THEEE was much diligent searching of the advertising columns of the daily papers for several weeks after this. Advertisements, in fact, became the staple literature, and Dolly's zeal in the perusal of them was only to be equalled by her readiness to snatch at the opportunities they presented. No weather was too grewsome for her to confront, and no representation too unpromising for her to be allured by. In the morning she was at Bayswater calling upon the chilling mother of six (four of them boys) whose moral nature needed judicious attention, and who required to be taught the rudiments of French, German, and Latin; in the afternoon she was at the general post-office applying to Q. Y. Z., who had the education of two interesting orphans to negotiate for, and who was naturally desirous of doing it as economically as possible; and at night she was at home, writing modest, business-like epistles to every letter in the alphabet in every conceivable or inconceivable part of the country.
“If I had only been born 'a stout youth,' or 'a likely young man,' or 'a respectable middle-aged person,' I should have been 'wanted' a dozen times a day,” she would remark; “but as it is, I suppose I I must wait until something 'presents itself,' as the Rev. Marmaduke puts it.”
And in defiance of various discouraging and dispiriting influences, she waited with a tolerable degree of tranquillity until, in the course of time, her patience was rewarded. Sitting by the fire one morning with Tod and a newspaper, her eye was caught by an advertisement which, though it did not hold out any extra inducements, still attracted her attention, so she read it aloud to Aimée and 'Toinette.
“Wanted, a young person to act as companion to an elderly lady. Apply at the printers.”
“There, Aimée,” she commented, “there is another. I suppose I might call myself 'a young person,' Don't you think I had better 'apply at the printer's'?”
“They don't mention terms,” said Aimée.
“You would have to leave home,” said 'Toinette.
Dolly folded up the paper and tossed it on to the table with a half sigh. She had thought of that the moment she read the paragraph, and then, very naturally, she had thought of Griffith. It would not be feasible to include him in her arrangements, even if she made any. Elderly ladies who engage “young persons” as companions were not in the habit of taking kindly to miscellaneous young men, consequently the prospect was not a very bright one.
There would only be letter-writing left to them, and letters seemed such cold comfort contrasted with every-day meetings. She remembered, too, a certain six months she had spent with her Bilberry charges in Switzerland, when Griffith had nearly been driven frantic by her absence and his restless dissatisfaction, and when their letters had only seemed new aids to troublous though unintentional games at cross-purposes. There might be just the same thing to undergo again, but, then, how was it to be avoided? It was impossible to remain idle just at this juncture.
“So it cannot be helped,” she said, aloud. “I must take it if I can get it, and I must stay in it until I can find something more pleasant, though I cannot help wishing that matters did not look so unpromising. Tod, you will have to go down, Aunt Dolly is going to put on her hat and present herself at the printer's in the character of a young person in search of an elderly lady.”
Delays were dangerous, she had been taught by experience, so she ran up-stairs at once for her out-door attire, and came down in a few minutes, drawing on her gloves and looking a trifle ruefully at them.
“They are getting discouragingly white at the seams,” she said, “and it seems almost impossible to keep them sewed up. I shall have to borrow Aimée's muff. What a blessing it is that the weather is so cold!”
At the bottom of the staircase she met Mollie.
“Phemie is in the parlor, Dolly,” she announced, “and she wants to see you. I don't believe Lady Augusta knows she is here, either, she looks so dreadfully fluttered.”
And when she entered the room, surely enough Phemie jumped up with a nervous bound from a chair immediately behind the door, and, dropping her muff and umbrella and two or three other small articles, caught her in a tremulous embrace, and at once proceeded to bedew her with tears.
“Oh, Dolly!” she lamented, pathetically; “I have come to say good-by; and, oh! what shall I do without you?”
“Good-by!” said Dolly. “Why, Phemie?”
“Switzerland!” sobbed Phemie. “The—the select seminary at Geneva, Dolly, where th-that professor of m-music with the lumpy face was.”
“Dear me!” Dolly ejaculated. “You don't mean to say you are going there, Phemie?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Euphemia. “Next week, too. And, oh dear, Dolly!” trying to recover her handkerchief, “if it had been anywhere else I could have borne it, but that,” resignedly, “was the reason mamma settled on it. She found out how I loathed the very thought of it, and then she decided immediately. And don't you remember those mournful girls, Dolly, who used to walk out like a funeral procession, and how we used to make fun—at least, how you used to make fun of the lady principal's best bonnet?”
It will be observed by this that Miss Dorothea Crewe's intercourse with her pupils had not been as strictly in accordance with her position as instructress as it had been friendly. She had even gone so far as to set decorum at defiance, by being at once entertaining and jocular, though to her credit it must be said that she had worked hard enough for her modest salary, and had not neglected even the most trivial of her numerous duties.
She began to console poor Euphemia to the best of her ability, but Euphemia refused to be comforted.
“I shall have to take lessons from that lumpy professor, Dolly,” she said. “And you know how I used to hate him when he would make love to you. And that was mamma's fault, too, because she would patronize him and call him 'a worthy person.' He was the only man who admired you I ever knew her to encourage, and she would n't have encouraged him if he had n't been so detestable.”
