Anne's Terrible Good Nature (Collection)/The Miss Bannisters' Brother
THE MISS BANNISTERS' BROTHER
I
Christina's father was as good as his word—the doll came, by post, in a long wooden box, only three days after he had left for Paris. All the best dolls come from Paris, but you have to call them "poupees" there when you ask the young ladies in the shops for them.
Christina had been in the garden ever since she got up, waiting for the postman—there was a little gap in the trees where you could see him coming up the road—and she and Roy had run to meet him across the hay-field directly they spied him in the distance. Running across the hay-field was forbidden until after hay-making; but when a doll is expected from Paris...!
Christina's father was better than his word, for it was the most beautiful doll ever made, with a whole wardrobe of clothes, too.
Also a tiny tortoiseshell comb and a powder puff. Also an extra pair of bronzed boots. Her eyes opened and shut, and even her eyebrows were real hair. This, as you know, is unusual in dolls, their hair, as a rule, being made of other materials and far too yellow, and their eyebrows being just paint. "She shall be called Diana," said Christina, who had always loved the name from afar.
Christina took Diana to her mother at once, Roy running behind her with the box and the brown paper and the string and the wardrobe, and Chrissie calling back every minute, "Don't drop the powder puff whatever you do!" "Hold tight to the hand-glass!" and things like that.
"It's splendid!" Mrs. Tiverton said. "There isn't a better doll in the world; only, Chrissie dear, be very careful with it. I don't know but that father would have done better to have got something stronger—this is so very fragile. I think perhaps you had better have it only indoors. Yes, that's the best way; after to-day you must play with Diana only indoors."
It was thus that Diana came to Mapleton.
How Christina loved her that first day! She carried her everywhere and showed her everything—all over the house, right into the attics; all over the garden, right into the little black stove-place under the greenhouse, where Pedder, the gardener, read last Sunday's paper over his lunch; into the village, to the general shop, to introduce her to the postmistress, who lived behind a brass railing in the odour of bacon and calico; into the stables, to kiss Lord Roberts, the old white horse. Jim, who groomed the General, was the only person who did not admire the doll properly; but how could you expect a nice feeling from a boy who sets dogs on rats?
II
It was two or three days after this that Roy went down to the river to fish. He had to go alone, because Christina wanted to play with Diana in the nursery; but not more than half an hour had passed when he heard feet swishing through the long grass behind him, and, looking up, there was Christina. Now, as Christina had refused so bluntly to have anything to do with his fishing, Roy was surprised to see her, but more surprised still to see that Diana had come too.
"Why, surely mother never said you might bring Diana?" he exclaimed.
THERE WAS CHRISTINA.
"No," said Christina, rather sulkily, "but I didn't think she'd mind. Besides, she's gone to the village, and I couldn't ask her."
Roy looked troubled; his mother did not often make rules to interfere with their play, and when she did she liked to be obeyed. She had certainly forbidden Christina to take Diana out of the house. He did not say anything. Christina sat down and began to play. She was not really at all happy, because she knew it was wrong of her to have disobeyed, and she was really a very good girl. Roy went on fishing.
"Oh, do do something else," Christina cried pettishly, after a few minutes. "It's so cold sitting here waiting for you to catch stupid fish that never come. Let's go to the cave." The cave was an old disused lime-kiln, where robbers might easily have lived.
"All right," Roy said.
"I'll get there first," Christina called out, beginning to run.
"Bah!" said Roy, and ran after. They had raced for a hundred yards, when, with a cry, Christina fell. Roy, who was still some distance behind, having had to pack up his rod, hastened to Christina's side. He found her looking anxiously into Diana's face.
"Oh, Roy," she wailed, "her eyes have gone!"
It was too true. Diana, lately so radiantly observant, now turned to the world the blankest of empty sockets. Roy took her poor head in his hand and shook it. A melancholy rattle told that a pair of once serviceable blue eyes were now at large. Christina sank on the grass in an agony of grief—due partly, also, to the knowledge that if she had not been naughty this would never have happened. Roy stood by, feeling hardly less unhappy. After a while he took her arm. "Come along," he said; "let's see if Jim can mend her."
"Jim!" Christina cried in a fury, shaking off his hand.
"But come along, anyway," Roy said.
