A Girl in Ten Thousand by L. T. Meade (old books to read .TXT) 📖

"You are the comfort of my life, Effie. If you make up your mind to go away, what is to become of me?"

The speaker was a middle-aged woman. She was lying on a sofa in a shabby little parlor. The sofa was covered with horse-hair, the room had a faded paper, and faded chintz covered the shabby furniture. The woman's pleading words were emphasized by her tired eyes and worn face. She looked full at the young girl to whom she spoke.

"What shall I do without you, and what will your father say?"

"I have made up my mind," said Effie. "I don't want to be unkind to you, mother,—I love you more than words can say,—but I must go out into the world. I must live my life like other girls."

"You had none of these ideas until you met Dorothy Fraser."

"Yes, I have had them for a long time; Dorothy has given them emphasis, that's all. Dorothy's mother did not like her to go away, but now she is glad. She says that nothing has made Dorothy into so fine a woman as taking her life into her own hands,6 and making the best she can of it. Before I go, mother, I will get Agnes to learn all my duties; she shall help you. She is nearly fourteen; she ought to be of use to you, ought she not?"

"She would not be like you," replied Mrs. Staunton. "She is very young, remember, and is at school most of the day. I won't argue with you, Effie, but it tires me even to think of it."

Effie sighed. She bent down and kissed her mother. Her words had sounded hard and almost defiant, but there was nothing at all hard or defiant about her sweet face. She was a dark-eyed girl, and looked as if she might be any age between seventeen and twenty. There was a likeness between her and her mother quite sufficient to show their relationship; both faces were softly curved, both pairs of eyes were dark, and the mother must have been even prettier in her youth than the daughter was now.

"As I say," continued Mrs. Staunton, "it fills me with terror to think of doing without you."

"Try not to think of it, mother. I am not going yet, I only want to go very much indeed. I am going to talk to father about it. I want to have the thing arranged while Dorothy is here."

Here Effie went suddenly on her knees by the sofa and threw one young arm protectingly round her mother.

"You do not know what it means to me," she said. "When Dorothy talks of the full life, the keen interest, the battle, the thrill of living, I feel that I must go into it—I must."

While Effie was speaking, Mrs. Staunton looked fixedly at her. There are moments which all mothers know, when they put themselves completely out of sight, when they blot themselves out, as it were. This time had come to Mrs. Staunton now.7

After a pause, she said, and her words came out even without a sigh:

"The question, after all, is this, Effie: What will your father say?"

"When he thinks it out carefully he will be pleased," replied Effie. "He must be interested in the profession I want to take up. How often—oh, how often, mother—has he groaned and sighed at the bad nursing which his patients get! You know you have always said, and he has said the same, that I am a born nurse. Won't he be proud and pleased when I come home and tell him all about the new ways in which things are done in London hospitals? You know there are six of us, and Agnes and Katie are growing up, and can take my place at home presently. Of course I know that father is quite the cleverest doctor in Whittington, but nobody gets ill here, and it is quite impossible to go on clothing and feeding six of us with no means at all. I do not think I am vain, mother, and I do not really care very much about dress, but mine is shabby, is it not? I think I should look pretty—as pretty as you must have looked long ago—if I were better dressed."

"No dress can change your face," said Mrs. Staunton, with sudden passion. "You have the sweetest and dearest face in the world to me. When you go away the sunshine will go out of my life; but, my darling, my darling, I won't—you shall never have it to say that your mother stood in your way. I must think, however, of what your father will say to this. I can only warn you that if there is one person your father dreads and dislikes more than another, it is the modern girl. He said to me, 'Thank God, Effie has none of that hideous modernity about her. She is fairly good-looking; she does not think about Girton8 or Newnham, or any of the women's colleges; in short, she has no advanced ideas.'"

"That is all he knows," replied Effie. "The fact is, I must and will do something to earn my living. You are sending George out into the world to win his spurs, and I am going to win mine."

"In what way?" asked Mrs. Staunton. "You know you are not clever."

"Dorothy thinks I can be a nurse, mother. May she come and see you, and talk it all over?"

"There is no harm in talking it over," said Mrs. Staunton. "But now I wish you would go upstairs and help Susan to put the children to bed. You can bring baby downstairs if you like, and I will undress him. Run along, Effie—run along, there's a good child."

