Kitabı oku: «A World of Girls: The Story of a School», sayfa 15
Chapter Thirty Nine
Hester’s Hour Of Trial
However calmly or however peacefully Annie slept that night, poor Hester did not close her eyes. The white face of the girl she had wronged and injured kept rising before her. Why had she so deceived Annie? Why from the very first had she turned from her and misjudged her, and misrepresented her? Was Annie, indeed, all bad? Hester had to own to herself that to-night Annie was better than she – was greater than she. Could she now have undone the past, she would not have acted as she had done; she would not for the sake of a little paltry revenge have defiled her conscience with a lie, have told her governess that she could throw no light on the circumstance of the stolen essay. This was the first lie Hester had ever told; she was naturally both straightforward and honourable, but her sin of sins, that which made her hard and almost unlovable, was an intensely proud and haughty spirit. She was very sorry she had told that lie; she was very sorry she had yielded to that temptation; but not for worlds would she now humble herself to confess – not for worlds would she let the school know of her cowardice and shame. No, if there was no other means of clearing: Annie except through her confession, she must remain with the shadow of this sin over her to her dying day.
Hester, however, was now really unhappy, and also truly sorry for poor Annie. Could she have got off without disgrace or punishment, she would have been truly glad to see Annie exonerated. She was quite certain that Susan Drummond was at the bottom of all the mischief which had been done lately at Lavender House. She could not make out how stupid Susan was clever enough to caricature and to imitate peoples’ hands. Still she was convinced that she was the guilty person, and she wondered and wondered if she could induce Susan to come forward and confess the truth, and so save Annie without bringing her, Hester, into any trouble.
She resolved to speak to Susan, and without confessing that she had been in the school-room on the night the essay was changed, to let her know plainly that she suspected her.
She became much calmer when she determined to carry out this resolve, and toward morning she fell asleep.
She was awakened at a very early hour by little Nan clambering over the side of her crib, and cuddling down cosily in a way she loved by Hester’s side.
“Me so ’nug, ’nug,” said little Nan. “Oh, Hetty, Hetty, there’s a wy on the teiling!”
Hester had then to rouse herself, and enter into an animated conversation on the subject of flies generally, and in especial she had to talk of that particular fly which would perambulate on the ceiling over Nan’s head.
“Me like wies,” said Nan, “and me like ’oo, Hetty, and me love – me love Annie.”
Hester kissed her little sister passionately; but this last observation, accompanied by the expression of almost angelic devotion which filled little Nan’s brown eyes, as she repeated that she liked flies and Hetty, but that she loved Annie, had the effect of again hardening her heart.
Hester’s hour of trial, however, was at hand, and before that day was over she was to experience that awful emptiness and desolation which those know whom God is punishing.
Lessons went on as usual at Lavender House that morning, and, to the surprise of several, Annie was seen in her old place in class. She worked with a steadiness quite new to her; no longer interlarding her hours of study with those indescribable glances of fun and mischief, first at one school-companion and then at another, which used to worry her teachers so much.
There were no merry glances from Annie that morning: but she worked steadily and rapidly, and went through that trying ordeal, her French verbs, with such satisfaction that Mademoiselle was on the point of praising her, until she remembered that Annie was in disgrace.
After school, however, Annie did not join her companions in the grounds, but went up to her bedroom, where, by Mrs Willis’s orders, she was to remain until the girls went in. She was to take her own exercise later in the day.
It was now the tenth of June – an intensely sultry day; a misty heat brooded over everything, and not a breath of air stirred the leaves in the trees. The girls wandered about languidly, too enervated by the heat to care to join in any noisy games. They were now restored to their full freedom, and there is no doubt they enjoyed the privileges of having little confabs, and whispering secrets to each other without having Miss Good and Miss Danesbury for ever at their elbows. They talked of many things – of the near approach of the holidays, of the prize day which was now so close at hand, of Annie’s disgrace, and so on.
They wondered, many of them, if Annie would ever be brought to confess her sin, and, if not, how Mrs Willis would act toward her. Dora Russell said in her most contemptuous tones —
“She is nothing, after all, but a charity child, and Mrs Willis has supported her for years for nothing.”
“Yes, and she’s too clever by half; eh, poor old Muddy Stream?” remarked a saucy little girl. “By the way, Dora, dear, how goes the river now? – has it lost itself in the arms of mother ocean yet?”
