Alas! Dora was not yet sixteen—there was no possibility, however carefully you counted the months, and showed her birthday to be approaching, to get over that fact. And what were her love and anxious desire to be of service, and devotion to her father, in comparison with these few years and the superior training of the women, who knew almost as much as the doctor himself? “Not saying much, that!” Dr. Roland grumbled under his breath, as he joined the anxious circle of malcontents in Miss Bethune’s apartment, where Dora came, trying proudly to restrain her tears, and telling how she had been shut out of Mr. Mannering’s room—“my own father’s room!” the girl cried in her indignation, two big drops, like raindrops, falling, in spite of her, upon her dress.
“It’s better for you, my bonnie dear,—oh, it’s better for you,” Gilchrist whispered, standing behind her, and drying her own flowing eyes with her apron.
“Dora, my darling,” said Miss Bethune, moved to a warmth of spirit quite unusual to her, “it is quite true what Gilchrist says. I am not fond of these women myself. They shall never nurse me. If I cannot have a hand that cares for me to smooth my pillow, it shall be left unsmoothed, and none of these good-looking hussies shall smile over me when I’m dying—no, no! But it is different; you’re far too young to have that on your head. I would not permit it. Gilchrist and me would have taken it and done every justice to your poor papa, I make no doubt, and been all the better for the work, two idle women as we are—but not you. You should have come and gone, and sat by his bedside and cheered him with the sight of you; but to nurse him was beyond your power. Ask the doctor, and he will tell you that as well as me.”
“I have always taken care of my father before,” said Dora. “When he has had his colds, and when he had rheumatism, and when–that time, Dr. Roland, you know.”
“That was the time,” said the doctor, “when you ran down to me in the middle of the night and burst into my room, like a wise little girl. We had him in our own hands then, and we knew what to do with him, Dora. But here’s Vereker, he’s a great swell, and neither you nor I can interfere.”
It comforted Dora a little to have Dr. Roland placed with herself among the outsiders who could not interfere, especially when Miss Bethune added: “That is just the grievance. We would all like to have a finger in the pie. Why should a man be taken out of the care of his natural friends and given into the charge of these women, that never saw him in their lives before, nor care whether he lives or dies?”
“Oh, they care—for their own reputation. There is nothing to be said against the women, they’ll do their duty,” said the doctor. “But there’s Vereker, that has never studied his constitution—that sees just the present symptoms, and no more. Take the child out for a walk, Miss Bethune, and let’s have her fresh and fair for him, at least, if"—the doctor pulled himself up hastily, and coughed to swallow the last alarming syllable,—“fresh and fair,” he added hastily, “when he gets better, which is a period with which no nurses can interfere.”
A colloquy, which was silent yet full of eager interest and feeling, sprang up between two pairs of eyes at the moment that if—most alarming of conjectures—was uttered. Miss Bethune questioned; the doctor replied. Then he said in an undertone: “A constitution never very strong,—exhausting work, exhausting emotions, unnatural peace in the latter life.”
Dora was being led away by Gilchrist to get her hat for the proposed walk; and Dr. Roland ended in his ordinary voice.
“Do you call that unnatural peace, with all the right circumstances of his life round him, and—and full possession of his bonnie girl, that has never been parted from him? I don’t call that unnatural.”
“You would if you were aware of the other side of it lopped off—one half of him, as it were, paralysed.”
“Doctor,” said Miss Bethune, with a curious smile, “I ought to take that as a compliment to my sex, as the fools say—if I cared a button for my sex or any such nonsense! But there is yourself, now, gets on very well, so far as I can see, with that side, as you call it, just as much lopped off.”
“How do you know?” said the doctor. “I may be letting concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on my damask cheek. But I allow,” he said, with a laugh, “I do get on very well: and so, if you will permit me to say it, do you, Miss Bethune. But then, you see, we have never known anything else.”
Something leaped up in Miss Bethune’s eye—a strange light, which the doctor could not interpret, though it did not escape his observation. “To be sure,” she said, nodding her head, “we have never known anything else. And that changes the case altogether.”
“That changes the case. I say nothing against a celibate life. I have always preferred it—it suits me better. I never cared,” he added, again with a laugh, “to have too much baggage to move about.”
“Do not be uncivil, doctor, after being more civil than was necessary.”
“But it’s altogether a different case with poor Mannering. It is not even as if his wife had betrayed him—in the ordinary way. The poor thing meant no harm.”
“Oh, do not speak to me!” cried Miss Bethune, throwing up her hands.
“I know; it is well known you ladies are always more severe—but, anyhow, that side was wrenched away in a moment, and then there followed long years of unnatural calm.”
“I do not agree with you, doctor,” she said, shaking her head. “The wrench was defeenitive.” Miss Bethune’s nationality betrayed itself in a great breadth of vowels, as well as in here and there a word or two. “It was a cut like death: and you do not call calm unnatural that comes after death, after long years?”
“It’s different—it’s different,” the doctor said.
“Ay, so it is,” she said, answering as it were her own question.
And there was a pause. When two persons of middle age discuss such questions, there is a world lying behind each full of experiences, which they recognise instinctively, however completely unaware they may be of each other’s case.
“But here is Dora ready for her walk, and me doing nothing but haver,” cried Miss Bethune, disappearing into the next room.
They might have been mother and daughter going out together in the gentle tranquillity of use and wont,—so common a thing!—and yet if the two had been mother and daughter, what a revolution in how many lives would have been made!—how different would the world have been for an entire circle of human souls! They were, in fact, nothing to each other—brought together, as we say, by chance, and as likely to be whirled apart again by those giddy combinations and dissolutions which the head goes round only to think of. For the present they walked closely together side by side, and talked of one subject which engrossed all their thoughts.
“What does the doctor think? Oh, tell me, please, what the doctor thinks!”
“How can he think anything, Dora, my dear? He has never seen your father since he was taken ill.”
“Oh, Miss Bethune, but he knew him so well before. And I don’t ask you what he knows. He must think something. He must have an opinion. He always has an opinion, whatever case it may be.”
“He thinks, my dear, that the fever must run its course. Now another week’s begun, we must just wait for the next critical moment. That is all, Dora, my darling, that is all that any man can say.”
“Oh, that it would only come!” cried Dora passionately. “There is nothing so dreadful as waiting—nothing! However bad a thing is, if you only know it, not hanging always in suspense.”
“Suspense means hope; it means possibility and life, and all that makes life sweet. Be patient, be patient, my bonnie dear.”
Dora looked up into her friend’s