Not Like Other Girls Part 9

Nan's frame of mind was slightly monotonous. What would d.i.c.k say, and how would this affect certain vague hopes she had lately cherished?

Then she thought of Mr. Mayne, and shivered, and a sense of coldness and remote fear stole over her.

One could hardly blame her for this sweet dual selfishness, that was not selfishness. She was thinking less of herself than of a certain vigorous young life that was becoming strongly entwined with hers. It was all very well to say that d.i.c.k was d.i.c.k; but what could the most obstinate will of even that most obstinate young man avail against such a miserable combination of adverse influences,--"when the stars in their courses fought against Sisera"? And at this juncture of her thoughts she could feel Phillis's hand folding softly over hers with a most sisterly pressure of full understanding and sympathy. Phillis had no d.i.c.k to stand sentinel over her private thoughts; she was free to be alert and vigilant for others. Nevertheless, her forehead was puckered up with hard thinking, and her silence was so very expressive that Dulce sat and looked at her with grave unsmiling eyes, the innocent child-look in them growing very pathetic at the speechlessness that had overtaken them. As for Mrs. Challoner, she still moaned feebly from time to time, as she stretched her numb hands towards the comforting warmth. They were fine delicate hands, with the polished look of old ivory, and there were diamond rings on them that twinkled and shone as she moved them in her restlessness.

"They shall all go; I will keep nothing," she said, regarding them plaintively; for they were heirlooms, and highly valued as relics of a wealthy past. "It is not this sort of thing that I mind. I would live on a crust thankfully, if I could only keep my children with me." And she looked round at the blooming faces of her girls with eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with maternal fondness.

Poor Dulce's lips quivered, and she made a horrified gesture.

"Oh, mamsie, don't talk so. I never could bear crusts, unless they were well b.u.t.tered. I like everything to be nice, and to have plenty of it,--plenty of sunshine, and fun, and holiday-making, and friends; and--and now you are talking as though we must starve, and never have anything to wear, and go nowhere and be miserable forever?" And here Dulce broke into actual sobs; for was she not the petted darling? and had she not had a life so gilded by sunshine that she had never seen the dark edge of a single cloud? So that even Nan forgot d.i.c.k for a moment, and looked at her young sister pityingly; but Phillis interposed with bracing severity:

"Don't talk such nonsense, Dulce. Of course we must eat to live, and of course we must have clothes to wear. Aren't Nan and I thinking ourselves into headaches by trying to contrive how even the crusts you so despise are to be bought?" which was hardly true as far as Nan was concerned, for she blushed guiltily over this telling point in Phillis's eloquence. "It only upsets mother to talk like this." And then she touched the coals skilfully, till they spluttered and blazed into fury. "There is the Friary, you know," she continued, looking calmly round on them, as though she felt herself full of resources.

"If Dulce chooses to make herself miserable about the crusts, we have, at least, a roof to shelter us."

"I forgot the Friary," murmured Nan, looking at her sister with admiration; and, though Mrs. Challoner said nothing, she started a little as though she had forgotten it too. But Dulce was not to be comforted.

"That horrid, dismal, pokey old cottage!" she returned, with a shrill rendering of each adjective. "You would have us go and live in that damp, musty, fusty place?"

Phillis gave a succession of quick little nods.

"I don't think it particularly dismal, or Nan either," she returned, in her brisk way. Phillis always answered for Nan, and was never contradicted. "It is not dear Glen Cottage, of course, but we could not begin munching our crusts here," she continued, with a certain grim humor. Things were apparently at their worst; but at least she,--Phillis,--the clever one, as she had heard herself called, would do her best to keep the heads of the little family above water. "It is a nice little place enough if we were only humble enough to see it; and it is not damp, and it is our own," running up the advantages as well as she could.

"The Friary!" commented her mother, in some surprise: "to think of that queer old cottage coming into your head! And it so seldom lets.

And people say it is dear at forty pounds a year; and it is so dull that they do not care to stay."

