A House in Bloomsbury

CHAPTER XIII

“Dora,” said Mr. Mannering, half raising his head from the large folio which had come from the old book dealer during his illness, and which, in these days of his slow convalescence, had occupied much of his time. After he had spoken that word he remained silent for some time, his head slightly raised, his shoulders bent over the big book. Then he repeated “Dora” again. “Do you think,” he said, “you could carry one of these volumes as far as Fiddler’s, and ask if he would take it back?”

“Take it back!” Dora cried in surprise.

“You can tell him that I do not find it as interesting as I expected—but no; for that might do it harm, and it is very interesting. You might say our shelves are all filled up with big books, and that I have really no room for it at present, which,” he added, looking anxiously up into her face, “is quite true; for, you remember, when I was so foolish as to order it, we asked ourselves how it would be possible to find a place for it? But no, no,” he said, “these are inventions, and I see your surprise in your face that I should send you with a message that is not genuine. It is true enough, you know, that I am much slackened in the work I wanted this book for. I am slackened in everything. I doubt if I can take up any piece of work again to do any good. I’m old, you see, to have such a long illness,” he said, looking at her almost apologetically; “and, unless it had been with an idea of work, I never could have had any justification in ordering such an expensive book as this.”

“You never used to think of that, father,” Dora said.

“No, I never used to think of that; but I ought to have done so. I’m afraid I’ve been very extravagant. I could always have got it, and consulted it as much as I pleased at the Museum. It is a ridiculous craze I have had for having the books in my own possession. Many men cannot understand it. Williamson, for instance. He says: ‘In your place I would never buy a book. Why, you have the finest library in the world at your disposal.’ And it’s quite true. There could not be a more ridiculous extravagance on my part, and pride, I suppose to be able to say I had it.”

“I don’t think that’s the case at all,” cried Dora. “What do you care for, father, except your library? You never go anywhere, you have no amusements like other people. You don’t go into society, or go abroad, or—anything that the other people do.”

“That is true enough,” he said, with a little gleam of pleasure. Then, suddenly taking her hand as she stood beside him: “My poor child, you say that quite simply, without thinking what a terrible accusation it would be if it went on,—a sacrifice of your young life to my old one, and forgetfulness of all a girl’s tastes and wishes. We’ll try to put that right at least, Dora,” he said, with a slight quiver in his lip, “in the future—if there is any future for me.”

“Father!” she said indignantly, “as if I didn’t like the books, and was not more proud of your work that you are doing–”

“And which never comes to anything,” he interjected, sadly shaking his head.

“– than of anything else in the world! I am very happy as I am. I have no tastes or pleasures but what are yours. I never have wanted anything that you did not get for me. You should see,” cried Dora, with a laugh, “what Janie and Molly think downstairs. They think me a princess at the least, with nothing to do, and all my fine clothes!”

“Janie and Molly!” he said,—“Janie and Molly! And these are all that my girl has to compare herself with—the landlady’s orphan granddaughters! You children make your arrows very sharp without knowing it. But it shall be so no more. Dora, more than ever I want you to go to Fiddler’s; but you shall tell him what is the simple truth—that I have had a long illness, which has been very expensive, and that I cannot afford any more expensive books. He might even, indeed, be disposed to buy back some that we have. That is one thing,” he added, with more animation, “all the books are really worth their price. I have always thought they would be something for you, whether you sold them or kept them, when I am gone. Do you think you could carry one of them as far as Fiddler’s, Dora? They are in such excellent condition, and it would show him no harm had come to them. One may carry a book anywhere, even a young lady may. And it is not so very heavy.”

“It is no weight at all,” cried Dora, who never did anything by halves. “A little too big for my pocket, father; but I could carry it anywhere. As if I minded carrying a book, or even a parcel! I like it—it looks as if one had really something to do.”