Christina continued sobbing. After a while she moved to rise, but suddenly fell back again. Her sobbing as suddenly ceased. "Roy!" she exclaimed fearfully, "I can't walk."
Christina had sprained her ankle.
Roy ran to the house as fast as he could to find help, and very soon old Pedder, the gardener, and Jim were carrying Christina between them, with mother, who had just come back, and nurse, walking by her side. Christina was put to bed and her foot wrapped in bandages, but she cried almost incessantly, no matter how often she was assured that she was forgiven. "Her sobs," the cook said, coming downstairs after her twentieth visit to the nursery—"her sobs are that heartrending I couldn't stand it; and all the while she asks for that blessed doll, which its eyes is rattling in its head like marbles, through falling on the ground, and Master Roy and Jim's trying to catch them with a skewer."
Cook was quite right. Roy and Jim, with Diana between them, were seated in the harness-room, probing tenderly the depths of that poor Parisienne's skull. A housemaid was looking on without enthusiasm. "You won't do it," she said every now and then; "you can't catch dolls' eyes with skewers. No one can. It's impossible. The King himself couldn't. The Primest Minister couldn't. No," she went on, "no one could do it. No one but the Miss Bannisters' Brother near where I live at Dormstaple. He could. You ought to take it to him. He'd mend it in a jiffy—there's nothing he can't do in that way."
Roy said nothing, but went on prodding and probing. At last he gave up in despair. "All right, I'll take it to the Miss Bannisters' Brother," he said. "Dormstaple's only six miles." But a sudden swoop from a figure in the doorway interrupted his bold plan.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," cried nurse, seizing the doll, "with that angel upstairs crying for it every minute, and the doctor saying she's in a high fever with lying on the wet grass"; and with a swirl of white skirts and apron, nurse and Diana were gone.
Roy put his hands in his pockets and wandered moodily into the garden. The world seemed to have no sun in it any more.
III
The next day Christina was really ill. It was not only the ankle, but she had caught a chill, the doctor said, and they must be very careful with her. Roy went about with a sad and sadder face, for Christina was his only playmate, and he loved her more than anything else; besides, there was now no one to bowl to him, and also it seemed so silly not to be able to mend a doll's eyes. He moped in the house all the morning, and was continually being sent away from Christina's door, because she was too ill to bear anyone in the room except nurse. She was wandering in her mind, nurse said, and kept on saying that she had blinded her doll, and crying to have its eyes made right again; but she would not let a hand be laid upon her, so that to have Diana mended seemed impossible. Nurse cried too, as she said it, and Roy joined with her. He could not remember ever having been so miserable.
The doctor looked very grave when he was going away. "That doll ought to be put right," he said to Mrs. Tiverton. "She's a sensitive little thing, evidently, and this feeling of disobeying you and treating her father's present lightly is doing her a lot of harm, apart altogether from the chill and the sprain. If we could get those eyes in again she'd be better in no time, I believe."
Roy and his mother heard this with a sinking heart, for they knew that Christina's arms locked Diana to her side almost as if they were bars of iron.
"Anyway," the doctor said, "I've left some medicine that ought to give her some sleep, and I shall come again this afternoon." So saying, he touched up his horse, and Mrs. Tiverton walked into the house again.
Roy stood still pondering.
Suddenly his mind was made up, and he set off for the high road at a good swinging pace. At the gate he passed Jim. "If they want to know where I am," he called, "say I've gone to Dormstaple, to the Miss Bannisters' Brother."
IV
Miss Sarah Bannister and Miss Selina Bannister had lived in Dormstaple as long almost as anyone could remember, although they were by no means old. They had the red house with white windows, the kind of house which one can see only in old English market-towns. There was a gravel drive before it, in the shape of a banana, the carriages going in at one end and out at the other, stopping at the front doorsteps in the middle. A china cockatoo hung in the window. The door knocker was of the brightest brass; it was a pleasure to knock it.
Behind the house was a very large garden, with a cedar in the midst, and a very soft lawn, on which the same birds settled every morning in winter for the breakfast that the Miss Bannisters provided. The cedar and the other trees had cigar-boxes nailed to them, for tits or wrens to build in, and half cocoa-nuts and lumps of fat were always hung just outside the windows. In September button mushrooms grew on the lawn—enough for breakfast every morning. At one side of the house was the stable and coach-house, on the other side a billiard-room, now used as a workshop. And this workshop brings us to the Miss Bannisters' Brother.