Dora turned red and walked away, and her young tormentor exclaimed with considerable gusto —
“There, I have silenced her for a bit; I do hate the way she talks about charity children. Whatever her faults, Annie is the sweetest and prettiest girl in the school, in my opinion.” In the meantime Hester was looking in all directions for Susan Drummond. She thought the present a very fitting opportunity to open her attack on her, and she was the more anxious to bring her to reason as a certain look in Annie’s face – a pallid and very weary look – had gone to her heart, and touched her in spite of herself. Now, even though little Nan loved her, Hester would save Annie could she do so not at her own expense.
Look, however, as she would, nowhere could she find Miss Drummond. She called and called, but no sleepy voice replied. Susan, indeed, knew better; she had curled herself up in a hammock which hung between the boughs of a shady tree, and though Hester passed under her very head, she was sucking lollipops and going off comfortably into the land of dreams, and had no intention of replying. Hester wandered down the shady walk, and at its farther end she was gratified by the sight of little Nan, who, under her nurse’s charge, was trying to string daisies on the grass. Hester sat down by her side, and Nan climbed over and made fine havoc of her neat print dress, and laughed, and was at her merriest and best.
“I hear say that that naughty Miss Forest has done something out-and-out disgraceful,” whispered the nurse.
“Oh, don’t!” said Hester impatiently. “Why should everyone throw mud at a girl when she is down? If poor Annie is naughty and guilty, she is suffering now.”
“Annie not naughty,” said little Nan. “Me love my own Annie; me do, me do.”
“And you love your own poor old nurse, too?” responded the somewhat jealous nurse.
Hester left the two playing happily together, the little one caressing her nurse, and blowing one or two kisses after her sister’s retreating form. Hester returned to the house, and went up to her room to prepare for dinner. She had washed her hands, and was standing before the looking-glass re-plaiting her long hair when Susan Drummond, looking extremely wild and excited, and with her eyes almost starting out of her head, rushed into the room.
“Oh, Hester, Hester!” she gasped, and she flung herself on Hester’s bed, with her face downwards; she seemed absolutely deprived for the moment of the power of any further speech.
“What is the matter, Susan?” inquired Hester half impatiently. “What have you come into my room for? Are you going into a fit of hysterics? You had better control yourself, for the dinner gong will sound directly.”
Susan gasped two or three times, made a rush to Hester’s wash-handstand, and taking up a glass, poured some cold water into it, and gulped it down.
“Now I can speak,” she said. “I ran so fast that my breath quite left me. Hester, put on your walking things or go without them, just as you please – only go at once if you would save her.”
“Save whom?” asked Hester.
“Your little sister – little Nan. I – I saw it all. I was in the hammock, and nobody knew I was there, and somehow I wasn’t so sleepy as usual, and I heard Nan’s voice, and I looked over the side of the hammock, and she was sitting on the grass picking daisies, and her nurse was with her, and presently you came up. I heard you calling me, but I wasn’t going to answer. I felt too comfortable. You stayed with Nan and her nurse for a little, and then went away; and I heard Nan’s nurse say to her: ‘Sit here, Missy, till I come back to you; I am going to fetch another reel of sewing cotton from the house. Sit still, Missy; I’ll be back directly.’ She went away, and Nan went on picking her daisies. All on a sudden I heard Nan give a sharp little cry, and I looked over the hammock, and there was a tall dark woman, with such a wicked face, and she snatched up Nan in her arms, and put a thick shawl over her face, and ran off with her. It was all done in an instant. I shouted, and I scrambled out of the hammock, and I rushed down the path; but there wasn’t a sign of anybody there. I don’t know where the woman went – it seemed as if the earth swallowed up both her and little Nan. Why, Hester, are you going to faint?”
“Water!” gasped Hester – “one sip – now let me go.”