"Never mind all that, mammy," returned Phillis, with a grave business-like face. "A cottage, rent-free, that will hold us, is not to be despised; and Hadleigh is a nice place, and the sea always suits you. There is the house, and the furniture, that belongs to us; and we have plenty of clothes for the present. How much did Mr. Trinder think we should have in hand?"

Then her mother told her, but still mournfully, that they might possibly have about a hundred pounds. "But there are my rings and that piece of point-lace that Lady Fitzroy admired so----" but Phillis waved away that proposition with an impatient frown.

"There is plenty of time for that when we have got through all the money. Not that a hundred pounds would last long, with moving, and paying off the servants, and all that sort of thing."

Then Nan, who had worn all along an expression of admiring confidence in Phillis's resources, originated an idea of her own.

"The mother might write to Uncle Francis, perhaps;" but at this proposition Mrs. Challoner sat upright and looked almost offended.

"My dear Nan, what a preposterous idea! Your uncle Francis!"

"Well, mammy, he is our uncle; and I am sure he would be sorry if his only brother's children were to starve."

"You are too young to know any better," returned Mrs. Challoner, relapsing into alarmed feebleness; "you are not able to judge. But I never liked my brother-in-law,--never; he was not a good man. He was not a person whom one could trust," continued the poor lady, trying to soften down certain facts to her innocent young daughters.

Sir Francis Challoner had been a black sheep,--a very black sheep indeed: one who had dyed himself certainly to a most sable hue; and though, for such prodigals, there may be a late repentance and much killing of fatted calves, still Mrs. Challoner was right in refusing to intrust herself and her children to the uncertain mercies of such a sinner.

Now, Nan knew nothing about the sin; but she did think that an uncle who was a baronet threw a certain reflected glory or brightness over them. Sir Francis might be that very suspicious character, a black sheep; he might be landless, with the exception of that ruined tenement in the North; nevertheless, Nan loved to know that he was of their kith and kin. It seemed to settle their claims to respectability, and held Mr. Mayne in some degree of awe; and he knew that his own progenitors had not the faintest trace of blue blood, and numbered more aldermen than baronets.

It would have surprised and grieved Nan, especially just now, if she had known that no such glory remained to her,--that Sir Francis Challoner had long filled the cup of his iniquities, and lay in his wife's tomb in some distant cemetery, leaving a certain red-headed Sir Harry to reign in his stead.

"I don't think we had better talk anymore," observed Phillis, somewhat brusquely: and then she exchanged meaning looks with Nan. The two girls were somewhat dismayed at their mother's wan looks; her feebleness and uncertainty of speech, the very vagueness of her lamentations, filled them with sad forebodings for the future. How were they to leave her, when they commenced that little fight with the world? She had leaned on them so long that her helplessness had become a matter of habit.

Nan understood her sister's warning glance, and she made no further allusion to Sir Francis; she only rose with a.s.sumed briskness, and took her mother in charge.

"Now I am going to help you to bed, mammy darling," she said, cheerfully. "Phillis is quite right: we will not talk any more to-night; we shall want all our strength for to-morrow. We will just say our prayers, and try and go to sleep, and hope that things may turn out better than we expect." And, as Mrs. Challoner was too utterly spent to resist this wise counsel, Nan achieved her pious mission with some success. She sat down by the bedside and leaned her head against her mother's pillow, and soon had the satisfaction of hearing the even breathing that proved that the sleeper had forgotten her troubles for a little while.

"Poor dear mother! how exhausted she must have been!" thought Nan, as she closed the door softly. She was far too anxious and wide awake herself to dream of retiring to rest. She was somewhat surprised to find her sisters' room dark and empty as she pa.s.sed. They must be still downstairs, talking over things in the firelight: they were as little inclined for sleep as she was. Phillis's carefully decocted tea must have stimulated them to wakefulness.

The room was still bright with firelight. Dulce was curled up in her mother's chair, and had evidently been indulging in what she called "a good cry." Phillis, sombre and thoughtful, was pacing the room, with her hands clasped behind her head,--a favorite att.i.tude of hers when she was in any perplexity. She stopped short as Nan regarded her with some astonishment from the threshold.

