Маргарет Олифант - A House in Bloomsbury

When she had come to this point, Dora, who was a girl full of natural sense, began to feel instinctively that she was not in a good way, and that it would be better to do something active to clear away the cobwebs. It was evening, however, and she did not know exactly what to do. To go back to the sitting-room where her father was reading, and to sit down also to read at his side, seemed an ordeal too much for her after the excitement of their previous talk; but it was what probably she would have been compelled to do, had she not heard a heavy step mounting the stairs, the sound of a knock at the door, and her father’s voice bidding some one enter.

She satisfied herself presently that it was the voice of one of Mr. Mannering’s chief friends, a colleague from the Museum, and that he was safe for a time not to remark her absence or to have urgent need for her. What now should Dora do? The openings of amusement were small. Mrs. Hesketh had been exhausted for the moment. It must be said that Dora was free of the whole house, and that she used her petites entrées in the most liberal and democratic fashion, thinking no scorn of going downstairs sometimes to the funny little room next to the kitchen, which Mrs. Simcox called the breakfast-room, and used as her own sanctum, the family centre where her grandchildren and herself found refuge out of the toils of the kitchen. The kitchen itself remained in the possession of Jane; and Jane, like her mistress, occasionally shared the patronage of Miss Dora. To-night perhaps she wanted solace of another kind from any which could be given her on the basement story. It is not often that a young person in search of entertainment or sympathy has all the gradations of the social system to choose from. The first floor represented the aristocracy in the establishment at Bloomsbury. It was occupied by a Scotch lady, a certain Miss Bethune, a somewhat harsh-featured and angular person, hiding a gentle heart under a grim exterior; but a little intolerant in her moods, and not always sure to respond to overtures of friendship; with a maid not much less unlike the usual denizens of Bloomsbury than herself, but beaming with redness and good humour, and one of Dora’s chief worshippers in the house. When the girl felt that her needs required the sympathy of a person of the highest, i.e. , her own class, she went either boldly or with strategy to the drawing-room floor. She had thus the power of drawing upon the fellowship of her kind in whatever way the temper of the time adapted it best for her.

Mrs. Simcox and the girls downstairs, and Mrs. Hesketh above, would have been lost in raptures over Dora’s new dress. They would have stared, they would perhaps have touched with a timid finger, they would have opened their eyes and their mouths, and cried: “Oh!” or “La!” or “Well, I never!” But they would not have understood. One’s own kind, Dora felt, was necessary for that. But as it was evening, and Miss Bethune was not always gracious, she did not boldly walk up to her door, but lingered about on the stairs, coming and going, until, as was pretty sure to occur, Gilchrist, the maid, with her glowing moon face and her sandy locks, came out of the room. Gilchrist brightened immediately at the sight of the favourite of the house.

“Oh, is that you, Miss Dora? Come in and see my lady, and cheer her up. She’s not in the best of spirits to-night.”

“Neither am I—in the best of spirits,” said Dora.

“You!” cried Gilchrist, with what she herself would have called a “skreigh” of laughter. She added sympathetically: “You’ll maybe have been getting a scold from your papaw".

“My father never scolds,” said Dora, with dignity.

“Bless me! but that’s the way when there’s but wan child,” said Miss Bethune’s maid: “not always, though,” she added, with a deep sigh that waved aloft her own cap-strings, and caught Dora’s hair like a breeze. The next moment she opened the door and said, putting her head in: “Here’s Miss Dora, mem, to cheer you up a bit: but no’ in the best of spirits hersel’".

“Bless me!” repeated Miss Bethune from within: “and what is wrong with her spirits? Come away, Dora, come in.” Both mistress and maid had, as all the house was aware, curious modes of expressing themselves, which were Scotch, though nobody was aware in Bloomsbury how that quality affected the speech—in Miss Bethune’s case at least. The lady was tall and thin, a large framework of a woman which had never filled out. She sat in a large chair near the fire, between which and her, however, a screen was placed. She held up a fan before her face to screen off the lamp, and consequently her countenance was in full shadow. She beckoned to the girl with her hand, and pointed to a seat beside her. “So you are in low spirits, Dora? Well, I’m not very bright myself. Come and let us mingle our tears.”

“You are laughing at me, Miss Bethune. You think I have no right to feel anything.”

“On the contrary, my dear. I think at your age there are many things that a girl feels—too much; and though they’re generally nonsense, they’re just as disagreeable as if they were the best of sense. Papa a little cross?”

“Why should you all think anything so preposterous? My father is never cross,” cried Dora, with tears of indignation in her eyes.

“The better for him, my dear, much the better for him,” said Miss Bethune; “but, perhaps, rather the worse for you. That’s not my case, for I am just full of irritability now and then, and ready to quarrel with the tables and chairs. Well, you are cross yourself, which is much worse. And yet I hear you had one of your grand boxes to-day, all full of bonnie-dies. What a lucky little girl you are to get presents like that!”

“I am not a little girl, Miss Bethune.”

“No, I’ll allow you’re a very big one for your age. Come, Dora, tell me what was in the box this time. It will do you good.”

Dora hesitated a little to preserve her dignity, and then she said almost with awe: “There was a dress in it".

“A dress!” cried Miss Bethune, with a little shriek of surprise; “and does it fit you?”

“It’s just a very, very little bit too short,” said Dora, with pride, “and just a very, very little bit too wide at the waist.”

“Run and bring it, and let me see it,” cried the lady. “I’ve no doubt in the world it fits like a glove. Gilchrist, come in, come in, and see what the bairn’s got. A frock that fits her like a glove.”

“Just a very, very little too short, and a very, very little too wide in the waist,” said Dora, repeating her formula. She had flown upstairs after the first moment’s hesitation, and brought it back in her arms, glad in spite of herself to be thus delivered from silence and the sense of neglect.

“Eh, mem,” cried Gilchrist, “but it must be an awfu’, awfu’ faithful woman that has minded how a lassie like that grows and gets big, and just how big she gets, a’ thae years.”

“There ye are with your moral!” cried the mistress; and to Dora’s infinite surprise tears were on her cheeks. “It’s just the lassie that makes all the difference,” said Miss Bethune. She flung the pretty dress from her, and then she rose up suddenly and gave Dora a hasty kiss. “Put it on and let me see it,” she said; “I will wager you anything it just fits like a glove.”

“That is a very strange business of these Mannerings, Gilchrist,” said Miss Bethune to her maid, when Dora, excited by praise and admiration, and forgetting all her troubles, had retired to her own habitation upstairs, escorted, she and her dress, by Gilchrist, who could not find it in her heart, as she said, to let a young thing like that spoil her bonnie new frock by not putting it properly away. Gilchrist laid the pretty dress lovingly in a roomy drawer, smoothing out all its creases by soft pats of her accustomed hands, and then returned to her mistress to talk over the little incident of the evening.