Chapter Forty
A Gipsy Maid
In a few moments everyone in Lavender House was made acquainted with Susan’s story. At such a time ceremony was laid aside, dinner forgotten, teachers, pupils, servants all congregated in the grounds, all rushed to the spot where Nan’s withered daisies still lay, all peered through the underwood, and all, alas! looked, in vain for the tall dark woman and the little child. Little Nan, the baby of the school, had been stolen – there were loud and terrified lamentations. Nan’s nurse was almost tearing her hair, was rushing frantically here, there, and everywhere. No one blamed the nurse for leaving her little charge in apparent safety for a few moments, but the poor woman’s own distress was pitiable to see. Mrs Willis took Hester’s hand, and told the poor stunned girl that she was sending to Sefton immediately for two or three policemen, and that in the meantime every man on the place should commence the search for the woman and child.
“Without any doubt,” Mrs Willis added, “we shall soon have our little Nan back again; it is quite impossible that the woman, whoever she is, can have taken her so far away in so short a time.”
In the meantime, Annie in her bedroom heard the fuss and the noise. She leaned out of her window and saw Phyllis in the distance; she called to her. Phyllis ran up, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh, something so dreadful!” she gasped; “a wicked, wicked woman has stolen little Nan Thornton. She ran off with her just where the undergrowth is so thick at the end of the shady walk. It happened to her half an hour ago, and they are all looking, but they cannot find the woman or little Nan anywhere. Oh, it is so dreadful! Is that you, Mary?”
Phyllis ran off to join her sister, and Annie put her head in again, and looked round her pretty room.
“The gipsy,” she murmured, “the tall, dark gipsy has taken little Nan!”
Her face was very white, her eyes shone, her lips expressed a firm and almost obstinate determination. With all her usual impulsiveness, she decided on a course of action – she snatched up a piece of paper and scribbled a hasty line:
“Dear Mother-friend, – However badly you think of Annie, Annie loves you with all her heart. Forgive me, I must go myself to look for little Nan. That tall, dark woman is a gipsy – I have seen her before; her name is Mother Rachel. Tell Hetty I won’t return until I bring her little sister back. – Your repentant and sorrowful Annie.”
Annie twisted up the note, directed it to Mrs Willis, and left it on her dressing-table.
Then, with a wonderful amount of forethought for her, she emptied the contents of a little purse into a tiny gingham bag, which she fastened inside the front of her dress. She put on her shady hat, and threw a shawl across her arm, and then, slipping softly downstairs, she went out through the deserted kitchens, down the back avenue, and past the laurel-bush, until she came to the stile which led into the wood – she was going straight to the gipsies’ encampment.
Annie, with some of the gipsy’s characteristics in her own blood, had always taken an extraordinary interest in these queer wandering people. Gipsies had a fascination for her, she loved stories about them; if a gipsy encampment was near, she always begged the teachers to walk in that direction. Annie had a very vivid imagination, and in the days when she reigned as favourite in the school she used to make up stories for the express benefit of her companions. These stories, as a rule, always turned upon the gipsies. Many and many a time had the girls of Lavender House almost gasped with horror as Annie described the queer ways of these people. For her, personally, their wildness and their freedom had a certain fascination, and she was heard in her gayest moments to remark that she would rather like to be stolen and adopted by a gipsy tribe.
Whenever Annie had an opportunity she chatted with the gipsy wives, and allowed them to tell her fortune, and listened eagerly to their narratives. When a little child she had once for several months been under the care of a nurse who was a reclaimed gipsy, and this girl had given her all kinds of information about them. Annie often felt that she quite loved these wild people, and Mother Rachel was the first gipsy she cordially shrank from and disliked.
When the little girl started now on her wild-goose chase after Nan she was by no means devoid of a plan of action. The knowledge she had taken so many years to acquire came to her aid, and she determined to use it for Nan’s benefit. She knew that the gipsies, with all their wandering and erratic habits, had a certain attachment, if not for homes, at least for sites; she knew that as a rule they encamped over and over again in the same place; she knew that their wanderings were conducted with method, and their apparently lawless lives governed by strict self-made rules.
Annie made straight now for the encampment, which stood in a little dell at the other side of the fairies’ field. Here for weeks past the gipsies’ tents had been seen; here the gipsy children had played, and the men and women smoked and lain about in the sun.
Anne entered the small field now, but uttered no exclamation of surprise when she found that all the tents, with the exception of one, had been removed, and that this tent also was being rapidly taken down by a man and a girl, while a tall boy stood by, holding a donkey by the bridle.
