THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER

Vol. XX.—No. 1004.]

[Price One Penny.

MARCH 25, 1899.

[Transcriber’s Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

[A POINT OF CONSCIENCE.]
[OUR MEDICINE CHEST.]
[“OUR HERO.”]
[HOUSEHOLD HINTS.]
[FROCKS FOR TO-MORROW.]
[ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.]
[VARIETIES.]
[A NEW GAME.]
[HIS GREAT REWARD.]
[ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.]
[OUR PUZZLE POEMS.]
[OUR SUPPLEMENT STORY COMPETITIONS.]

[A POINT OF CONSCIENCE.]

“THE DAINTY PORTFOLIO.”

Miss Colbourne was expecting a visitor to tea. Not to the ordinary lodging-house meal which was prepared for herself every evening, but to a special four o’clock tea, every detail of which was arranged by her own hands. The little copper kettle was purring on the old-fashioned hob, the unsteady round table was covered with a dainty white cloth, and weighted with the silver salver and porcelain cups without handles that had belonged to her grandmother. Hot cakes were keeping warm in front of the fire, and there was a special little jug of cream.

The room itself was of a very common type. Carpets and curtains were in clashing shades of crimson, while a green table-cloth disagreed with both. There was the usual profusion of china ornaments with various photographs of the landlady’s friends. Miss Colbourne had inhabited the room for years past. She objected to the ornaments, but respect for her landlady’s feelings enabled her to keep silence and to endure them. Nothing else troubled her. Her own possessions were disposed inartistically enough; books encumbered the sideboard, more lay in piles on the floor. She had few pretty things, and had not the knack of so arranging her surroundings as to make a nest for herself. Her room reminded the onlooker of a temporary halting place—never of a home.

She had only just finished her preparations, and was in the act of rolling up an easy-chair close to the fire, when a slight tap at the door was followed by the entrance of the expected visitor.

Jessie Blaher was a slim rosy-cheeked girl of sixteen, who had been one of Miss Colbourne’s favourite pupils from the time she was a tiny trot of seven. Lessons had only been given up when Mr. Blaher removed his family into the country.

Jessie had not seen her old teacher for more than twelve months. Over tea and cake they talked of the past and present, of books and men. Then Jessie helped to wash up and put away the cherished relics. Miss Colbourne was bringing out some photographs, when she exclaimed—

“Oh, I want so much to see the views of Florence that Lena sent you!”

“Do you mean the illustrations of Romola?”

“Yes, please!”

Miss Colbourne walked across to the corner of the room that held her especial treasures. There stood a bookshelf brought from Bellagio by a friend, carved out of the olive wood with inlaid work. On the bottom shelf were arranged her Italian books, one or two rare editions among them. Above was a fine likeness of Dante and a plaster medallion of Savonarola, with some trifling objects picked up by friends on their wanderings. One of the most precious of these treasures was the dainty portfolio which she now brought forward and laid on the table.

Jessie took it up eagerly.

“Lena amused herself last winter,” said Miss Colbourne, “with collecting all the views she could find to illustrate Romola. She knows it is my favourite story.”

“And did she make the case too?”

“Yes, out of a piece of Italian silk. These are the Florentine lilies she has embroidered on the front.”

Miss Colbourne untied the ribbons—green, white, and blue—carefully, and showed the contents—the Via de Bardi, Santa Croce, the Convent of San Marco, and many another.

“Lena could not get pictures of all the places,” she said, “so she took several sketches herself. These in the side-pocket don’t belong exactly to Romola—they are photographs of some of the great pictures in the Galleries.”

“How well you explain it!” said Jessie admiringly as she put the case carefully back. “Just as if you had been there! But you haven’t been to Italy, have you?”

“No,” said Miss Colbourne, “but I hope to go soon,” and her face glowed with suppressed fervour. “It has been the dream of my life to see Italy ever since I was a little girl. It seemed impossible then, but now I think it may be managed next year.”