The Miss Bannisters' Brother was an invalid, and he was also what is called eccentric. "Eccentric, that's what he is," Mr. Stallabrass, who kept the King's Arms, had said, and there could be no doubt of it after that. This meant that he wore rather shabby clothes, and took no interest in the town, and was rarely seen outside the house or the garden.
Rumour said, however, that he was very clever with his hands, and could make anything. What was the matter with the Miss Bannisters' Brother no one seemed to know, but it gradually kept him more and more indoors.
No one ever spoke of him as Mr. Bannister; they always said the Miss Bannisters' Brother. If you could see the Miss Bannisters, especially Miss Selina, you would understand this; but although they had deep, gruff voices, they were really very kind.
As time went on, and the Miss Bannisters' Brother did not seem to grow any better, or to be likely to take up his gardening and his pigeons again, the Miss Bannisters had racked their brains to think of some employment for him other than reading, which is not good for anyone all day long. One evening, some years before this story, while the three were at tea. Miss Selina cried suddenly, "I have it!"—so suddenly, indeed, that Miss Sarah spilt her cup, and her brother took three lumps of sugar instead of two.
"Have what?" they both exclaimed.
"Why," she said, "I was talking to-day with Mrs. Boniface, and she was saying how nice it would be if there was some one in the town who could mend toys—poor Miss Piper at the Bazaar being so useless, and all the carpenters understanding nothing but making bookshelves and cucumber-frames, and London being so far away—and I said, 'Yes,' never thinking of Theodore here. And, of course, it's the very thing for him."
"Of course," said Miss Sarah. "He could take the old billiard-room."
"And have a gas-stove put in it," said Miss Selina.
"An oil-stove," said Miss Sarah; "it's more economical."
"A gas-stove," said Miss Selina; "it's more trustworthy."
"And put up a bench," said Miss Sarah.
"And some cocoa-nut-matting on the floor," said Miss Selina.
"Linoleum," said Miss Sarah; "it's cheaper."
"Cocoa-nut-matting," said Miss Selina; "it's better and warmer for his feet."
"And we could call it the Dolls' Hospital," said Miss Sarah.
"Infirmary," said Miss Selina.
"I prefer Hospital," said Miss Sarah.
"Infirmary," said Miss Selina. "Dr. Bannister, house-surgeon, attends daily from ten till one."
"It would be the prettiest and kindliest occupation," said Miss Sarah, "as well as a useful one."
"That's the whole point of it," said Miss Selina.
And that is how—five or six years ago—the Miss Bannisters' Brother came to open the Dolls' Infirmary. But he did not stop short at mending dolls. He mended all kinds of other things too; he advised on the length of tails for kites; he built ships; he had even made fireworks.
V
Roy walked into Dormstaple at about one o'clock, very tired and hot and dusty and hungry. With the exception of a lift for a mile and a half in the baker's cart, he had had to walk or run all the way. A little later, after asking his way more than once, he stood on the doorstep of the Miss Bannisters' house. The door was opened by old Eliza, and as the flavour of roast fowl rushed out, Roy knew how hungry he was. "I want to see the Miss Bannisters' Brother," he said, "please."
"You're too late," was the answer, "and it's the wrong door. Come to-morrow morning, and go to the Hinfirmary. Mr. Theodore never sees children in the afternoon."
"Oh, but I must," Roy almost sobbed.
"Chut, chut!" said old Eliza, "little boys shouldn't say must,"
"But when they must, what else is there for them to say?" Roy asked.
"Chut, chut!" said old Eliza again. "That's himperent! Now run away, and come to-morrow morning."
This was too much for Roy. He covered his face with his hands, and really and truly cried—a thing he would scorn to do on his own account.
While he stood there in this distress a hand was placed on his arm and he was drawn gently into the house. He heard the door shut behind him. The hand then guided him along passages into a great room, and there he was liberated. Roy looked round; it was the most fascinating room he had ever seen. There was a long bench at the window, with a comfortable chair before it, and on the bench were hammers and chisels and all kinds of tools. A ship nearly finished lay in one place, a clockwork steamer in another, a pair of rails wound about the floor on the cocoa-nut matting—in and out like a snake—on which a toy train probably ran, and here and there were signals. On the shelves were coloured papers, bottles, boxes, and wire. In one corner was a huge kite, as high as a man, with a great face painted on it. Several dolls, more or less broken, lay on the table.