It was very evident that the eldest Miss Bilberry was in a highly rebellious and desperate state of mind. Dolly's daily visits, educational though they were, had been the brightest gleams of sunlight in her sternly regulated existence. No one had ever dared to joke in the Bilberry mansion but Dolly, and no one but Dolly, had ever made the clan gatherings bearable to Euphemia; and now that Dolly was cut off from them all, and there were to be no more jokes and no more small adventures, life seemed a desert indeed. And then with the calamitous prospect of Switzerland and the lumpy professor before her, Phemie was crushed indeed.
“Mamma doesn't know I came,” she confessed, tearfully, at last; “but I could n't help it, Dolly, I could n't go away without asking you to write to me and to let me write to you. You will write to me, won't you?”
Dolly promised at once, feeling a trifle affected herself. She had always been fond of Phemie, and inclined to sympathize with her, and now she exerted herself to her utmost to cheer her. She persuaded her to sit down, and after picking up the muff and umbrella and parcels, took a seat by her, and managed to induce her to dry her tears and enter into particulars.
“It will never do for Lady Augusta to see that you have been crying,” she said. “Dry your eyes, and tell me all about it, and—wait a minute, I have a box of chocolates here, and I know you like chocolates.”
It was a childish consolation, perhaps, but Dolly knew what she was doing and whom she was dealing with, and this comforting with confections was not without its kindly girlish tact. Chocolates were one of Phemie's numerous school-girl weaknesses, and a weakness so rarely indulged in that she perceptibly brightened when her friend produced the gay-colored, much-gilded box. And thus stimulated, she poured forth her sorrows with more coherence and calmness. She was to go to Switzerland, that was settled, and the others were to be placed in various other highly select educational establishments. They were becoming too old now, Lady Augusta had decided, to remain under Dolly's care.
“And then,” added Euphemia, half timidly, “you won't be vexed if I tell you, will you?”
“Certainly not,” answered Dolly, who knew very well what was coming, though poor Phemie evidently thought she was going to impart an extremely novel and unexpected piece of intelligence. “What is it, Phemie?”
“Well, somehow or other, I don't believe mamma exactly likes you, Dolly.”
Now, considering circumstances, this innocent speech amounted to a rich sort of thing to say, but Dolly did not laugh; she might caricature Lady Augusta for the benefit of her own select circle of friends, but she never made jokes about her before Phemie, however sorely she might be tempted. So, now she helped herself to a chocolate with perfect sobriety of demeanor.
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. “I have thought so myself, Phemie.” And then, as soon as possible, changed the subject.
At length Phemie rose to go. As Lady Augusta was under the impression that she was merely taking the dismal daily constitutional, which was one of her unavoidable penances, it would not do to stay too long.
“So I must go,” lamented Phemie; “but, Dolly, if you would n't mind, I should so like to see the baby. I have never seen him since the day we called with mamma,—and I am so fond of babies, and he was so pretty.”
Dolly laughed, in spite of herself. She remembered the visit so well, and Lady Augusta's loftily resigned air of discovering, in the passively degenerate new arrival, the culminating point of the family depravity.
“It is much to be regretted,” she had said, disapprovingly; “but it is exactly what I foresaw from the first, and you will have to make the best of it.”
And then, on Dolly's modestly suggesting that they intended to do so, and were not altogether borne down to the earth by the heavy nature of their calamity, she had openly shuddered.
But Phemie had quite clung to the small bundle of lawn and flannel, and though she had never seen Tod since, she had by no means forgotten him.
“He will be quite a big boy when I come back,” she added. “And I should so like to see him once again while he is a baby.”
“Oh, you shall see him,” said Dolly. “Tod is the one individual in this house who always feels himself prepared to receive visitors. He is n't fastidious about his personal appearance. If you will come into the next room, I dare say we shall find him.”
And they did find him. Being desirous of employing, to the greatest advantage, the time spent in his retirement within the bosom of his family, he was concentrating his energies upon the mastication of the toe of his slipper, upon which task he was bestowing the strictest and most undivided attention, as he sat in the centre of the hearth-rug.
“He has got another tooth, Aunt Dolly,” announced 'Toinette, triumphantly, as soon as the greetings were over. “Show Aunt Dolly his tooth.” And, being laid upon his back on the maternal knee, in the most uncomfortable and objectionable of positions, the tooth was exhibited, as a matter calling forth public rejoicings.
Phemie knelt on the carpet before him, the humblest of his devotees.
“He is prettier than ever,” she said. “Do you think he would come to me, Mrs. Crewe?”
And, though the object of her admiration at once asserted his prerogatives by openly rejecting her overtures with scorn, she rejoiced over him as ecstatically as if he had shown himself the most amiable of infant prodigies, which he most emphatically had not, probably having been rendered irascible by the rash and inconsiderately displayed interest in his dental developments. Whatever more exacting people might have thought, Phemie was quite satisfied.
“I wish I was in your place, Dolly,” she said, as she was going away. “You seem so happy together here, somehow or other. Oh, dear! You don't know how dreadful our house seems by contrast. If things would break or upset, or look a little untidy,—or if mamma's caps and dresses just would n't look so solid and heavy—”
“Ah!” laughed Dolly, “you have n't seen our worst side, Phemie,—the shabby side, which means worn shoes and old dresses and bills. We don't get our whistle for nothing in Vagabondia, though, to be sure,"—and I won't say a memory of the shabby coat-sleeve did not suggest the amendment,—"I don't think we pay too dearly for it; and I believe there is not one of us who would not rather pay for it than live without it.”
