When Dora returned to the room, she found her father as she had left him, staring straight before him, seeing nothing, his head supported on his hands, his hollow eyes fixed. He did not notice her return, as he had not noticed her absence. What was she to do? One of those crises had arrived which are so petty, yet so important, when the wisest of women are reduced to semi-imbecility by an emergency not contemplated in any moral code. It was time for him to take his beef tea. The doctor had commanded that under no circumstances was this duty to be omitted or postponed; but who could have foreseen such circumstances as these, in which evidently matters of life and death were going through his mind? After such an agitating interview he wanted it more and more, the nourishment upon which his recovery depended. But how suggest it to a man whose mind was gone away into troubled roamings through the past, or still more troubled questions about the future? It could have been no small matters that had been brought back to Mr. Mannering’s mind by that strange visit. Dora, who was not weak-minded, trembled to approach him with any prosaic, petty suggestion. And yet how did she dare to pass it by? Dora went about the room very quietly, longing to rouse yet unwilling to disturb him. How was she to speak of such a small matter as his beef tea? And yet it was not a small matter. She heard Gilchrist go into the other room, bringing it all ready on the little tray, and hurried thither to inquire what that experienced woman would advise. “He has had some one to see him about business. He has been very much put out, dreadfully disturbed. I don’t know how to tell you how much. His mind is full of some dreadful thing I don’t understand. How can I ask him to take his beef tea? And yet he must want it. He is looking so ill. He is so worn out. Oh, Gilchrist, what am I to do?”
“It is just a very hard question, Miss Dora. He should not have seen any person on business. He’s no’ in a fit state to see anybody the first day he is out of his bedroom: though, for my part, I think he might have been out of his bedroom three or four days ago,” Gilchrist said.
“As if that was the question now! The question is about the beef tea. Can I go and say, ‘Father, never mind whatever has happened, there is nothing so important as your beef tea’? Can I tell him that everything else may come and go, but that beef tea runs on for ever? Oh, Gilchrist, you are no good at all! Tell me what to do.”
Dora could not help being light-hearted, though it was in the present circumstances so inappropriate, when she thought of that “great deal of money"—money that would sweep all bills away, that would make almost everything possible. That consciousness lightened more and more upon her, as she saw the little bundle of bills carefully labelled and tied up, which she had intended to remove surreptitiously from her father’s room while he was out of it. With what comfort and satisfaction could she remove them now!
“Just put it down on the table by his side, Miss Dora,” said Gilchrist. “Say no word, just put it there within reach of his hand. Maybe he will fly out at you, and ask if you think there’s nothing in the world so important as your confounded—— But no, he will not say that; he’s no’ a man that gets relief in that way. But, on the other hand, he will maybe just be conscious that there’s a good smell, and he will feel he’s wanting something, and he will drink it off without more ado. But do not, Miss Dora, whatever you do, let more folk on business bother your poor papaw, for I could not answer for what might come of it. You had better let me sit here on the watch, and see that nobody comes near the door.”
“I will do what you say, and you can do what you like,” said Dora. She could almost have danced along the passage. Poor lady from America, who was dead! Dora had been very sorry. She had been much troubled by the interview about her which she did not understand: but even if father were pitiless, which was so incredible, it could do that poor woman no harm now: and the money—money which would be deliverance, which would pay all the bills, and leave the quarter’s money free to go to the country with, to go abroad with! Dora had to tone her countenance down, not to look too guiltily glad when she went in to where her father was sitting in the same abstraction and gloom. But this time he observed her entrance, looking up as if he had been waiting for her. She had barely time to follow Gilchrist’s directions when he stretched out his hand and took hers, drawing her near to him. He was very grave and pale, but no longer so terrible as before.
“Dora,” he said, “how often have you seen this lady of whom I have heard to-day?”
“Twice, father; once in Miss Bethune’s room, where she had come. I don’t know how.”
“In this house?” he said with a strong quiver, which Dora felt, as if it had been communicated to herself.
“And the night before last, when Miss Bethune took me to where she was living, a long way off, by Hyde Park. I knelt at the bed a long time, and then they put me in a chair. She said many things I did not understand—but chiefly,” Dora said, her eyes filling with tears—the scene seemed to come before her more touchingly in recollection than when, to her wonder and dismay, it took place, “chiefly that she loved me, that she had wanted me all my life, and that she wished for me above everything before she died.”