"Oh, come in, Nan: it will be such a relief to talk to a sensible person. Dulce is so silly, she does nothing but cry."

"I can't help it," returned Dulce, with another sob; "everything is so horrible, and Phillis will say such dreadful things."

"Poor little soul!" said Nan, in a sympathetic voice, sitting down on the arm of the chair and stroking Dulce's hair; "it is very hard for her and for us all," with a pent-up sigh.

"Of course it is hard," retorted Phillis, confronting them rather impatiently from the hearth-rug; "it is bitterly hard. But it is not worse for Dulce than for the rest of us. Crying will not mend matters, and it is a sheer waste of tears. As I tell her, what we have to do now is to make the best of things, and see what is to be done under the circ.u.mstances."

"Yes, indeed," repeated Nan, meekly; but she put her arm round Dulce, and drew her head against her shoulder. The action comforted Dulce, and her tears soon ceased to flow.

"I am thinking about mother," went on Phillis, pondering her words slowly as she spoke; "she does look so ill and weak. I do not see how we are to leave her."

Mrs. Challoner's moral helplessness and dread of responsibility were so sacred in her daughters' eyes that they rarely alluded to them except in this vague fashion. For years they had shielded and petted her, and given way to her little fads and fancies, until she had developed into a sort of gentle hypochondriac.

"Mother cannot bear this; we always keep these little worries from her," Nan had been accustomed to say; and the others had followed her example.

The unspoken thought lay heavy upon them now. How were they to prevent the rough winds of adversity from blowing too roughly upon their cherished charge? The roof, and perhaps the crust, might be theirs; but how were they to contrive that she should not miss her little comforts? They would gladly work; but how, and after what fashion?

Phillis was the first to plunge into the unwelcome topic, for Nan felt almost as helpless and bewildered as Dulce.

"We must go into the thing thoroughly," began Phillis, drawing a chair opposite to her sisters. She was very pale, but her eyes had a certain brightness of determination. She looked too young for that quiet care-worn look that had come so suddenly to her; but one felt she could be equal to any emergency. "We are down-hearted, of course; but we have plenty of time for all that sort of thing. The question is, how are we to live?"

"Just so," observed Nan, rather dubiously; and Dulce gave a little gasp.

"There is the Friary standing empty; and there is the furniture; and there will be about fifty pounds, perhaps less, when every thing is settled. And we have clothes enough to last some time, and----" here Dulce put her hands together pleadingly, but Phillis looked at her severely, and went on: "Forty or fifty pounds will soon be spent, and then we shall be absolutely penniless; we have no one to help us.

Mother will not hear of writing to Uncle Francis; we must work ourselves or starve."

"Couldn't we let lodgings?" hazarded Dulce, with quavering voice; but Phillis smiled grimly.

"Let lodgings at the Friary! why, it is only big enough to hold us. We might get a larger house in Hadleigh; but no, it would be ruinous to fail, and perhaps we should not make it answer. I cannot fancy mother living in the bas.e.m.e.nt story; she would make herself wretched over it.

We are too young. I don't think that would answer, Nan: do you?"

Nan replied faintly that she did not think it would. The mere proposition took her breath away. What would Mr. Mayne say to that?

Then she plucked up spirit and went into the question vigorously.

There were too many lodging-houses in Hadleigh now; it would be a hazardous speculation, and one likely to fail; they had not sufficient furniture for such a purpose, and they dare not use up their little capital too quickly. They were too young, too, to carry out such a thing, Nan did not add "and too pretty," though she colored and hesitated here. Their mother could not help them; she was not strong enough for housework or cooking. She thought that plan must be given up.

"We might be daily governesses, and live at home," suggested Dulce, who found a sort of relief in throwing out feelers in every direction.

Nan brightened up visibly at this, but Phillis's moody brow did not relax for a moment.

"That would be nice," acquiesced Nan, "and then mother would not find the day so long if we came home in the evening; she could busy herself about the house, and we could leave her little things to do, and she would not find the hours so heavy. I like that idea of yours, Dulce; and we are all so fond of children."