And when she gave the girl her farewell kiss, it was a very warm one, with a touch of pity in it. It was impossible for her to help feeling sympathy for any one who was without the Griffith element in existence.
After this she went out herself to apply at the printer's, and was sent from there to Brabazon Lodge, which was a suburban establishment, in a chilly aristocratic quarter. An imposing edifice, Brabazon Lodge, built of stone, and most uncompromisingly devoid of superfluous ornament. No mock minarets or unstable towers at Brabazon Lodge,—a substantial mansion in a substantial garden behind substantial iron gates, and so solid in its appointments that it was quite a task for Dolly to raise the substantial lion's head which formed the front-door knocker.
“Wanted, a young person,” she was saying to herself, meekly, when her summons was answered by a man-servant, and she barely escaped announcing herself as “the young person, sir.”
Once inside the house, she was not kept waiting. She was ushered into a well-appointed side-room, where a bright fire burned in the grate. The man retired to make known her arrival to his mistress, and Dolly settled herself in a chair by the hearth.
“I wonder how many 'young persons' have been sent away sorrowing this morning,” she said, “and I wonder how Griffith will like the idea of my filling the position of companion to an elderly lady, or any other order of lady, for the matter of that? Poor old fellow!” and she gave vent to an unmistakable sigh.
But the appearance of the elderly lady put an end to her regrets. The door opened and she entered, and Dolly rose to receive her. The next instant, however, she gave a little start. She had seen the elderly lady before, and confronting her now recognized her at once,—Miss Berenice MacDowlas. And that Miss MacDowlas recognized her also was quite evident, for she advanced with the air of one who was not at all at a loss.
“How do you do?” she remarked, succinctly, and gave Dolly her hand.
That young person took it modestly.
“I believe I have had the pleasure—” she was beginning, when Miss MacDowlas interrupted her.
“You met me at the Bilberrys',” she said. “I remember seeing you very well. You are Dorothea Crewe.”
Dolly bowed in her most insinuatingly graceful manner.
“Take a seat,” said Miss MacDowlas.
Dolly did so at once.
Miss MacDowlas looked at her with the air of an elderly lady who was not displeased.
“I remember you very well,” she repeated. “You were governess there. Why did you leave?”
Dolly did not know very definitely, and told her so.
The notice given her had been unexpected. Lady Augusta had said it was because her pupils were old enough to be sent from home.
“Oh!” said Miss MacDowlas, and looked at her again from her hat to her shoes.
“You are fond of reading?” she asked next
“Yes,” answered Dolly.
“You read French well?”
“Yes,” said Dolly. She knew she need not hesitate to say that, at least.
“You are good company and are fond of society?”
“I am fond of society,” said Dolly, “and I hope I am 'good company,'”
“You don't easily lose patience?”
“It depends upon circumstances,” said Dolly.
“You can play and sing?”
“I did both the night I met you,” returned the young person.
“So you did,” said Miss MacDowlas, and examined her again.
It was rather an odd interview, upon the whole, but it did not end unfortunately. Miss MacDowlas wanted a companion who was quick-witted and amusing, and, having seen that Dolly was both on the evening of the Bilberry clan gathering, she had taken a fancy to her. So after a little sharp questioning, she announced her decision. She would employ her to fill the vacant situation at the same rate of salary she had enjoyed in her position of governess to the youthful Bilberrys, and she would employ her at once.
“I want somebody to amuse me,” she said, “and I think you can do it. I am often an invalid, and my medical man says the society of a young person will benefit me.”
So it was settled that the following week Dolly should take up her abode at Brabazon Lodge and enter upon the fulfilment of her duties. She was to read, play, sing, assist in the entertainment of visitors, and otherwise make herself generally useful, and, above all, she was to be amusing.
She left the house and proceeded homeward in a peculiar frame of mind. She could have laughed, but she was compelled to admit to herself that she could also have cried with equal readiness. She had met with an adventure indeed. She was a young person at large no longer; henceforth she was the property of the elderly dragon she had so often laughed at with Griffith. And yet the dragon had not been so objectionable, after all. She had been abrupt and unceremonious, but she had been better than Lady Augusta, and she had not shown herself illiberal. But there would be no more daily visits from Griffith, no more téte-à-tétes in the shabby parlor, no more sitting by the fire when the rest had left the room, no more tender and inconsistently long farewells at the front door. It was not pleasant to think about. She found herself catching her breath quickly, with a sound like a little sob.
“He will miss it awfully,” she said to herself, holding her muff closely with her small, cold hands, and shutting her eyes to work away a tear; “but he won't miss it more than I shall. He might live without me perhaps, but I could n't live without him. I wonder if ever two people cared for each other as we do before? And I wonder if the time will ever come—” And there she broke off again, and ended as she so often did. “Poor old fellow!” she said. “Poor, dear, patient, faithful fellow! how I love you!”
