A Houseful of Girls Part 16

After p.r.o.nouncing this high encomium it was rather a shock to Rose not only to incur Annie's righteous displeasure, but to discover that on occasions Annie could be as severe and relentless in her sentences as ever.

Rose, like most middle-cla.s.s girls not fairly out of their teens, and committed to their own discretion in the huge motley world of London, had been solemnly charged to behave with the greatest wariness. She was to treat every man or woman she encountered well-nigh as a dangerous enemy in disguise till her suspicions were proved to be misplaced, and the stranger shown to Rose's satisfaction and that of her seniors and guardians to be a harmless friend.

To do Rose justice, she remembered for the most part what had been told her, and was careful not to expose herself to the slightest chance of misapprehension--not to say rudeness, such as would have frightened her mother and incensed her father. Rose would not be tempted by the fearless independence of Hester Jennings and her cronies. They maintained, in theory at least, that though there might be dens of vice and dark places of cruelty in the great city, for those whose feet trod the downward path, yet its crowded thoroughfares, to those who honestly went about their own business, or to the messengers of divine charity and mercy, were as safe, and safer, than any quiet country road.

Womanhood in the strength and confidence of its purity and fearlessness might traverse them alone at any hour of the day or night.

But Rose submitted to the ordinary if antiquated code, which implies the timidity and defencelessness of young women whenever and wherever a.s.sailed. She had not gone far enough in her emanc.i.p.ation to reckon as part of it, immunity from apprehension of every kind, including the strife of evil tongues.

However, one day in the beginning of May, Rose went to Covent Garden in pursuit of a pot of tulips, which she suddenly felt she must have, without delay, as an accessory in one of her sketches. She was coming home laden with her spoil by way of Burnet's, where there was an equal necessity for her to procure, on the instant, a yard or two of gauzy stuff of a certain uncertain hue, when a thunder-storm unexpectedly broke over the haunt of artists. Torrents of rain followed, enough to wash away whole pyramids of flowers and piles of art-materials. If the downpour did nothing else it cleared the crowded street, with the celerity of magic only seen in such circ.u.mstances, and left Rose cowering in a doorway, alone as it seemed to her, but for a cab-driver who took refuge in his cab, drawn up before one of the opposite houses.

The rain looked as if it meant to continue, while, laden as Rose was, she could not have held up an umbrella even if she had found one ready to her hand.

Her slender funds did not set her up in cabs, as she had told herself on many a weary trudge in fog and drizzle between Mr. Foy's cla.s.s-rooms and Welby Square. Besides she would like to see Hester Jennings's face when she (Rose Millar) proposed to indulge in such a luxury. But there would be more lost than gained if she stood s.h.i.+vering in that doorway till her best spring frock was ruined, waiting for an omnibus which was sure to arrive with every available inch of s.p.a.ce occupied. She would catch a chill or an influenza with no kind father near to save her a doctor's bill, and cure her simply for the pleasure of doing it. She would brave Hester's eagle eye, supposing it could scan Rose's misdeeds from some coigne of vantage commanding this end of the street. She signalled to the cab-driver opposite, who put his head out of the cab window and signalled back that he had a fare besides himself at present ensconced in one of the inhospitable-looking houses.

Should she bid the thunder, lightning, and rain do their worst, and set out to walk home in defiance of them? While she still paused irresolute, peeping out disconsolately at the inky sky from which the downpour fell, a young man in the conscious superiority of a waterproof and an ample umbrella, walked leisurely along the sloppy, deserted pavement. He looked at her, seemed arrested by something which struck him in her appearance, hesitated a little undecidedly, stopped short, and addressed her, colouring up to his frank, honest blue eyes as he did so.

"I am afraid you have been caught in this tremendous shower. Can I do nothing to help you--call a cab, for instance?"

"Oh! thank you very much," she said gratefully, forgetting all about the cunning enemy in disguise for whom she was to be always looking out.

Indeed she had felt so lonely a minute before that she was rather disposed to welcome a comrade in misfortune. "The cabman in the cab opposite tells me he is engaged, and I do not remember any cab-stand near this."

"There is one round the corner, which I pa.s.sed a minute ago, but it was vacant; all the world is wanting cabs in such weather. However, I can shelter you a little, if you will allow me," and he held the umbrella in front of her.