Annie wasted no time in looking for Nan here. Before the girl and the man could see her, she darted behind a bush, and removing her little bag of money, hid it carefully under some long grass; then she pulled a very bright yellow sash out of her pocket, tied it round her blue cotton dress, and leaving her little shawl also on the ground, tripped gayly up to the tent.
She saw with pleasure that the girl who was helping the man was about her own size. She went up and touched her on the shoulder.
“Look here,” she said, “I want to make such a pretty play by-and-by – I want to play that I’m a gipsy girl. Will you give me your clothes, if I give you mine? See, mine are neat, and this sash is very handsome. Will you have them? Do. I am so anxious to play at being a gipsy.”
The girl turned and stared. Annie’s pretty blue print and gay sash were certainly tempting bait. She glanced at her father.
“The little lady wants to change,” she said in an eager voice.
The man nodded acquiescence, and the girl taking Annie’s hand, ran quickly with her to the bottom of the field.
“You don’t mean it, surely?” she said. “Eh, but I’m uncommon willing.”
“Yes, I certainly mean it,” said Annie. “You are a dear, good, obliging girl, and how nice you will look in my pretty blue cotton! I like that striped petticoat of yours, too, and that gay handkerchief you wear round your shoulders. Thank you so very much. Now, do I look like a real, real gipsy?”
“Your hair ain’t ragged enough, miss.”
“Oh, clip it, then; clip it away. I want to be quite the real thing. Have you got a pair of scissors?”
The girl ran back to the tent, and presently returned to shear poor Annie’s beautiful hair in truly rough fashion.
“Now, miss, you look much more like, only your arms are a bit too white. Stay, we has got some walnut-juice; we was just a-using of it. I’ll touch you up fine, miss.”
So she did, darkening Annie’s brown skin to a real gipsy tone.
“You’re, a dear, good girl,” said Annie, in conclusion; and as the girl’s father called her roughly at this moment, she was obliged to go away, looking ungainly enough in the English child’s neat clothes.
Chapter Forty One
Disguised
Annie ran out of the field, mounted the stile which led into the wood, and stood there until the gipsy man and girl, and the boy with the donkey, had finally disappeared. Then she left her hiding-place, and taking her little gingham bag out of the long grass, secured it once more in the front of her dress. She felt queer and uncomfortable in her new dress, and the gipsy girl’s heavy shoes tired her feet; but she was not to be turned from her purpose by any manner of discomforts, and she started bravely on her long trudge over the dusty roads, for her object was to follow the gipsies to their next encampment, about ten miles away. She had managed, with some tact, to obtain a certain amount of information from the delighted gipsy girl. The girl told Annie that she was very glad they were going from here; that this was a very dull place, and that they would not have stayed so long but for Mother Rachel, who for some reasons of her own, had refused to stir.
Here the girl drew herself up short, and coloured under her dark skin. But Annie’s tact never failed. She even yawned a little, and seemed scarcely to hear the girl’s words.
Now, in the distance, she followed these people.
In her disguise, uncomfortable as it was, she felt tolerably safe. Should any of the people in Lavender House happen to pass her on the way, they would never recognise Annie Forest in this small gipsy maiden. When she did approach the gipsies’ dwelling she might have some hope of passing as one of themselves. The only one whom she had really to fear was the girl with whom she had changed clothes, and she trusted to her wits to keep out of this young person’s way.
When Zillah, her old gipsy nurse, had charmed her long ago with gipsy legends and stories, Annie had always begged to hear about the fair English children whom the gipsies stole, and Zillah had let her into some secrets which partly accounted for the fact that so few of these children are ever recovered.
She walked very fast now; her depression was gone, a great excitement, a great longing, a great hope, keeping her up. She forgot that she had eaten nothing since breakfast: she forgot everything in all the world now but her great love for little Nan, and her desire to lay down her very life, if necessary, to rescue Nan from the terrible fate which awaited her if she was brought up as a gipsy’s child.
Annie, however, was unaccustomed to such long walks, and besides, recent events had weakened her, and by the time she reached Sefton – for her road lay straight through this little town – she was so hot and thirsty that she looked around her anxiously to find some place of refreshment.
In an unconscious manner she paused before a restaurant, where she and several other girls of Lavender House had more than once been regaled with buns and milk.
The remembrance of the fresh milk and the nice buns came gratefully before the memory of the tired child now. Forgetting her queer attire, she went into the shop, and walked boldly up to the counter.