She hurried on briskly after this, but she was wondering all the time what he would say when he found out that they were really to be separated. He would rebel, she knew, and anathematize fate vehemently. But she knew the rest of them would regard it as rather a rich joke that chance should have thrown her into the hands of Miss MacDowlas. They had all so often laughed at Griffith's descriptions of her and her letters, given generally when he had been galled into a caustic mood by the arrival of one of the latter.
Beaching Bloomsbury Place, Dolly found her lover there. He had dropped in on his way to his lodgings, and was awaiting her in a fever of expectation, having heard the news from Aimée.
“What is this Aimée has been telling me?” he cried, the moment she entered the room. “You can't be in earnest, Doll! You can't leave home altogether, you know.”
She tossed her muff on the table and sat down on one of the low chairs, with her feet on the fender.
“I thought so until this morning,” she said, a trifle mournfully; “but it can't be helped. The fact is, it is all settled now. I am an engaged young person.”
“Settled!” exclaimed Griffith, indignantly. “Engaged! Dolly, I did n't think you would have done it.”
“I could n't help doing it,” said Dolly, her spirits by no means rising as she spoke. “How could I?”
But he would not be consoled by any such cold comfort. He had regarded the possibility of her leaving the house altogether as something not likely to be thought of. Very naturally, he was of the opinion that Dolly was as absolute a necessity to every one else as she was to himself. What should he do without her? How could he exist? It was an unreasoning insanity to talk about it. He was so roused by his subject indeed, that, neither of them being absolutely angelic in temperament, they wandered off into something very like a little quarrel about it,—he, goaded to lover-like madness by the idea that she could live without him; she, finding her low spirits culminate in a touch of anger at his hotheaded, affectionate obstinacy.
“But it is not to be expected,” he broke out at last, without any reason whatever,—"it is not to be expected that you can contend against everything. You are tired of disappointment, and I don't blame you. I should be a selfish dolt if I did. If Gowan had been in my place he could have married you, and have given you a home of your own. I never shall be able to do that. But,” with great weakness and evidence of tribulation at the thought, “I didn't think you would be so cool about it, Dolly.”
“Cool!” cried Dolly, waxing wroth and penitent both at once, as usual. “Who is cool? Not I, that is certain. I shall miss you every hour of my life, Griffith.” And the sad little shadow on her face was so real that he was pacified at once.
“I am an unreasonable simpleton!” was his next remorseful outburst.
“You have said that before,” said Dolly, rather hard-heartedly; but in spite of it she did not refuse to let him be as affectionate as he chose when he knelt down by her chair, as he did the next minute.
“It would be a great deal better for me,” she half whispered, breaking the suspicious silence that followed,—"it would be a great deal better for me if I did not care for you half so much;” and yet at the same time she leaned a trifle more toward him in the most traitorous of half-coaxing, half-reproachful ways.
“It would be the death of me,” said Griffith; and he at once plunged into an eloquently persuasive dissertation upon the height and depth and breadth and force of his love for her. He was prone to such dissertations, and always ready with one to improve any occasion; and I am compelled to admit that, far from checking him, Dolly rather liked them, and was given to encourage and incite him to their delivery. When this one was ended, he was quite in the frame of mind to listen to reason, and let her enter into particulars concerning her morning's efforts, which she did, at length, only adding a flavor of the mysterious up to the introduction of Miss MacDowlas.
“What!” cried out Griffith, when she let out the secret. “Confound it! No! Not Aunt MacDowlas in the flesh, Dolly? You are joking.”
“No,” answered Dolly, shaking her head at the amazed faces of the girls, who had come in during the recital, and who had been guilty of the impropriety of all exclaiming at once when the climax was reached. “I am in earnest. I am engaged as companion to no less a person than Miss Berenice MacDowlas.”
“Why, it is like something out of a three-volumed novel,” said Mollie.
“It is a good joke,” said 'Toinette.
“It is very awkward,” commented Aimée. “If she finds out you are engaged to Griffith, she will think it so indiscreet of you both that she will cut him off with a shilling.”
“Indiscreet!” echoed Dolly. “So we are indiscreet, my sage young friend,—but indiscretion is like variety, it is the spice of life.”
And by this brisk speech she managed to sweep away the shadow which had touched Griffith's face, at the unconscious hint at their lack of wisdom.
“Don't say such a thing again,” she said to Aimée afterward, when they were talking the matter over, as they always talked things over together, “or he will fancy that you share his own belief that he has something to reproach himself with. Better to be indiscreet than to love one another less.”
“A great deal better,” commented the wise one of the family, oracularly. She was not nineteen yet, this wise one, but she was a great comfort and help to Dolly, and indeed to all of them. “And it is n't my way to blame you, either, Dolly, though things do look so entangled. I never advised you to give it up, you know.”
“Give it up,” cried Dolly, a soft, pathetic warmth and color rising to her face and eyes. “Give it up! There would be too much of what has past and what is to come to give up with it. Give it up! I wouldn't if I could, and I could n't if I would.”
IT was several days before Bloomsbury Place settled down and became itself again after Dolly's departure. They all missed her as they would have missed any one of their number who had chanced to leave them; but Griffith, coming in to make his daily visits, was naturally almost disconsolate, and for a week or so refused to be comforted.