After Jessie had gone, Miss Colbourne settled down to her books. It was after eight when Mrs. Coombes, the churchwarden’s wife, bustled in. She was a stout, pleasant little woman who knew everyone’s business.

“Good evening, Miss Colbourne. Why, bless me, you have let your fire out! Aren’t you cold?”

“I have been busy and forgot it,” said Miss Colbourne apologetically, rising to meet her, “and it is rather early for fires, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know! It looks pretty dismal without one on a wet evening. I have just run in to pay for Gertie’s lessons. Mr. Coombes wrote you out a cheque two or three days ago, but I’ve been too busy to get round with it.”

While Miss Colbourne was receipting the account, Mrs. Coombes went on—

“I suppose you have heard about Mrs. Bateson? I can’t say that I was surprised.”

“No,” said Miss Colbourne, turning round, her pen suspended in her hand. “What is it? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“It seems when she went home in August her mother wasn’t satisfied with her looks and made her see a physician. He said she is consumptive—one lung affected—and that she ought to winter abroad.”

“Dear, dear, I am sorry!”

“Yes, it’s a bad business. I don’t know what they can do! A curate with four children can’t be expected to have means to send his wife abroad at a moment’s notice.”

“But can nothing be done?”

“Well, Mr. Coombes has been talking to the Vicar, and they are making a collection. Fifty pounds will be wanted, and so far they have fifteen towards it. I’m afraid they will never raise it. It’s a pity, because the doctor said she was a hopeful case—probably the winter away would save her life. But I must be going, Miss Colbourne; my husband will be wondering where I am. You do look cold. Why don’t you have your fire lit again?”

Her visitor gone, Miss Colbourne did not settle to her work again. Usually she did not find time for all she wanted to accomplish, but to-night she tried one thing after another without success. At last, flinging her books on one side, she fell to pacing up and down the room.

After a while she opened the secret drawer in her desk, and taking out an old-fashioned long silk purse, she turned out its contents—five ten-pound notes and a little loose gold. She weighed them in her hands—the savings of ten years. Often had she sat without a fire and gone without a hot meal to add to that hoard. It explained why she wore a threadbare jacket and shabby bonnet. With it she thought to turn the dream of her youth into reality. Once and again she had been on the point of visiting Italy, but illness and bereavement had barred the way. Now she was so near attainment that she had planned to go after Christmas. She did not lock the money up again, but laid it in a heap on the open desk and resumed her pacing.

She knew the Batesons well. She respected and admired the curate and sincerely loved his wife. She knew enough of their circumstances to be sure that, unless help from outside were forthcoming, the doctor’s advice could not be followed. She felt equally sure that Mrs. Coombes was right, and that the necessary sum would not be raised by so poor a congregation.

Must the invalid then face the rigours of an English winter? There seemed no other solution to the problem. And yet as she turned in her deliberate walk, there was the little pile of money glittering in the lamplight that offered quite another solution.

Miss Colbourne was not given to sentiment; she was a woman who had faced the world and earned her own living for thirty years, and was not quickly moved by any sudden impulse of compassion. Neither was she one to grasp at her own advantage. Had it been merely her own pleasure she was asked to sacrifice, she would have done it willingly. It was characteristic that this aspect of the question did not trouble her. In her heart she knew well that this was her last opportunity of realising her dreams: never again would she possess the necessary funds; youth had gone, health and strength were both on the wane. To give up now meant to give up for life. She realised this, but it did not move her; it hurt her, but it did not shake her purpose. It was not her own pleasure that she hesitated to relinquish; it was rather a question of her duty to herself. Miss Colbourne took life very seriously, and lived up to a delicately poised standard of right and wrong. She had a few months before refused an invitation to a performance of the Agamemnon, because she did not consider her knowledge of Greek equal to its perfect comprehension, and she would not pose as a Greek scholar. The pleasure the spectacle would have given her was not allowed to influence her decision. In the same way now she hesitated whether she ought to give up this opportunity of widening and enriching her mind, cramped by narrow horizons at home. The months she dreamed of spending abroad would not only increase her mental stores, but send her back with enlarged and quickening powers to her pupils. “Where,” she debated, “does one’s duty to one’s higher nature leave off and that to one’s neighbour begin? Shall I not be a more useful member of society if I go abroad, and ought I not to consider my work first?”

