Part 15 (1/2)

”Was he in trade?” inquired May, with some surprise. ”I know he wrote _The Complete Angler_, and was a friend of Dr. Donne's and George Herbert's, and is very much thought of to this day.”

”Deservedly,” said Tom Robinson emphatically. ”Yes, I am proud to say, he was a hosier to begin with, and a linen-draper to end with--well-to-do in both lines. They say his first wife, whom he married while he was still in business, was a niece of the Archbishop of Canterbury of the day, and his second wife, whom he married after he had retired to live on his earnings, was a half-sister of good Bishop Ken's; but I do not pretend to vouch for the truth of these statements. Now, about your father. I cannot do what you ask--I cannot in conscience.

Will you ever forgive me, 'little May'--that is what your father and mother and your sisters call you sometimes to this day, ain't it? and it is what I should have called you if I had been--your uncle say? Shall we be no longer friends?” he demanded ruefully.

”Of course we shall,” said May, with a suspicion of petulance. ”You are not bound to do what I bid you--I never thought that; and you are father and mother's friend--how could I help being your friend?”

”Don't try to help it,” he charged her.

Tom Robinson went farther than not feeling bound to do what May begged of him, he was constrained to remonstrate in another quarter to prevent trouble and disappointment to all concerned. He screwed up his courage, and everybody knows he was a modest man, and called at the Old Doctor's House for the express purpose. He had called seldom during the past year--just often enough to keep up the form of visiting--to show that he was not the surly boor, without self-respect or consideration for the Millars, which he would have been if he had dropped all intercourse with the family because one of them had refused to marry him. But though he had begged for Dora's friends.h.i.+p when he could not have her love, and had meant what he said, the wound was too recent for him to act as if nothing had happened. In addition to the pain and self-consciousness, there was a traditional atmosphere of agitation and alarm, a kind of conventional awkwardness, together with an anxious countenance, and protection sedulously afforded by the initiated and interested spectators to Tom and Dora, which, like many other instances of countenance and protection, went far towards doing the mischief they were intended to prevent.

Tom saw through the punctilious feints and solemn stratagems clearly; Dora did the same as plainly. Indeed the two would have been idiots if they could have escaped from the discomfiting perception of the care which was taken of them and their feelings, and the fact that every eye was upon them.

The sole result was to render the couple more wretchedly uncomfortable than if they had been set aside and sentenced to the company of each other and of no one else for a bad five minutes every day of their lives.

Another unhappy consequence of their being thus elaborately spared and s.h.i.+elded was, that when by some unfortunate chance the tactics failed, the couple felt as flurried and guilty as if they had contrived the fruitless accident to serve their own nefarious ends.

Tom Robinson called on the Millars between four and five the day after May had made her raid upon him, expecting to find what was left of the family gathering together for afternoon tea. He had the ulterior design of drawing May's father and mother apart, and letting them judge for themselves the advisability of her going up at once to St. Ambrose's, before her whole heart and mind were disastrously set against her natural and honourable destiny. He was distinctly put out by finding Dora alone. As for Dora, she told a faltering tale of her father's having been called away to a poor patient who was a pensioner of her mother's, and of Mrs. Millar's having walked over to Stokeleigh with him to see what she could do for old Hannah Lightfoot; while May was spending the afternoon with the Hewetts at the Rectory.

He hesitated whether to go or stay under the circ.u.mstances, but he hated to beat an ignominious retreat, as if _he_ thought that _she_ thought he could not be beside her for a quarter of an hour without making an a.s.s of himself again and pestering her. Why should he not accept the cup of tea which she faintly offered from the hands that visibly trembled with nervousness? When he came to consider it, why should he not transact his business with Dora? She was as deeply interested as anybody, unless the culprit herself; she probably knew better what May was foolishly planning than either their father or mother did, and would convey to them the necessary information.

As for Dora, she was thinking in a restless fever, ”I hope--I hope he does not see how much I mind being alone with him. It is just because I am not used to it. How I wish somebody would come in,--not mother, perhaps, for she would start and look put out herself, and sit down without so much as getting rid of her sunshade; and, oh dear, not May, for she would stare, and I do not know what on earth she would think--some wild absurdity, I dare say; anyhow, she would look exactly what she thought.”