"No, please; I am keeping you here in the wet, and you are exposing yourself to the rain," protested Rose, remorsefully. "I was just thinking of walking on, sooner than stand any longer getting gradually soaked," she confided to him with pleasant inconsiderateness.

"Then will you take the use of my umbrella?" he asked promptly; "and perhaps you will let me carry your parcels for you," he suggested in the humblest manner possible, eyeing covetously her flower-pot, and the paper wisp from "Burnet's."

"Oh dear, no," said Rose, pulling herself together when it was too late, and with an adorable frankness, which was another mistake so far as an unauthorized acquaintance's being nipped in the bud went. "I should be taking you out of your way; you must want your own umbrella, and I can manage perfectly well. I am accustomed to go about by myself"--the last piece of information given with a proud inflection of the voice which told its own tale.

"In storm and s.h.i.+ne?" he took it upon him to question her, with the slightest rallying tone, and a twinkle in his blue eyes, but still with the greatest respect in his att.i.tude and manner--"not in storm, surely.

I shall not be going out of my way. I am only taking a stroll--that is, I generally do take a stroll in some direction on my way back to my lodgings. You may not think the weather nice for strolling, but I don't mind it. I am as strong as a horse, and I certainly don't want an umbrella. I have this waterproof affair, which, like the umbrella, is rather a nuisance than otherwise."

She could see at a glance that he was a broad-shouldered young fellow, over six feet, and that his kindly, deferential face, seen through the steaming atmosphere, was as ruddy as youth and a vigorous const.i.tution could make it. He was evidently speaking the truth, and she could not resist the temptation of the friendly aid arriving thus opportunely, and so obligingly pressed upon her.

"Only for a little way," she bargained cheerfully. "The rain may stop in a minute, though I must say it does not look like it, or we may come on a return cab; anyhow, it cannot be long till an omnibus overtakes us."

She would have demurred at his ridding her of her flowers and parcel, which he disposed of easily under his arm and in his disengaged hand, as if he were well accustomed to being c.u.mbered with such small impediments, had not a comical idea crossed her mind. He might think that she did not trust his honesty, and was beset by a fear that he would rush down a side street and disappear with her goods before she could cry, "Stop, thief!" and arouse the scanty pa.s.sers-by.

Then Rose felt impelled to explain why she walked about London burdened with flower-pots and rolls of gauze. "I have just been to Covent Garden," she said. "I wished to get this pot of tulips--parrot tulips--yellow and scarlet, you know, to harmonize with a Chinese screen in a little picture I am painting. Then I had to go into 'Burnet's,'

for 'Liberty's' is too far away, for some blue stuff of the right shade which I could drape into a frock for the little girl who is my model."

"Are you fond of painting?" he caught her up, being to the full as willing to speak as she was. "So is my sister, and she also goes to 'Liberty's' for queer rags and tags. I suppose they are part of the amateur's stock-in-trade."

"I am going to be a professional artist," said Rose again, with that proud little inflection of the voice. But all the effect which her communication had upon him was that he took it as an invitation, or at least as a warrant, for responsive confidences on his own part.

"I am a doctor," he announced. "I have been ent.i.tled to write myself one for the last two months. I have just pa.s.sed my final exams, and got my degree--stiffish work for a fellow who does not take to sapping as easily as to the air he breathes."

"My father is a doctor," said Rose, brightly, with her tongue fairly loosened. "I forget whether he says examinations were easier or more difficult when he was young. He is Dr. Millar of Redcross."

"Millar!" exclaimed the tall young man so excitedly, that he stopped short for an instant, in the middle of the dismally las.h.i.+ng rain, and looked at her with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes. "I thought so, I saw it at the first glance. You have a sister among the lady probationers at St. Ebbe's."

"Yes--Annie," cried Rose, with equal ecstasy in the acquiescence; and she, too, stood still for a second in the rain. "Do you know St. Ebbe's?

Have you seen Annie?"

"I should think I do, I should think I have," he answered her fervently.

"St. Ebbe's is my hospital. I have been 'walking it' for a year past. I was there to-day, and Miss Millar is well known all over the place. She is a great favourite with the matron, Mrs. Hull, and the house surgeon, and especially with the operating surgeon. He is always asking to have Miss Millar in his cases since that boy had his leg cut off."