"Oh, yes, mother, I'll go; only just answer me one question first. May Dorothy come here after supper to-night?"

"What is the use of my seeing her? Your father is the one to decide."

"I will ask father to stay in after supper."

"I don't think he will. A message has come from the Watson people over at the farm. Mrs. Watson was taken bad with a stitch an hour ago, and they want your father as quickly as he can go."

"Well, he will be back in time—he won't spend the whole evening there. Anyhow, Dorothy can come and see you, and if father does come in before she leaves, well and good. I may run and tell her to come, may I not?"

"Won't you put the children to bed first, and bring me baby?"

"Oh, yes, yes, if you insist."

"I do, Effie; while you are at home you must help me all you can. I have not had a bit of strength9 since baby was born. It is perfectly dreadful to feel all your strength going and to know that things are at sixes and sevens, and however hard you try you cannot put them right. Dear me, Effie, I did think when you were grown up that you would stay at home and be a comfort to me."

"I shall be a greater comfort to you when I send you money from London. Now, don't speak another word. I will put the children to bed, and I will look after baby myself, while you close your eyes and go to sleep."

Effie pressed her warm young lips on the older woman's brow, and then ran out of the room.

There was a large nursery upstairs, where everything at the present moment was, as Effie's mother had said, at sixes and sevens. The nursemaid, a young girl of seventeen, was not up to her duties—the children ruled her, instead of her ruling the children. Effie, however, could be masterful enough when she liked. She had a natural sense of order, and she soon put things straight in the nursery. The children were undressed quickly and put to bed; and then Effie, taking the baby in her arms, asked Susan to go downstairs.

"You can have your supper," she said. "I will look after baby."

"I thought my missus would like me to take baby to her," said the girl.

"No; I will look after him for the present," said Effie. "Mother is tired, and she must sleep. Run away, Susan, and have your supper, and come back here as quickly as you can."

"Yes, Miss Effie; and I am sure I am very much obliged to you. You 'as a wonderful way with the children, and I only wish I could learn it."

Susan left the room. Pressing the baby's soft10 curly head against her breast, Effie began to pace up and down with it. The baby was three months old; he was fractious and disinclined to sleep, but when his sister began to purr a soft song into his ear, an old nursery rhyme which her mother had sung to her long ago, his wide-open eyes closed, and he sank off into peaceful slumber.

When she saw that he was quite sound asleep, Effie put him in his cot, drew the cot near the crib where Philip, a dark-eyed little boy of five, lay, and bending down to kiss Phil, said:

"You are to be baby's nurse until Susan comes up; if he wakes or begins to cry, just pat him on his back. I am most anxious that mother should have a quiet time; she is just worn out, and if she hears baby cry she is certain to send for him. Now, Phil, you are a very clever little man when you like—I trust to you to keep baby from crying until Susan comes back!"

"'Es, that I will," replied Phil, in a voice of intense importance. "I do love 'ou, Effie," he said.

Effie kissed him, and softly left the room. She ran downstairs, and began to help the servant to lay supper.

No one could look more bright than Effie as she performed the thousand and one duties which fell to her lot in this poor home. Dr. Staunton was poor, there were six children, Effie was the eldest daughter; it needs no more words to explain her exact position. From morning to night Effie was busy, very busy, doing what she herself called nothing. She was getting discontented with her life. A feeling of discontent had stolen over her ever since her eldest brother George had gone to London, to help his uncle in a large warehouse. For months the dream of her life was to give up the little duties11 near at hand, and to take some great duties which nobody wanted her to do, far away from home. She was quite prepared for the advice which her friend Dorothy Fraser, who lived all the year round in London, and only came home for the holidays to Whittingham, was able to give her. Effie's conscience was not in the least pricked at the thought of leaving her mother—it seemed to her quite right. "Had she not to make the most of her youth? Why should she spend all her young days in looking after the children, and making things tolerable for her father and mother?"

These thoughts kept swiftly passing through her brain, as she noiselessly laid the table and made it look charming and pretty. When all was done, she took up a little frock of one of the children's, and, sitting down by the window, began to work. Her pretty dark head