In her pacings she picked up one of the views that had dropped from the portfolio and carried it back to its place. It was a quaint representation of the bonfire of vanities. She handled her treasures tenderly, and with her handkerchief wiped an imaginary speck of dust from Savonarola’s medallion. As she did so she wondered whether the great ascetic would have thought this dream of hers a “vanity” too. Very lightly did culture weigh in his mind.

This was a new thought; she was called to another kind of self-denial than that of food and clothing. Might not the culture of the mind be dearly bought at the expense of another’s life? Myra Bateson’s life, too, involved the happiness of the little ones gathered about her knees. The problem grew complex; contrasted with the well-being of this family group Miss Colbourne felt the insignificance of her own needs.

“I don’t want to believe it,” she said at last, with a half-smile, “but after all the Mother is more important than the Teacher.”

While Miss Colbourne was thus debating a nice point of morals, Mrs. Bateson was wearily pacing up and down her nursery, trying to hush the baby to sleep. But he was cutting his first tooth, and quite fractious enough to prefer his mother’s arms to the cot. When he condescended to be laid down, another child awoke, and it was nine o’clock before their mother descended the stairs. Her husband’s coat, saturated with rain, caught her eye in the hall, and she carried it off to the kitchen to dry. He was not in the sitting-room where the supper table, spread with cold meat and bread and cheese, awaited him. She did not like to disturb him, but sat down to an overflowing basket of socks till he should be ready. Perhaps of all those who knew of her illness she was the least concerned; she was thinking then, not of her journey, but whether Tommy ought not to give up skirts this autumn. She wished her husband would not work so late, she was anxious to consult him about so many things—he ought to have a new overcoat, and she wanted to make him promise to order it at once.

But the curate was not at work; the rain that had drenched him in his long walk back from church to his home in the suburbs seemed to have affected him mentally. He sat, a limp, huddled-up figure, in his study armchair; he heard his wife come downstairs, but he was not ready to meet her gentle eyes and join in easy talk.

Over six feet in height, his face had not lost its boyish look, with wavy light hair and bright blue eyes. But the lids were downcast now, and the lips under the scanty moustache were set in a curve of pain. The Vicar had not been to church, but Coombes had told him of the scanty response to their appeal. His pride revolted at their dependence on charity, while his heart was wrung with pity for his suffering wife.

He had entered the ministry with a single desire for God’s service, and for a time all had gone well with him. But now the iron had entered into his soul, and he was tempted to curse God and die.

His schoolfellows were prospering in the world; he, with gifts no whit behind them, was forced to see his wife fade by his side for lack of the sordid pence that had fallen so plentifully to their share. In his agony he dared God to a trial of strength; he challenged Him by the promises of old to show Himself a God of might, and to deliver His servants in their hour of need.

A gentle tapping on the wall roused him at last; he strove for composure and in a few moments joined his wife in the sitting-room.

“How late you are, Arthur,” she said anxiously, “and you look so tired. I do wish you would not study so late. A letter came for you an hour ago, but I did not like to disturb you,” and she held out a sealed envelope.

He weighed it in his hand for a moment before opening it. Within were five ten-pound notes, and a scrap of paper bearing the lines—

“Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,

Ringing with echoes of Italian song;

Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong,

And all the pleasant place is like a home.”

“Not very appropriate, are they?” commented the curate smiling. “Darning is more in your line than Italian poetry.”

He could not know that Miss Colbourne had with the money transferred all her own hopes and aspirations to the invalid.

Cecil Vincent.

[OUR MEDICINE CHEST.]

By “THE NEW DOCTOR.”