Читать книгу Mary Gray - Katharine Tynan - Страница 8

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Mary took the news of her great promotion in an unthankful spirit.

"Lady Anne is very kind," she said tearfully; "but I don't want to stay with her. I couldn't bear to live anywhere but in Wistaria Terrace. It is absurd that you should say you have given your consent, papa. How could you possibly have consented when the house could not get on without me? You know it could not. Why, even for a day things would be all topsy-turvy without me."

"And so you have not gone to school," the father answered, with an accent of self-reproach. "You have been weighed down with responsibilities and cares that you ought to have been free of for years to come. You have even been stunted in your growth, as Lady Anne said. It is time things were altered. I don't know how I was so blind. We ought to be grateful to the accident that has opened a door to us."

When he had gone, Lady Anne came and comforted Mary. There was a deal of kindness in the old lady's heart.

"You shall help them," she said. "Dear me, how much help you will be able to give them! Imagine beginning with a salary at fifteen! You are to leave things to me, Mary. I have sent help to your stepmother—an excellent woman, Mrs. Devine, whom I have known for many years. She is very capable. I will tell her that she must remain with your stepmother. It is amazing what one really capable woman can do. And afterwards there will be the salary."

The salary, and perhaps a quick, warm feeling for Lady Anne which sprang up suddenly in Mary's heart, settled the question. After all, as Lady Anne said, despite her greatness she was very lonely. She had lost her son and her grandson, and she could not endure her nephew or his family. She had only a few old cronies. As a matter of fact, although she had taken a fancy to Mary Gray and captured the child's susceptible heart, she was not a particularly amiable or lovable old lady to the rest of the world. She was too keen-sighted and sharp-tongued to be popular.

Mary slept that night in such a room as she had never dreamt of. There was a little bed in the corner of it with a flowing veil of white, lace-trimmed muslin like a baby's cot. There was white muslin tied with blue ribbons at the window, and the dressing-table was as gaily and innocently adorned. There was a work-box on a little table, a writing-desk on another; a shelf of books hung on the wall. The room had really been made ready for a dear young cousin of Lady Anne's, who had not lived to enjoy it. If Mary had only known, she owed something of Lady Anne's interest to the fact that her eyes were grey, like Viola's, her cheek transparent like Viola's.

Apart from the discomfort of the broken arm, as she lay in the soft, downy little bed, she was ill at ease, wondering how they were getting on without her at Wistaria Terrace. Her breast had an ache for the baby who was used to lie warm against it. Her good arm felt strange and lonely for the familiar little body. She kept putting it out in a panic during her sleep because she missed the baby.

In the morning Simmons, Lady Anne's maid, came to help her dress. It was very difficult, Mary found, to do things for one's self with a broken arm. Her head ached because of the disturbed sleep and the pain of the broken limb. Simmons had come to her in a somewhat hostile frame of mind. She did not hold with picking up gutter-children from no one knew where and setting people as were respectable to wait upon them. But at heart she was a good-natured woman, and her indignation disappeared before the unchildish pain and weariness of Mary's face.

"There," she said, "I wouldn't be fretting, if I were you. Lor' bless you, there's fine treats in store for you. Her ladyship sent only last night for a roll of grey cashmere. I'm to fit you after your breakfast and make it up as quick as I can. Then you'll be fit to go out with her ladyship in the carriage and get your other things."

It was the last day of the ugly linsey. Simmons got through her task with great quickness. She was a woman of taste, else she had not been Lady Anne's maid. Lady Anne was more particular about her garments than most young women. And, having once made up her mind to like Mary, Simmons took an interest in her task.

"You are so kind, Mrs. Simmons," Mary said gratefully, feeling the gentleness and dexterity with which the woman tried on her new garments without once jarring the broken arm.

"I'm kind enough to those who take me the proper way," said Simmons, greatly pleased with Mary's prefix of Mrs., which was brevet rank, since Simmons had never married. It would have made a great difference to Mary's comfort at this time if she had been sufficiently ill-advised to call Simmons without a prefix, as Lady Anne did.

Dr. Carruthers had called to see Mary the morning after the accident. He had interviewed his patient in the morning-room, and was passing out through the hall when Lady Anne's voice over the banisters summoned him to her presence.

"You can give me a little while, Dr. Carruthers?" she said. "I shall not be interfering with your work?"

"I am quite free"—a little colour came into his cheeks. "The friend whose work I was doing at the House of Mercy returned last night. Yesterday was my last day."

"Ah! and yesterday brought you an unexpected patient. How do you find her?"

"She has less physique than she ought to have."

"Yes, she has been underfed and overworked. I am going to alter all that. I have taken her into my house as my little companion."

Dr. Carruthers stared in spite of himself.

"You think it very odd of me? Well, I am odd, and I can afford to do what pleases me. Mary Gray is going to live here. You should know her father. A quite remarkable man, I consider him. Now, about yourself. I have heard of you, Dr. Carruthers. I have heard that you are a very clever young man and devoted to your work, that you have all the knowledge of the schools at your fingertips, but very little experience, and no practice to speak of."

"Excuse me, Lady Anne. I was three years house surgeon at the Good Samaritan; and I have done a great deal of work since I have been here. I will confess that my patients have been of a poor class."

"Who have not paid you a penny. I don't know whether you do it for philanthropy or to keep your hand in——"

"A little of both," the young man said with a faint smile.