"I know, I know," chimed in Rose, "the little boy who begged you to wait till he had said his prayers, and when he could not do it for himself, Annie was able to do it for him. Now he is hopping about on his crutches quite actively and happily; and she has got him an engagement, to clean the knives and boots at Mrs. Jennings, the boarding-house in Welby Square where I stay. Isn't it too funny and nice that you should happen to have to do with St. Ebbe's and Annie?"

"It has been a great pleasure to me--well, these are not the right words," said the young fellow with sudden gravity and a shade of agitation in his manner. "I count it the greatest piece of good fortune which ever befell me that I took St. Ebbe's for my hospital. But I ought not to presume on my acquaintance with Miss Millar," he began again immediately, with an infusion of cautious reserve and something like vexation creeping into his tone; "it is purely professional. We are far too busy people at St. Ebbe's to know each other as private persons.

Very likely if you ask her, she will deny all knowledge of me as an individual; she may not even be able to recall the fact of my existence apart from a circle of big uncouth medical students in the train of the doctors--all alike to her. At the same time I have drunk tea in her company both in the matron's room and in Dr. Moss's, and I have often sat near her in the services at the hospital chapel," he ended a little defiantly.

The speech, save for its ring of half-boyish mortification, was suspicious, as if he were providing a loophole for escape in case Annie refused to indorse his a.s.sertion of mutual acquaintance. But Rose, in spite of her spirit and quickness, was hardly more given to suspicion than her sister May showed herself, and saw nothing dubious in his remark. She was carried away with the agreeable surprise of having stumbled on somebody connected with St. Ebbe's who knew all about Annie.

She chatted on in the frankest, friendliest way, plying him with girlish questions, and supplying free comments on his answers; and he was an auditor who was nothing loth to be so treated, and to be furnished with stores of information on points which had aroused his ardent curiosity. She forgot all about taking him out of his way, and when they reached Welby Square she crowned her unbounded faith in him by inviting him into the house. On his acceptance of her invitation, after a moment's hesitation, she presented him to Mrs. Jennings as a friend of Annie's from St. Ebbe's.

The young man had the grace to feel his ears tingle while Mrs. Jennings, looking a little astonished, took him on Rose's word, bowed her welcome, begged him to sit down with her usual gracious, languid good-breeding, and said she was glad to see any friend of Miss Annie Millar's.

He did his best, with a flushed face, to remedy his and Rose's rashness.

He put down his card, with Harry Ironside, M.D., engraved on it, at Mrs.

Jennings's elbow. He set himself with a strenuous and sincere effort to talk to her, and so to conduct himself as to do credit to Rose's voucher.

Mrs. Jennings was easily propitiated on receiving the attention which was due to her. She thought the young man's manners perfectly good; they had well-bred ease, and at the same time the modesty which ought to accompany youth, though his introduction to her had been somewhat informal.

Irregularity and singularity were among the fas.h.i.+ons of the day. She would have been glad if her daughter Hester, in carrying out these fas.h.i.+ons, had brought forward no rougher, or commoner-looking, or more eccentric satellites and proteges--secretaries of those horrid women's unions and clubs--than this friend of Rose and Annie Millar's.

Mrs. Jennings never forgot a name and its social connection. "Ironside?"

she repeated tentatively, but with an air of agreeable expectation. "I am familiar with the name. One of my sons, Captain Lawrence Jennings, when his regiment was at Manchester, knew and received much kindness from a family named Ironside."

"It must have been the family of one of my uncles," said Dr. Harry Ironside, eagerly. "My Uncle John, and my Uncle Charles too, for that matter, stay in Manchester. Both are married men with families. My Uncle John was mayor a few years ago."

"The same," cried Mrs. Jennings with bland satisfaction. "Lawrie's Ironsides were the family of the mayor, I remember perfectly when you mention it;" and she added the mental note, "They were among the richest cotton-brokers in the place--well-nigh millionaires."

"Were you all named from Cromwell's Ironsides?" inquired Rose, lightly, inclined to laugh and colour at the absurd recollection that, though she had seemed to know all about him from the moment he spoke of St. Ebbe's and Annie, she had been ignorant of his very name till he put down his card. If he had not done so, she would have had to describe him to Annie as the big, fair-haired young doctor with the Roman nose, or by some other nonsensical item, such as the signet-ring on his left hand, or the trick of putting his hand to his chin.