”Look here, Miss Dora,” he said abruptly; ”you don't think your sister May ought to renounce the object of her education hitherto, and your father's views for her, in order to do like Miss Phyllis Carey? You are aware that May has become enamoured of Phyllis Carey's example, and is bent on following in her footsteps; but it won't do, and I have told her so. I trust n.o.body suspects me of encouraging young ladies to become shop-women,” he added, with a slightly foolish laugh, ”as old actors used to be accused of decoying young men of rank and fas.h.i.+on into going on the stage, and recruiting sergeants of beguiling country b.u.mpkins into taking the king's s.h.i.+lling.”

”Has May spoken to you about it?” cried Dora, startled out of her engrossing private reflections. ”What a child she is! I am sorry she has troubled you; she ought not to have done that. I hope you will excuse her.”

”Don't speak of it,” he said a little stiffly, as he put down his cup and signified he would have no more tea.

”And you said no,” remarked Dora, with an involuntary fall of her voice reflecting the sinking of her heart. ”Of course you could not do otherwise. It was a foolish notion. I am afraid Phyllis Carey is enough of a nuisance to Miss Franklin--and other people. It is hard that you should be bothered by these girls. Only I suspect poor 'little May' will be most dreadfully, unreasonably disappointed;” and there was an attempt to smile and a quiver of the soft lips which she could not hide.

”I am not bothered, and I hate to disappoint your sister,--I trust you understand that,” he said quickly and earnestly. ”But it would be sacrificing her and overturning your father's arrangements for her--disappointing what I am sure are among his dearest wishes.”

She did not ask, like May, why he did not count himself sacrificed. She only said shyly and wistfully, ”I knew it was out of the question, but if it had not been so, or if there had been any other way, it would have been such a boon to poor May not to be torn from home.” At the harrowing picture thus conjured up her voice fairly shook, and the tears started into her dovelike eyes.

”Home,” he said impatiently, ”is not everything; at least, not the home from which every boy must go, as a matter of course. 'Torn from home' in order to go to school! Surely the first part of the sentence is tall language.”

”It is neither too tall nor too strong where May is concerned,” said Dora, rousing herself to plead May's cause. ”She has not been away from home and from father--especially from mother, and one or other of the rest of us, for longer than a week since she was born.”

”Then the sooner she begins the better for her,” he said brutally, as it sounded to himself, to the loving, shrinking girl he was addressing.

”She has always been the little one, the pet,” urged Dora; ”she will not know what to do without some of us to take care of her and be good to her.”

”But she must go away some day,” he continued his remonstrance. ”How old is your sister?”

”She was seventeen last Christmas,” Dora answered shamefacedly.

”Why, many a woman is married before she is May's age,” he protested.

”Many a woman has left her native country, gone among strangers, and had to maintain her independence and dignity unaided, by the time she was seventeen. Queen Charlotte was not more than sixteen when she landed in England and married George the Third.”

Dora could not help laughing, as he meant her to do. ”May and Queen Charlotte! they are as far removed as fire and water. But,” she answered meekly, ”I know the Princess Royal was no older when she went to Berlin; and poor Marie Antoinette was a great deal younger, as May would have reminded me if she had been here, in the old days when she travelled from Vienna to Paris. But there--it is all so different. They were princesses from whom a great deal is expected, and the Princess Royal was the eldest instead of the youngest of the Queen's children.”

”Does seniority make so great a difference?” he said, with an inflection of his voice which she noticed, though he hastened to make her forget it by speaking again gravely the next minute. ”Should May not learn to stand alone? Would it not be dwarfing and cramping her, all her life probably, to give way to her now. Can it ever be too early to acquire self-reliance, and is it not one of the most necessary lessons for a responsible human being to learn? Besides, '_ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_.' It is only the first wrench which will hurt her. She will find plenty of fresh interests and congenial occupations at St.