"But it is a good thing to do," the old lady went on, without noticing his interpellation. "You're spoken well of by the poor, if the rich have not heard anything about you. I know you're living beyond your means in a big house, hoping that a paying practice will come to you. My dear man, it never will, so long as people think you are in need of it. They like Dr. Pownall at their doors with his carriage and pair, even if he can only give them five minutes. Pownall forgot himself with me. I remember his father—a very decent, respectable man who used to grow cabbages. That's nothing against Pownall—creditable to him, I should say. Still, he hadn't time to listen to my symptoms, and he was rude. 'A woman of your age,' he said. I should like to know who told Dr. Pownall my age. A lady has no age. 'It's time you retired,' I said to him. 'I don't think of it,' said he; 'not for ten years yet. My patients won't hear of it.' 'You're greedy,' said I; 'if you weren't your patients might go to Hong Kong.' He thought it was a joke—hadn't time to find out whether I was serious or not. I made him, Dr. Carruthers. It's time for him to retire now. I shall mention to all my friends that you are my body-physician."

She spoke like one of the Royal Family. But Dr. Carruthers had no inclination to laugh. His eyes were dim as he murmured his acknowledgments. It was fame, it was fortune, in those parts to be approved by Lady Anne Hamilton. Hitherto she had been understood to swear by Dr. Pownall.

"It means a deal to us, Lady Anne," he said, stumbling over his words. "We had made up our minds to give up the big house and look for a slum practice. The children—I have two living—are not very strong, any more than Mildred. We put all we could into the venture of taking the house. It was our bid for fortune."

"I wouldn't approve of it in a general way," said Lady Anne. "Still, it has turned out well. Will your wife be at home to-morrow afternoon? I should like to call upon her."

"She will be delighted."

Dr. Carruthers was regaining his self-control. He knew that the presence of Lady Anne's barouche at his door for an hour in the afternoon would be more potent in opening doors to him than if he had made the most brilliant cure on record.

Mary was with Lady Anne next day when she went to call on Mrs. Carruthers. It was characteristic of Lady Anne that she thought to tell Jennings, the coachman, to drive up and down in front of the house and round the sides, for Dr. Carruthers' house was a corner one with a frontage to three sides. It was a hot summer day, and Jennings wondered disrespectfully what bee the old lady had got in her bonnet. Such a jangling of harness, such a flashing of polished surfaces! Every window that commanded the three sides of Dr. Carruthers' house had an eye at the pane. The tidings flew from one to another that Lady Anne Hamilton was visiting Mrs. Carruthers, and was making a very long call.

Mildred was still on her sofa. She would have risen when Lady Anne came in, but the old lady prevented her. Lady Anne could be royally kind when it pleased her.

She drew a chair by the sofa and sat down. Mary, who had come in with her, listened in some wonder to Lady Anne's sympathetic questions about the children. That was something in which Mary was interested, in which Mary had knowledge and experience; but though she listened she would not have spoken a word for worlds.

As she sat there on the edge of one of Mrs. Carruthers' chairs—the drawing-room furniture was of the sparsest; a chair or small table dotted here and there on the wilderness of polished floor—she could see herself in a pier-glass at the other end of the room. It was a quite unfamiliar presentment she saw. This Mary was dressed in soft dove-grey. She had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders. She had a wide black hat, with one long white ostrich feather. Her good hand was gloved in delicate grey kid. There was something quaint about her aspect; for that artist, Simmons, had discovered that Mary, for all her fifteen years, looked her best with her soft fine brown hair piled on top of her head. When she presented Mary so to Lady Anne the old lady was fain to acknowledge that Simmons was right. There was a quaint and delightful stateliness about Mary which made Lady Anne say to herself once more that the child had gentle blood in her.

"Dear me," Mildred Carruthers thought, as her eyes wandered again and again to the elegant little figure, "Kit said nothing of this. I expected to find a rather interesting child of the humbler classes. I remember particularly that he said she looked as though she had had a hard time."

Mary's changed aspect had one unforeseen result. When she presented herself at Wistaria Terrace the baby did not know her. Her stepmother shed a few tears, which were half-gratification. The elder children were already a bit shy of her, the baby's immediate predecessor even murmuring of her as "the yady," and surveying her from afar, finger in mouth. But the baby could in no way be brought to recognise her, and only shouted lustily when she tried to force herself upon his recognition.

"I shall come to-morrow in my old frock," Mary said, bitterly hurt by this lack of perception on the baby's part. "I hate these hideous things; so I do. To-morrow he will come to his Mary, so he will."

But when the morrow came, and she sought for her old work-a-day garments in that pretty white and blue wardrobe where she had hung them when she had discarded them for the grey frock and hat, they were not to be found. There were numbers of things such as Mary had never dreamed of. Lady Anne had provided her with an outfit, simple according to her thoughts, but splendid in Mary's eyes. A white cashmere dressing-gown, trimmed with lace, hung on the peg where the grey linsey had been.

Mary flew to Simmons to know where her old frock had gone to. The good woman, who by this time had taken Mary under her wing to uphold her against the rest of the household if it were inclined to resent the new inmate, looked at her reprovingly.

"You never wanted that old frock, and you her ladyship's companion? No, Miss Mary—for so I shall call you, as by her ladyship's orders, let some people say what they like—that frock you never will see, for gone it has to a poor child that'll maybe find it a comfort when winter comes. I wonder at you for thinking on it, so I do, seeing as how I've taken so much trouble with your clothes."

Mary turned away with a desolate feeling. The grey linsey might have been like the feathers of the enchanted bird that became a woman for the love of a mortal, the feathers which, if she wore them again, had the power of transporting her back to her kindred and her old estate. The old life was indeed closed to Mary with the disappearance of the grey linsey; and it was long before she lost the feeling that if she could only have kept her old garments she need not have been so separated from the old life.