She went out a few minutes after, lightly with great energy and animation, carrying under one arm the big book as if it had been a feather-weight. It was a fine afternoon, and the big trees in the Square were full of the rustle and breath of life—life as vigorous as if their foliage waved in the heart of the country and not in Bloomsbury. There had been showers in the morning; but now the sun shone warm, and as it edged towards the west sent long rays down the cross streets, making them into openings of pure light, and dazzling the eyes of the passers-by. Dora was caught in this illumination at every street corner, and turned her face to it as she crossed the opening, not afraid, for either eyes or complexion, of that glow “angry and brave". The great folio, with its worn corners and its tarnished gilding, rather added to the effect of her tall, slim, young figure, strong as health and youth could make it, with limbs a little too long, and joints a little too pronounced, as belonged to her age. She carried her head lightly as a flower, her step was free and light; she looked, as she said, “as if she had something to do,” and was wholly capable of doing it, which is a grace the more added, not unusually in these days, to the other graces of early life in the feminine subject. But it is not an easy thing to carry a large folio under your arm. After even a limited stretch of road, the lamb is apt to become a sheep: and to shift such a cumbrous volume from one arm to another is not an easy matter either, especially while walking along the streets. Dora held on her way as long as she could, till her wrist was like to break, and her shoulder to come out of its socket. Neither she nor her father had in the least realised what the burden was. Then she turned it over with difficulty in both arms, and transferred it to the other side, speedily reducing the second arm to a similar condition, while the first had as yet barely recovered.

It is not a very long way from the corner of the Square to those delightful old passages full of old book-shops, which had been the favourite pasturage of Mr. Mannering, and where Dora had so often accompanied her father. On ordinary occasions she thought the distance to Fiddler’s no more than a few steps, but to-day it seemed miles long. And she was too proud to give in, or to go into a shop to rest, while it did not seem safe to trust a precious book, and one that she was going to give back to the dealer, to a passing boy. She toiled on accordingly, making but slow progress, and very much subdued by her task, her cheeks flushed, and the tears in her eyes only kept back by pride, when she suddenly met walking quickly along, skimming the pavement with his light tread, the young man who had so wounded and paralysed her in Miss Bethune’s room, whom she had seen then only for the first time, but who had claimed her so cheerfully by her Christian name as an old friend.

She saw him before he saw her, and her first thought was the quick involuntary one, that here was succour coming towards her; but the second was not so cheerful. The second was, that this stranger would think it his duty to help her; that he would conceive criticisms, even if he did not utter them, as to the mistake of entrusting her with a burden she was not equal to; that he would assume more and more familiarity, perhaps treat her altogether as a little girl—talk again of the toys he had helped to choose, and all those injurious revolting particulars which had filled her with so much indignation on their previous meeting. The sudden rush and encounter of these thoughts distracting her mind when her body had need of all its support, made Dora’s limbs so tremble, and the light so go out of her eyes, that she found herself all at once unable to carry on her straight course, and awoke to the humiliating fact that she had stumbled to the support of the nearest area railing, that the book had slipped from under her tired arm, and that she was standing there, very near crying, holding it up between the rail and her knee.

“Why, Miss Dora!” cried that young man. He would have passed, had it not been for that deplorable exhibition of weakness. But when his eye caught the half-ridiculous, wholly overwhelming misery of the slipping book, the knee put forth to save it, the slim figure bending over it, he was beside her in a moment. “Give it to me,” he cried, suiting the action to the word, and taking it from her as if it had been a feather. Well, she had herself said it was a feather at first.

Dora, relieved, shook her tired arms, straightened her figure, and raised her head; with all her pride coming back.

“Oh, please never mind. I had only got it out of balance. I am quite, quite able to carry it,” she cried.

“Are you going far? And will you let me walk with you? It was indeed to see you I was going—not without a commission.”

“To see me?”

The drooping head was thrown back with a pride that was haughty and almost scornful. A princess could not have treated a rash intruder more completely de haut en bas. “To me! what could you have to say to me?” the girl seemed to say, in the tremendous superiority of her sixteen years.

The young man laughed a little—one is not very wise at five and twenty on the subject of girls, yet he had experience enough to be amused by these remnants of the child in this half-developed maiden. “You are going this way?” he said, turning in the direction in which she had been going. “Then let me tell you while we walk. Miss Dora, you must remember this is not all presumption or intrusion on my side. I come from a lady who has a right to send you a message.”

“I did not say you were intrusive,” cried Dora, blushing for shame.

“You only looked it,” said young Gordon; “but you know that lady is my aunt too—at least, I have always called her aunt, for many, many years.”