All this he saw in a moment. Then he looked at the owner of the hand, who had been standing beside him all the while with an amused expression on his delicate, kind face. Roy knew in an instant it was the Miss Bannisters' Brother.
"Well," said the Miss Bannisters' Brother; "so when one must, one must?"
"Yes," Roy said half timidly.
"Quite right too," said the Miss Bannisters' Brother. "'Must' is a very good word, if one has the character to back it up. And now tell me, quickly, what is the trouble? Something very small, I should think, or you wouldn't be able to carry it in your pocket."
"It's not in my pocket," Roy said; "it's not here at all. I want—I want a lesson."
"A lesson?" the Miss Bannisters' Brother asked in surprise.
"Yes, in eye-mending. When eyes fall inside and rattle, you know."
The Miss Bannisters' Brother sat down, and took Roy between his knees. There was something about this little dusty, nervous boy that his clients (often tearful enough) had never displayed before, and he wished to understand it. "Now tell me all about it," he said.
Roy told him everything, right from the first.
"And what is your father's name?" was the only question that had to be asked. When he heard this, the Miss Bannisters' Brother rose. "You must stay here a minute," he said.
"But—but the lesson?" Roy exclaimed, "You know I ought to be getting back again. Christina"
"All right, just a minute," the Miss Bannisters' Brother replied.
When the Miss Bannisters' Brother came back, Miss Selina came with him. "Come and get tidy. You are just in time for dinner," she said, "and afterwards we are going to drive home with you."
"Oh, but I can't stop for dinner!" Roy cried. "It's much too important to stop for dinner; I'm not really hungry, either."
"Dinner will only take a little while," said Miss Selina, "and the horses can be getting ready at the same time; and if you were to walk you wouldn't be home nearly so soon as you will if you drive, dinner-time included."
"Besides," said the Miss Bannisters' Brother, "I'm much too hungry to give lessons. I need heaps of food—chicken and things—before I can give a lesson."
"But Christina" Roy gasped again.
"And, as a matter of fact, we've thought of a better way than the lesson," Miss Selina said. "Mr. Bannister is going with you; but he must eat first, mustn't he?"
It took a moment for Roy to appreciate this, but when he did he was the happiest boy in Dormstaple.
He never tasted a nicer chicken, he said afterwards,
VI
Certainly not more than three-quarters of an hour had passed before the carriage was on its way to Mapleton—with the Miss Bannisters' Brother propped up with cushions (for he could not bear the jolting of carriages) on the back seat, and Miss Selina and Miss Sarah, who had come to look after him, on the other. Roy was on the box. You never saw such puzzled faces as the Dormstaple people had when the party went by, for the Miss Bannisters' Brother had not driven out these twenty years; but their surprise was nothing to that of old Eliza, who wandered about the rooms all the rest of the day muttering "Little himperent boy!"
At the Mapleton gates Roy jumped down and rushed up to the house. His mother came to the door as he reached it. "Oh, mother, mother," he cried, "he's come himself!"
"Who has come?" she asked, forgetting to say anything about Roy's long absence. "I hoped it was the doctor. Christina is worse, I'm afraid; she won't sleep."
"It's all right," Roy assured her. "I've brought the Miss Bannisters' Brother, who mends dolls and everything, and he'll put the eyes right in no time, and then Crissie'll be well again. Here they are!"
At this moment the carriage reached the door; but Mrs. Tiverton's perplexities were not removed by it. On the contrary, they were increased, for she saw before her three total strangers. Miss Selina, however, hastily stepped out and took Mrs. Tiverton's hand, and explained the whole story, adding, "We are not coming in; my sister and I have a call to pay a little further on. We shall come back in less than an hour for our brother, carry him off, and be no trouble at all. I know how little you must want just now even people that you know." In spite of Mrs. Tiverton's protest. Miss Selina had her way, and the sisters drove off.
While this conversation had been in progress, Roy had been speaking to the Miss Bannisters' Brother. He had been preparing the speech ever since they had started, for it was very important. "Please," he said—"please how much will this visit be, because I want to pay for it myself?"
The Miss Bannisters' Brother smiled. "But suppose you haven't enough?" he said.