He could not overcome his habit of dropping in on his way to and from his lodgings, which were near by; it was a habit of too long standing to be overcome easily, and besides this, he was so far a part of the family circle that his absence from it would have been regarded by its other members as something rather like a slight, so he was obliged to pay them the delicate attention of presenting himself at least once a day. And thus his wounds were kept open. To come into the parlor and find them all there but Dolly, to see her favorite chair occupied by Mollie or Aimée or 'Toinette, to hear them talk about her and discuss her prospects,—well, there were times when he was quite crushed by it.
“If there was any hope of a better day coming,” he said to Aimée, who, through being the family sage, was, of course, the family confidante, “if there was only something real to look forward to, but we are just where we were three years ago, and this sort of thing cannot go on forever. What right have I to hold her to her word when other men might make her happier?”
Ainice, sitting on a stool at his feet and looking reflective, shook her head.
“That is not a right view to take,” she said, “and it is n't fair to Dolly. Dolly would be happier with you on a pound a week than she would be with any one else on ten thousand a year. And you ought to know that by this time, Griffith. It is n't a question of happiness at all.”
“I don't mean—” he was beginning, but Aimée interrupted him. Her part of this love affair was to lay plans for the benefit of the lovers and to endeavor to settle their little difficulties in her own way.
“I am very fond of Dolly,” she said.
“Fond of her!” echoed Griffith. “So am I. Who isn't?”
“I am very fond of Dolly,” Aimée proceeded.
“And I know her as other people do not, perhaps. She does not show as much of her real self to outsiders as they think. I have often thought her daring, open way deceived people when it made them fancy she was so easy to read. She has romantic fancies of her own the world never suspects her of,—if I did not know her as I do, she is the last person on earth I should suspect of cherishing such fancies. The fact is, you are a sort of romance to her, and her love for you is one of her dreams, and she clings to it as closely as she would cling to life. It is a dream she has lived on so long that it has become part of herself, and it is my impression that if anything happened to break her belief in it she would die,—yes, die!” with another emphatic shake of the pretty head. “And Dolly is n't the sort of girl to die for nothing.”
Griffith raised his bowed head from his hands, his soft, dark, womanish eyes lighting up and his sallow young face flushing. “God bless her,—no!” he said. “Her life has not been free from thorns, even so far, and she has not often cried out against them.”
“No,” answered Aimée. “And when the roses come, no one will see as you will how sweet she finds them. Your Dolly is n't Lady Augusta's Dolly, or Mollie's, or Ralph Gowan's, or even mine; she is the Dolly no one but her lover and her husband has ever seen or ever will see. You can get at the spark in the opal.”
Griffith was comforted, as he often found himself comforted, under the utterances of this wise one.
His desperation was toned down, and he was readier to hope for the best and to feel warm at heart and grateful,—grateful for Dolly and the tender thoughts that were bound up in his love for her. The tender phantom Aimée's words had conjured up, stirred within his bosom a thrill so loving and impassioned, that for the time the radiance seemed to emanate from the very darkest of his clouds of disappointment and discouragement. He was reminded that but for those very clouds the girl's truth and faith would never have shone out so brightly. But for their poverty and long probation, he could never have learned how much she was ready to face for love's sake. And it was such an innocent phantom, too, this bright little figure smiling upon him through the darkness, with Dolly's own face, and Dolly's own saucy, fanciful ways, and Dolly's own hands outstretched toward him. He quite plucked up spirit.
“If Old Flynn could just be persuaded to give me a raise,” he said; “it would n't take much of an income for two people to live on.”
“No,” answered the wise one, feeling some slight misgivings, more on the subject of the out-go than the income. “You might live on very little—if you had it.”
“Yes,” said Griffith, apparently struck by the brilliancy of the observation, “Dolly and I have said so often.”
“Let me see,” considered Aimée, “suppose we were to make a sort of calculation. Give me your lead-pencil and a leaf out of your pocket-book.”
Griffith produced both at once. He had done it often enough before when Dolly had been the calculator, and had made a half-serious joke of the performance, counting up her figures on the tips of her fingers, and making great professions of her knowledge of domestic matters; but it was a different affair in Aimée's hands. Aimée was in earnest, and bending over her scrap of paper, with two or three little lines on her white forehead began to set things down with an air at once business-like and vigorous, reading, the various items aloud.
“Rent, coals, taxes, food, wages,—you can't do your own washing, you know,—clothes, etceteras. There it is, Griffith,” the odd, tried look settling in her eyes.
Griffith took the paper.
“Thank you,” he remarked, resignedly, after he had glanced at it. “Just fifty pounds per annum more than I have any prospect of getting. But you are very kind to take so much interest in it, little woman.” “Little woman” was his pet name for her.
She put her hand up to her forehead and gave the wrinkles a little rub, as if she would have liked to rub them away.
“No,” she said, in distress. “I am very fond of calculating, so it isn't any trouble to me. I only wish I could calculate until what you want and what you have got would come out even.”
Griffith sighed. He had wished the same thing himself upon several occasions.