“Ought I to call her aunt?” Dora said. “I suppose so indeed, if she is my mother’s sister.”

“Certainly you should, and you have a right; but I only because she allows me, because they wished it, to make me feel no stranger in the house. My poor dear aunt is very ill—worse, they say, than she has ever been before.”

“Ill?” Dora seemed to find no words except these interjections that she could say.

“I hope perhaps they may be deceived. The doctors don’t know her constitution. I think I have seen her just as bad and come quite round again. But even Miller is frightened: she may be worse than I think, and she has the greatest, the most anxious desire to see you, as she says, before she dies.”

“Dies?” cried Dora. “But how can she die when she has only just come home?”

“That is what I feel, too,” cried the young man, with eagerness. “But perhaps,” he added, “it is no real reason; for doesn’t it often happen that people break down just at the moment when they come in sight of what they have wished for for years and years?”

“I don’t know,” said Dora, recovering her courage. “I have not heard of things so dreadful as that. I can’t imagine that it could be permitted to be; for things don’t happen just by chance, do they? They are,” she added quite inconclusively, “as father says, all in the day’s work.”

“I don’t know either,” said young Gordon; “but very cruel things do happen. However, there is nothing in the world she wishes for so much as you. Will you come to her? I am sure that you have never been out of her mind for years. She used to talk to me about you. It was our secret between us two. I think that was the chief thing that made her take to me as she did, that she might have some one to speak to about Dora. I used to wonder what you were at first,—an idol, or a prodigy, or a princess.”

“You must have been rather disgusted when you found I was only a girl,” Dora cried, in spite of herself.

He looked at her with a discriminative gaze, not uncritical, yet full of warm light that seemed to linger and brighten somehow upon her, and which, though Dora was looking straight before her, without a glance to the right or left, or any possibility of catching his eye, she perceived, though without knowing how.

“No,” he said, with a little embarrassed laugh, “quite the reverse, and always hoping that one day we might be friends.”

Dora made no reply. For one thing they had now come (somehow the walk went much faster, much more easily, when there was no big book to carry) to the passage leading to Holborn, a narrow lane paved with big flags, and with dull shops, principally book-shops, on either side, where Fiddler, the eminent old bookseller and collector, lived. Her mind had begun to be occupied by the question how to shake this young man off and discharge her commission, which was not an easy one. She hardly heard what he last said. She said to him hastily, “Please give me back the book, this is where I am going,” holding out her hands for it. She added, “Thank you very much,” with formality, but yet not without warmth.

“Mayn’t I carry it in?” He saw by her face that this request was distasteful, and hastened to add, “I’ll wait for you outside; there are quantities of books to look at in the windows,” giving it back to her without a word.

Dora was scarcely old enough to appreciate the courtesy and good taste of his action altogether, but she was pleased and relieved, though she hardly knew why. She went into the shop, very glad to deposit it upon the counter, but rather troubled in mind as to how she was to accomplish her mission, as she waited till Mr. Fiddler was brought to her from the depths of the cavern of books. He began to turn over the book with mechanical interest, thinking it something brought to him to sell, then woke up, and said sharply: “Why, this is a book I sent to Mr. Mannering of the Museum a month ago".

“Yes,” said Dora, breathless, “and I am Mr. Mannering’s daughter. He has been very ill, and he wishes me to ask if you would be so good as to take it back. It is not likely to be of so much use to him as he thought. It is not quite what he expected it to be.”

“Not what he expected it to be? It is an extremely fine copy, in perfect condition, and I’ve been on the outlook for it to him for the past year.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Dora, speaking like a bookman’s daughter, “even I can see it is a fine example, and my father would like to keep it. But—but—he has had a long illness, and it has been very expensive, and he might not be able to pay for it for a long time. He would be glad if you would be so very obliging as to take it back.”

Then Mr. Fiddler began to look blank. He told Dora that two or three people had been after the book, knowing what a chance it was to get a specimen of that edition in such a perfect state, and how he had shut his ears to all fascinations, and kept it for Mr. Mannering. Mr. Mannering had indeed ordered the book. It was not a book that could be picked up from any ordinary collection. It was one, as a matter of fact, which he himself would not have thought of buying on speculation, had it not been for a customer like Mr. Mannering. Probably it might lie for years on his hands, before he should have another opportunity of disposing of it. These arguments much intimidated Dora, who saw, but had not the courage to call his attention to, the discrepancy between the two or three people who had wanted it, and the unlikelihood of any one wanting it again.

