the corner, and I’ll throw something over her head to stifle her cries, and then we’ll carry her away.”

“It isn’t any laughing matter,” she said, recovering her composure a little. “If you only knew, Harry! But I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell you—or any one. Oh, Harry, my poor boy, you’ll find out a great many things afterwards, and perhaps you’ll blame me. I know you’ll blame me. But remember I was always fond of you, and always kind to you all the same. You won’t forget that, however badly you may think of me. Oh, Harry, my dear, my dear!”

“Dear aunt, as if there could ever be any question of blame from me to you!” he said, kissing her hand.

“But there will be a question. Everybody will blame me, and you will be obliged to do it too, though it goes against your kind heart. I seem to see everything, and feel what’s wrong, and yet not be able to help it. I’ve always been like that,” she said, sobbing. “Whatever I did, I’ve always known it would come to harm; but I’ve never been able to stop it, to do different. I’ve done so many, many things! Oh, if I could go back and begin different from the very first! But I shouldn’t. I am just as helpless now as then. And I know just how you will look, Harry, and try not to believe, and try not to say anything against me–”