He had one consolation in the midst of his tribulations, however. He had Dolly's letters, one of which arrived at “the office” every few days. Certainly they were both faithful correspondents. Tied with blue ribbon in a certain strong box, lay an immense collection of small envelopes, all marked with one peculiarity, namely, that the letters inside them had been at once closely written, and so much too tightly packed that it seemed a wonder they had ever arrived safely at their destination. They bore various postmarks, foreign and English, and were of different tints, but they were all directed in the one small, dashing hand, whose t''s were crossed with an audacious little flourish, and whose capitals were so prone to run into whimsical little curls. Most of them had been written when Dolly had sojourned with her charges in Switzerland, and some of them were merely notes of appointment from Bloomsbury Place; but each of them held its own magnetic attraction for Griffith, and not one of them would he have parted with for untold gold. He could count these small envelopes by the score, but he had never received one in his life without experiencing a positive throb of delight, which held fresh pleasure every time.
Most of these letters, too, had stories of their own. Some had come when he had been discouraged and down at heart, and they had been so full of sunshine, and pretty, loving conceits, that by the time he had finished reading them he had been positively jubilant; some, I regret to say, were a trifle wilful and coquettish, and had so roused him to jealous fancies that he had instantly dashed off a page or so of insane reproach and distrust which had been the beginning of a lover's quarrel; some of them (always written after he had been specially miserable and unreasoning) were half-pathetic mixtures of reproach and appeal, full of small dashes of high indignation, and outbursts of penitence, and with such a capricious, yet passionate ring in every line, that they had seemed less like letters than actual speech, and had almost forced him to fancy that Dolly herself was at his side, all in the flush and glow of one of her prettiest remorseful outbreaks.
And these letters from Brabazon Lodge were just as real, so they at least helped him to bear his trials more patiently than he could otherwise have done. She was far more comfortable than she had expected to be, she told him. Her duties were light, and Miss MacDowlas not hard to please, and altogether she was not dissatisfied.
“But that I am away from you,” she wrote, “I should say Brabazon Lodge was better than the Bilberrys'. There is no skirmishing with Lady Augusta, at least; and, though skirmishing with Lady Augusta is not without its mild excitement, it is not necessary to one's happiness, and may be dispensed with. I wonder what Miss MacDowlas would say if she knew why I wear this modest ring on my third finger. When I explained to her casually that we were old friends, she succinctly remarked that you were a reprobate, and, feeling it prudent not to proceed with further disclosures, I bent my head demurely over my embroidery, and subsided into silence. I cannot discover why she disapproves of you unless it is that she has erratic notions about literary people. Perhaps she will alter her opinion in time. As it is, it can scarcely matter whether she knows of our engagement or not. When a fitting opportunity arrives I shall tell her, and I don't say I shall not enjoy the spice of the denouement. In the meantime I read aloud to her, talk, work wonders in Berlin wool, and play or sing when she asks me, which is not often. In the morning we drive out, in the afternoon she enjoys her nap, and in the evening I sit decorously intent upon the Berlin wonders, but thinking all the time of you and the parlor in Bloomsbury Place, where Tod disports himself in triumphant indifference to consequences, and where the girls discuss the lingering possibilities of their wardrobes. You may-tell Mollie we are very grand,—we have an immense footman, who accompanies us in our walks or drives, and condescends to open and shut our carriage-door for us, with the air of a gentleman at leisure. I am rather inclined to think that this gentleman has cast an approving eye upon me, as I heard him observe to the housemaid the other day, that I was 'a reether hinterestin' young party,' which mark of friendly notice has naturally cheered me on my lonely way.”
Among the people who felt the change in the household keenly, Ralph Gowan may assuredly be included. He missed Dolly as much as any of them did, but he missed her in a different manner. He did not call quite as often as he had been in the habit of doing, and when he did call he was more silent and less entertaining. Dolly had always had an inspiring effect upon him, and, lacking the influence of her presence, even Vagabondia lost something of its charm. So sometimes he was guilty of the impoliteness of slipping into half-unconscious reveries of a few minutes' duration, and, being thus guilty upon one particular occasion, he was roused, after a short lapse of time, through the magnetic influence of a pair of soft eyes fixed upon him, which eyes he encountered the instant he looked up, with a start.
Mollie—the eyes were Mollie's—dropped her brown lashes with a quick motion, turning a little away from him; so he smiled at her with a sense of half-awakened appreciation. It was so natural to smile so at Mollie.
“Why, Mollie,” he said, “what ails us? We are not usually so dull. We have not spoken to each other for ten minutes.”
The girl did not look at him; her round, childish cheek was flushed, and her eyes were fixed on the fire, half proudly, half with a sort of innocently transparent indifference.
“Perhaps we have nothing worth saying to each other,” she said. “Everybody is n't like Dolly.”
Dolly! He colored slightly, though he smiled again. How did she know he was thinking of Dolly? Was it so patent a fact that even she could read it in his face? It never occurred to him for an instant that there could exist a reason why the eyes of this grown-up baby should be sharpened. She was such a very baby, with her ready blushes and her pettish, lovely face.
“And so you miss Dolly, too?” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders, as if to imply that she considered the question superfluous.
“Of course I do,” she answered; “and of course we all do. Dolly is the sort of person likely to be missed.”