The conclusion was, however, that Mr. Fiddler politely, but firmly, declined to take the book back. He had every confidence in Mr. Mannering of the Museum. He had not the slightest doubt of being paid. The smile, with which he assured her of this, compensated the girl, who was so little more than a child, for the refusal of her request. Of course Mr. Mannering of the Museum would pay, of course everybody had confidence in him. After her father’s own depressed looks and anxiety, it comforted Dora’s heart to make sure in this way that nobody outside shared these fears. She put out her arms, disappointed, yet relieved, to take back the big book again.

“Have you left it behind you?” cried young Gordon, who, lingering at the window outside, without the slightest sense of honour, had listened eagerly and heard a portion of the colloquy within.

“Mr. Fiddler will not take it back. He says papa will pay him sooner or later. He is going to send it. It is no matter,” Dora said, with a little wave of her hand.

“Oh, let me carry it back,” cried the young man, with a sudden dive into his pocket, and evident intention in some rude colonial way of solving the question of the payment there and then.

Dora drew herself up to the height of seven feet at least in her shoes. She waved him back from Mr. Fiddler’s door with a large gesture.

“You may have known me for a long time,” she said, “and you called me Dora, though I think it is a liberty; but I don’t know you, not even your name.”

“My name is Harry Gordon,” he said, with something between amusement and deference, yet a twinkle in his eye.

Dora looked at him very gravely from head to foot, making as it were a résumé of him and the situation. Then she gave forth her judgment reflectively, as of a thing which she had much studied. “It is not an ugly name,” she said, with a partially approving nod of her head.

CHAPTER XIV

“No, Mannering,” said Dr. Roland, “I can’t say that you may go back to the Museum in a week. I don’t know when you will be up to going. I should think you had a good right to a long holiday after working there for so many years.”

“Not so many years,” said Mr. Mannering, “since the long break which you know of, Roland.”

“In the interest of science,” cried the doctor.

The patient shook his head with a melancholy smile. “Not in my own at least,” he said.

“Well, it is unnecessary to discuss that question. Back you cannot go, my good fellow, till you have recovered your strength to a very different point from that you are at now. You can’t go till after you’ve had a change. At present you’re nothing but a bundle of tendencies ready to develop into anything bad that’s going. That must be stopped in the first place, and you must have sea air, or mountain air, or country air, whichever you fancy. I won’t be dogmatic about the kind, but the thing you must have.”

“Impossible, impossible, impossible!” Mannering had begun to cry out while the other was speaking. “Why, man, you’re raving,” he said. “I—so accustomed to the air of Bloomsbury, and that especially fine sort which is to be had at the Museum, that I couldn’t breathe any other—I to have mountain air or sea air or country air! Nonsense! Any of them would stifle me in a couple of days.”

“You will have your say, of course. And you are a great scientific gent, I’m aware; but you know as little about your own health and what it wants as this child with her message. Well, Janie, what is it, you constant bother? Mr. Mannering? Take it to Miss Bethune, or wait till Miss Dora comes back.”

“Please, sir, the gentleman is waiting, and he says he won’t go till he’s pyed.”

“You little ass!” said the doctor. “What do you mean by coming with your ridiculous stories here?”

Mannering stretched out his thin hand and took the paper. “You see,” he said, with a faint laugh, “how right I was when I said I would have nothing to do with your changes of air. It is all that my pay will do to settle my bills, and no overplus for such vanities.”

“Nonsense, Mannering! The money will be forthcoming when it is known to be necessary.”

“From what quarter, I should be glad to hear? Do you think the Museum will grant me a premium for staying away, for being of no use? Not very likely! I shall not be left in the lurch; they will grant me three months’ holiday, or even six months’ holiday, and my salary as usual. But we shall have to reduce our expenses, Dora and I, and to live as quietly as possible, instead of going off like millionaires to revel upon fresh tipples of fancy air. No, no, nothing of the kind. And, besides, I don’t believe in them. I have made myself, as the French say, to the air of Bloomsbury, and in that I shall live or die.”