"Oh, but I think I have!" Roy told him. "I've got seven-and-six, and when the vet. came to see Lord Roberts it was only five shillings."
The Miss Bannisters' Brother smiled again. "Our infirmary is rather peculiar," he said. "We don't take money at all; we take promises; different kinds of promises from different people, according to their means. We ask rich patients' friends to promise to give away old toys, or story-books, or scrap-books, or something of that kind, to real hospitals—children's hospitals. We find that much better than money. Money's such a nuisance. One is always losing the key of the money-box."
Roy was a little disappointed. "Oh yes!" he said, however, "I'll do that. Won't I just? But, you know," he added, "you can always break open a money-box if it comes to the worst. Pokers aren't bad. And there's a way of getting the money out with a table-knife."
It was just then that the Miss Bannisters drove off, and Mrs. Tiverton asked their brother to come to Christina's room with her. Roy would have given anything to have been allowed upstairs; but as it was forbidden, he went to see Jim and tell him the news. He found, however, that the housemaid had already told not only Jim but every one else.
"Now it will be all right," she was saying. "The Miss Bannisters' Brother will do it! Why, he made a wooden leg for a tame jackdaw once!"
VII
Christina was moaning in the bed with Diana locked in her arms when the Miss Bannisters' Brother sat down beside her. "Come," he said gently, "let me feel your pulse."
Christina pushed her wrist towards him wearily.
"Oh no, not yours!" he said, with a little laugh. "Yours doesn't matter. I meant this little lady's. I'm not your doctor. I'm a doll's doctor."
Christina turned her poor flushed face towards him for the first time. A doll's doctor—it was a new idea. And he really seemed to be all right—not any one dressed up to make her feel foolish or coax her into taking horrid medicine. "Was it your carriage I heard?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "I have come on purpose. But so many dolls are ill just now that I must be getting away soon. It's quite a bad time for dolls, especially French ones. They are very delicate."
"Mine is French," Christina said, growing really interested.
"How very curious!" he answered. "I had a French patient the other day—a Parisian—whose sight had become so weak that she had to wear glasses. And now for the pulse," he went on, and he drew out a large gold watch.
Mrs. Tiverton was looking on with tears in her eyes. Christina had not taken this quiet interest in anything or kept so still in bed for many hours. Not even the sleeping draught had had any effect.
The Miss Bannisters' Brother held Diana's tiny wrist and looked very grave. "Dear, dear!" he said, "I ought to have been sent for before, and then I could have cured her here in your arms. As it is, I must take her to the light. Won't you have that nice jelly while I am treating Miss? Let me see, what is my patient's name?"
"Diana," Christina said.
"Ah, yes—Miss Diana. By the time you have finished the jelly I ought to have finished my visit," So saying he rose and carried Diana to the window-seat behind the curtains, while Mrs. Tiverton gave Christina the jelly. Christina took it, nurse said afterwards, like a lamb—though I never saw a lamb take jelly.
Meanwhile, the Miss Bannisters' Brother had taken some tools and a tube of seccotine from his pocket, and he had lifted up Diana's hair, cut a hole in her head, and was busily readjusting the machinery of her eyes. It was all done in five minutes, just as Christina was eating the last mouthful. "There," he said, returning to the bedside, "that's all right. It was a very simple operation, and didn't hurt at all. I think our patient can see now as well as ever."
Christina peered into Diana's face with a cry of joy, and sank back on the pillow in an ecstasy of content.
Neither Mrs. Tiverton nor the Miss Bannisters' Brother dared to move for some minutes. While they sat there the doctor tip-toed in. He crossed to the bed and looked at Christina. "She's asleep," he said. "Splendid! She's all right now. It was sleep she wanted more than anything. Don't let her hear a sound, nurse, for hours."
They found Roy waiting for the news. When he heard it he jumped for joy. His mother caught him up and hugged him. "You thoughtful little imp!" she cried—and, turning to the doctor, told him the story. He went off, laughing. "I shall take my door-plate down when I get home," he called out as he drove off, "and send it round to you, Bannister. You're the real doctor."
When the Miss Bannisters drove back they found tea all ready, and Mrs. Tiverton would not hear of their leaving without it. And when they did leave, an hour later, they were all fast friends.
VIII
Roy and Christina never think of going to Dormstaple now without calling at the red house.