She was so petulant about it that, not understanding her, he was both amused and puzzled, and so by degrees was drawn into making divers gallant, almost caressing speeches, such as might have been drawn from him by the changeful mood of a charming, wilful child.
“Something has made you angry,” he said. “What is it, Mollie?”
“Nothing has made me angry,” she replied. “I am not angry.”
“But you look angry,” he returned, “and how do you suppose I am to be interesting when you look angry?”
“It cannot matter to you,” said Miss Mollie, “whether I am angry or not.”
“Not matter!” he echoed, with great gravity. “It amounts to positive cruelty. Just at this particular moment I feel as if I should never smile again.”
She reddened to her very throat, and then turned round all at once, flashing upon him such a piteous, indignant, indescribable glance as almost startled him.
“You are making fun of me,” she cried out. “You always make fun of me. You would n't talk so to Dolly.” And that instant she burst into tears.
He was dumbfounded. He could not comprehend it at all. He had thought of her as being so completely a child, that her troubles were never more than a child's troubles, and her moods a child's moods. He had admired her, too, as he would have admired her if she had been six years old, and he had never spoken to her as he would have spoken to a woman, in the whole course of their acquaintance. She was right in telling him that he would not have said such things to Dolly. He was both concerned and touched. What could he do but go to her and be dangerously penitent, and say a great many things easily said, but not soon to be forgotten! Indeed, her soft, nervous, passionate sobs, of which she was so much ashamed, her innocent tremor, and her pretty, wilful disregard of his remorse were such a new sensation to him, that it must be confessed he was not so discreet as he should have been.
“You never speak so to Dolly,” she persisted, “nor to Aimée, either, and Aimée is only two years older than I am. It is not my fault,” petulantly, “that I am only seventeen.”
“Fault!” he repeated after her. “It is a very charming fault, if it is one. Come, Mollie,” looking down at her with a tender softness in his eyes, “make friends with me again,—we ought to be friends. See,—let us shake hands!”
Of course she let him take her hand and hold it lightly for a moment as he talked, his really honest remorse at his blunder making him doubly earnest and so doubly dangerous. She had swept even Dolly out of his mind for the time being, and she occupied his attention so fully for the rest of the evening that he had not the time to be absent-minded again. In half an hour all traces of her tears had fled, and she was sitting on her footstool near him, accepting with such evident delight his efforts at amusing her, that she quite repaid him for his trouble.
After this there seemed to be some connecting link between them. In default of other attractions, he made headway with Mollie, and was to some extent consoled. He talked to her when he made his visits, and it gradually became an understood thing that they were very good friends. He won her confidence completely,—so far, indeed, that she used to tell him her troubles, and was ready to accept what meed of praise or friendly blame he might think fit to bestow upon her.
It was a few weeks after the above-recorded episode that Griffith arrived one afternoon, in some haste, with a note from Dolly addressed to Aimée, and containing a few hurried lines. It had been enclosed in a letter to himself.
Somewhat unexpectedly Miss MacDowlas had decided upon giving a dinner-party, and Dolly wanted the white merino, which she had forgotten to put into her trunk when she had packed it. Would they make a parcel of it and send it by Mollie to Brabazon Lodge?
“You will have to go at once, Mollie,” said Aimée, after reading the note. “It will be dark in an hour, and you ought not to be out after dark.”
“It is a great deal nicer to be out then,” said Mollie, whose ideas of propriety were by no means rigid. “I like to see the shop windows lighted up. Where is my hat? Does anybody know?” rising from the carpet and abandoning Tod to his own resources.
Nobody did know, of course. It was not natural that anybody should. Hats and gloves and such small fry were generally left to provide quarters for themselves in Bloomsbury Place.
“What is the use of bothering?” remarked Mrs. Phil, disposing of the difficulty of their non-appearance when required, simply; “they always turn up in time.” And in like manner Mollie's hat “turned up,” and in a few minutes she returned to the parlor, tying the elastic under her hair.
“Your hair wants doing,” said Aimée, having made up her parcel.
“Yes,” replied Mollie, contentedly, “Tod has been pulling himself up by it; but it would be such a trouble to do anything to it just now, and I can tuck it back in a bunch. It only looks a little fuzzy, and that 's fashionable. Does this jacket look shabby, Aimée? It is a good thing it has pockets in it. I always did like pockets in a jacket, they are so nice to put your hands in when your gloves have holes in them.”
“Your gloves oughtn't to have holes in them,” commented Aimée.
“But how can you help it if you have n't got the money to buy new ones?” asked Mollie.
“You ought to mend them,” said the wise one.
“Mend them!” echoed Mollie, regarding two or three bare pink finger-tips dubiously. “They are not worth mending.”
“They were once,” said Aimée; “and you ought to have stitched them before it was too late. But that is always our way,” wrinkling her forehead with her usual touch of old-young anxiousness. “We are not practical. There! take the parcel and walk quickly, Mollie.”
Once on the street, Mollie certainly obeyed her. With the parcel in one arm, and with one hand thrust into the convenient pocket, she hurried on her way briskly, not even stopping once to look at the shop windows. Quite unconscious, too, was she of the notice she excited among the passers-by. People even turned to look after her more than once, as indeed they often did. The scarlet scarf twisted round her throat to hide the frayed jacket collar, and the bit of scarlet mixed with the trimmings of her hat contrasted artistically with her brown eyes, and added brightness to the color on her cheeks. It was no wonder that men and women alike, in spite of their business-like hurry, found time to glance at her and even turn their heads over their shoulders to look backward, as she made her way along the pavement.