Annie’s disguise, however, was good, and the young woman who was serving, instead of bending forward with the usual gracious “What can I get for you, miss?” said very sharply —
“Go away at once, little girl; we don’t allow beggars here; leave the shop instantly. No, I have nothing for you.”
Annie was about to reply rather hotly, for she had an idea that even a gipsy’s money might purchase buns and milk, when she was suddenly startled, and almost terrified into betraying herself, by encountering the gentle and fixed stare of Miss Jane Bruce, who had been leaning over the counter and talking to one of the shop-women when Annie entered.
“Here is a penny for you, little girl,” she said. “You can get a nice hunch of stale bread for a penny in the shop at the corner of the High Street.”
Annie’s eyes flashed back at the little lady, her lips quivered, and, clasping the penny, she rushed out of the shop.
“My dear,” said Miss Jane, turning to her sister, “did you notice the extraordinary likeness that little gipsy girl bore to Annie Forest?”
Miss Agnes sighed. “Not particularly, love,” she answered; “but I scarcely looked at her. I wonder if our dear little Annie is any happier than she was. Ah, I think we have done here. Good afternoon, Mrs Tremlett.”
The little old ladies, trotted off, giving no more thoughts to the gipsy child.
Poor Annie almost ran down the street, and never paused till she reached a shop of much humbler appearance, where she was served with some cold slices of German sausage, some indifferent bread and butter, and milk by no means over-good. The coarse fare, and the rough people who surrounded her, made the poor child feel both sick and frightened. She found she could only keep up her character by remaining almost silent, for the moment she opened her lips people turned round and stared at her.
She paid for her meal, however, and presently found herself at the other side of Sefton, and in a part of the country which was comparatively strange to her. The gipsies’ present encampment was about a mile away from the town of Oakley, a much larger place than Sefton. Sefton and Oakley lay about six miles apart. Annie trudged bravely on, her head aching; for, of course, as a gipsy girl, she could use no parasol to shade her from the sun. At last the comparative cool of the evening arrived, and the little girl gave a sigh of relief, and looked forward to her bed and supper at Oakley. She had made up her mind to sleep there, and to go to the gipsies’ encampment very early in the morning. It was quite dark by the time she reached Oakley, and she was now so tired, and her feet so blistered from walking in the gipsy girl’s rough shoes, that she could scarcely proceed another step. The noise and the size of Oakley, too, bewildered and frightened her. She had learnt a lesson in Sefton, and dared not venture into the more respectable streets. How could she sleep in those hot, common, close houses? Surely it would be better for her to lie down under a cool hedge-row – there could be no real cold on this lovely summer’s night, and the hours would quickly pass, and the time soon arrive when she must go boldly in search of Nan. She resolved to sleep in a hayfield which took her fancy just outside the town, and she only went into Oakley for the purpose of buying some bread and milk.
Annie was so far fortunate as to get a refreshing draught of really good milk from a woman who stood by a cottage door, and who gave her a piece of girdle-cake to eat with it.
“You’re one of the gipsies, my dear?” said the woman. “I saw them passing in their caravans an hour back. No doubt you are for taking up your old quarters in the copse, just alongside of Squire Thompson’s long acre field. How is it you are not with the rest of them, child?”
“I was late in starting,” said Annie. “Can you tell me the best way to get from here to the long acre field?”
“Oh! you take that turn-stile, child, and keep in the narrow path by the cornfields; it’s two miles and a half from here as the crow flies. No, no, my dear, I don’t want your pennies; but you might humour my little girl here by telling her fortune – she’s wonderful taken by the gipsy folk.”
Annie coloured painfully. The child came forward, and she crossed her hand with a piece of silver. She looked at the little palm and muttered something about being rich and fortunate, and marrying a prince in disguise, and having no trouble whatever.
“Eh! but that’s a fine lot, is yours, Peggy,” said the gratified mother.
Peggy however, aged nine, had a wiser head on her young shoulders.
“She didn’t tell no proper fortune,” she said disparagingly, when Annie left the cottage. “She didn’t speak about no crosses, and no biting disappointments, and no bleeding wounds. I don’t believe in her, I don’t. I like fortunes mixed, not all one way; them fortunes ain’t natural, and I don’t believe she’s no proper gipsy girl.”