"I am sure I cannot tell"--he met her question with an answering laugh--"except that, so far as I know, we have had more to do with cotton than with cannon-b.a.l.l.s. My father was a Manchester man, like my uncles. I have struck out a new line in handling--not to say a sword, but a lancet."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Jennings with mild superiority, "all my sons are in the services--I have given them to their Queen and country. Two of my sons-in-law are also in the army, and I often say of the third--a clergyman in a sadly heathen part of the Black Country--that, engaged as he is in the Church militant, he is as much a fighter as the rest of them." Having thus in the mildest, most ladylike manner, established her social supremacy, Mrs. Jennings was doubly gracious to the visitor.

They made such progress in their acquaintance by means of the Manchester Ironsides and other members of her very large circle of friends, with regard to whom the two discovered the names at least of several were also known to Harry Ironside, that the lady made another marked concession. When he said he was in rooms in London, and had his only sister with him, she signified with a kind and graceful bend of the lace-enfolded shoulders and the bewigged head within the wonderful edifice of a cap, that she meant to have the pleasure of calling on Miss Ironside.

Rose could hardly believe her ears; and she did not wonder, though she was glad that he had the sense and good feeling to thank Mrs. Jennings with warmth, since Rose knew what a testimony it was to the genuine liking which the mistress of the house had taken to her chance guest.

For Mrs. Jennings went very little out, and was exceedingly particular in adding to her visiting-list, as became the head of a select boarding-house, and the mother of so many officers and gentlemen, not to say gentlewomen.

But matters did not end even there. He managed to convey the impression that his sister and he were rather lonely in their rooms, while he alluded to the facts that he and she were orphans, and with the exception of each other had neither brother nor sister. They had looked forward to being together, and making a home as soon as Kate left school, and he had taken furnished lodgings at Campden Hill till he settled down somewhere. But somehow the lodgings were not very home-like. He should prize highly the friends.h.i.+p of Mrs. Jennings for his sister. At this point the slightest gleam of a business interest awoke in Mrs. Jennings's steel gray eyes, though she only told him softly that she had known it all--the loneliness of one or two members of a family in London, the comfortlessness of even the best of furnished apartments. It was such considerations, in a great measure, which had induced her to utilize her large house, much too large for herself and the only daughter left at home with her, to receive a few old friends as suitable boarders into her family. She had hoped to form a cheerful and refined little society round her, and so to be of a little use to her fellow-creatures. She might say she had succeeded in her humble mission, she finished with artless benevolence. He met her half-way with breathless alacrity. Had he and Kate but known in time Mrs. Jennings's generous idea, what a boon it would have been if she had let them avail themselves of it! Even yet if there ever occurred any change, any opening--but he was afraid, he added in disconsolate tones, there never would--the fortunate people would know too well when they were happy--it would be doing him and Kate the greatest favour, the utmost kindness to let them know. This was exactly the complimentary, beseeching, deprecatory mode in which Mrs. Jennings liked business to be conducted; whereas, if Hester had been present, she would have said in the clumsiest, coa.r.s.est manner, "Mamma, there are some rooms vacant, which any respectable person who cares to pay the rent may have."

But that was not Mrs. Jennings's plan. She said in her blandest voice--"Well, Dr. Ironside, we must see what we can do for you and your sister; I cannot bear to think of your feeling forlorn after what your cousins did for my son Lawrence. We must stretch a point with regard to accommodating you--that is, if you are not, both of you, dreadfully particular. No, you are not at all difficult to put up, you and your sister, you say? I am happy to hear it. It is such a good thing for young people to be easily pleased. I am not sure that something could not be contrived in the course of a week or two. I think I heard my old servant speak of rooms which were to have been kept for cousins of my friend Mr. Lyle, two charming ladies who were to have come up from the country for the season. But their dear old aunt died unexpectedly, and of course they are not inclined for any gaiety at present. I leave the details of arranging the sets of rooms and letting them to my Susan. I never interfere with her; she knows far better than I what is wanted, and she is a sensible, practical person to deal with. If you care to speak to Susan, I shall ring for her to see you in the dining-room, and she will tell you at once what she can do for you," Mrs. Jennings finished sweetly.

He did care; indeed he was so intent on benefiting by what Mrs.

Jennings, in her ladylike way, made so great an obligation conferred by her on her fellow-creatures, that he caught at the hope held out to him.

He had an interview with the potent Susan, and came back radiant to tell that the housekeeper had been nearly as kind to him as her mistress had shown herself. He and Susan had settled everything. He was free to give up the rooms which he and his sister were occupying the following week.