It was quite dark when she reached her destination, and Brabazon Lodge was brilliantly lighted up,—so brilliantly, indeed, that when the heavy front door was opened, in answer to her ring, she was a trifle dazzled by the flood of brightness in which Dolly's friend, the “gentleman at leisure,” seemed to stand.
On stating her errand, she was handed over to a female servant, who stood in the hall.
“She was to be harsked in,” she heard the footman observe, confidentially, to the young woman, “and taken to Miss Crewe's room immediate.”
So she was led up-stairs, and ushered into a pretty bedroom, where she found Dolly sitting by the fire in a dressing-gown, with her hair about her shoulders.
She jumped up the moment Mollie entered, and ran to her, brush in hand, to kiss her.
“You are a good child,” she said. “Come to the fire and sit down. Did you have any trouble in finding the house? I was afraid you would. It was just like me to forget the dress, and I never missed it until I began to look for it, wanting to wear it to-night. How is Tod?”
“He has got another tooth,” said Mollie. “I found it to-day. Dolly,” glancing round, “how nice your room is!”
“Yes,” answered Dolly, checking a sigh, “but don't sigh after the fleshpots of Egypt, Mollie. One does n't see the dullest side of life at Bloomsbury Place, at least.”
“Is it dull here?” asked Mollie.
Dolly shrugged her expressive shoulders.
“Berlin-wool work is n't exciting,” she said. “How did you leave Griffith?”
“Low-spirited,” replied Mollie. “I heard him tell Aimée this afternoon that he could n't stand it much longer.”
Dolly began to brush her hair, and brushed it very much over her face, perhaps because she wished to take advantage of its shadow; for most assuredly Mollie caught sight of something sparkling amongst the abundant waves almost like a drop of dew.
“Dolly,” she said at last, breaking the awkward little sympathetic silence which naturally followed, “do you remember our reading the 'Vicar of Wakefield'?”
“Yes,” said Dolly, in a mournful half-whisper; she could not trust herself to say more.
“And about the family being 'up,' and then being 'down'? I always think we are like they were. First it is 'the family up,' and then 'the family down.' It is down just now.”
“Yes,” said Dolly.
“It will be 'up' again, in time,” proceeded Mollie, sagaciously. “It always is.”
Dolly tried to laugh, but her laugh was a nervous little effort which broke off in another sound altogether. Berlin-wool work and Brabazon Lodge had tried her somewhat and—she wanted Griffith. It seemed to her just then such a far distant unreal Paradise,—that dream of the modest parlor with the door shut against the world, and the green sofa drawn near the fire. Were they ever to attain it, or were they to grow old and tired out waiting, and hoping against hope?
She managed to rally, however, in a few minutes. Feeling discouraged and rebellious was not of much use,—that was one of Vagabondia's earliest learned lessons. And what good was there in making Mollie miserable? So she plucked up spirit and began to talk, and, to her credit be it said, succeeded in being fairly amusing, and made Mollie laugh outright half a dozen times during the remainder of her short stay. It was only a short stay, however. She remembered Aimée's warning at last, and rose rather in a hurry.
“I shall have to walk quickly if I want to get home in time for tea,” she said, “so good-night, Dolly. You had better finish dressing.”
“So I had,” answered Dolly. “I am behind time already, but I shall not be many minutes, and Miss MacDowlas is not like Lady Augusta. Listen; I believe I hear wheels at the door now. It must be later than I fancied.”
It was later than she fancied. As Mollie passed through the hall two gentlemen who were ascending the steps crossed her path, and, seeing the face of one who had not appeared to notice her presence, she started so nervously that she dropped her glove. His companion—a handsome, foreign-looking man—bent down and, picking it up, returned it to her, with a glance of admiring scrutiny which made her more excited than ever. She scarcely had the presence of mind to thank him, but rushed past him and out into the night in a passionate flutter of pain and sudden childish anger, inconsistent enough.
“He never saw me!” she said to herself, catching her breath piteously. “He is going to see Dolly. It is n't the party he cares for, and it is n't Miss MacDowlas,—it is nobody but Dolly. He has tried to get an invitation just because—because he cares for Dolly.”
She reached home in time for tea, arriving with so little breath and so much burning color that they all stared at her, and Aimée asked her if she had been frightened.
“No,” she answered, “but I ran half the way because I wanted to be in time.”
She did not talk at tea, and scarcely ate anything, and when Griffith came in, at about nine o'clock, he found her lying on the sofa, flushed and silent. She said she had a headache.
“I took Dolly her dress,” she said. “They are having a grand party and—Does Miss MacDowlas know Mr. Gowan, Griffith?”
Griffith started and changed countenance at once.
“No,” he answered. “Why?”
“He was there,” she said, listlessly. “I met him in the hall as I came out, but he did not see me. He must have tried to get an invitation because—well, you know how he likes Dolly.”
And thus, the train having been already laid, was the spark applied.