Kitabı oku: «A World of Girls: The Story of a School», sayfa 16
Chapter Forty Two
Hester
At Lavender House the confusion, the terror, and the dismay were great. For several hours the girls seemed quite to lose their heads, and just when, under Mrs Willis’s and the other teachers’ calmness and determination, they were being restored to discipline and order, the excitement and alarm broke out afresh when some one brought Annie’s little note to Mrs Willis, and the school discovered that she also was missing.
On this occasion no one did doubt her motives; disobedient as her act was, no one wasted words of blame on her. All, from the head-mistress to the smallest child in the school, knew that it was love for little Nan that had taken Annie off; and the tears started to Mrs Willis’s eyes when she first read the tiny note, and then placed it tenderly in, her desk. Hester’s face became almost ashen in its hue when she heard what Annie had done.
“Annie has gone herself to bring back Nan to you, Hester,” said Phyllis. “It was I told her, and I know now by her face that she must have made up her mind at once.”
“Very disobedient of her to go,” said Dora Russell; but no one took up Dora’s tone, and Mary Price said, after a pause —
“Disobedient or not, it was brave – it was really very plucky.”
“It is my opinion,” said Nora, “that if anyone in the world can find little Nan it will be Annie. You remember. Phyllis, how often she has talked to us about gipsies, and what a lot she knows about them?”
“Oh, yes; she’ll be better than fifty policemen,” echoed several girls; and then two or three young faces were turned toward Hester, and some voice said almost scornfully – “You’ll have to love Annie now; you’ll have to admit that there is something good in our Annie when she brings your little Nan home again.”
Hester’s lips quivered; she tried to speak, but a sudden burst of tears came from her instead. She walked slowly out of the astonished little group, who none of them believed that proud Hester Thornton could weep.
The wretched girl rushed up to her room, where she threw herself on her bed and gave way to some of the bitterest tears she had ever shed. All her indifference to Annie, all her real unkindness, all her ever-increasing dislike came back now to torture and harass her. She began to believe with the girls that Annie would be successful; she began dimly to acknowledge in her heart the strange power which this child possessed; she guessed that Annie would heap coals of fire on her head by bringing back her little sister. She hoped, she longed, she could almost have found it in her heart to pray that some one else, not Annie, might save little Nan.
For not yet had Hester made up her mind to confess the truth about Annie Forest. To confess the truth now meant humiliation in the eyes of the whole school. Even for Nan’s sake she could not, she would not, be great enough for this.
Sobbing on her bed, trembling from head to foot, in an agony of almost uncontrollable grief, she could not bring her proud and stubborn little heart to accept God’s only way of piece. No, she hoped she might be able to influence Susan Drummond and induce her to confess, and if Annie was not cleared in that way, if she really saved little Nan, she would doubtless be restored to much of her lost favour in the school.
Hester had never been a favourite at Lavender House; but now her great trouble caused all the girls to speak to her kindly and considerately, and as she lay on her bed she presently heard a gentle step on the floor of her room – a cool little hand was laid tenderly on her forehead, and opening her swollen eyes, she met Cecil’s loving gaze.
“There is no news yet, Hester,” said Cecil; “but Mrs Willis has just gone herself into Sefton, and will not lose an hour in getting further help. Mrs Willis looks quite haggard. Of course she is very anxious both about Annie and Nan.”
“Oh, Annie is safe enough,” murmured Hester, burying her head in the bedclothes.
“I don’t know; Annie is very impulsive, and very pretty; the gipsies may like to steal her too – of course she has gone straight to one of their encampments. Naturally Mrs Willis is most anxious.”
Hester pressed her hand to her throbbing head.
“We are all so sorry for you, dear,” said Cecil gently.
“Thank you – being sorry for one does not do a great deal of good, does it?”
“I thought sympathy always did good,” replied Cecil, looking puzzled.
“Thank you,” said Hester again. She lay quite still for several minutes with her eyes closed. Her face looked intensely unhappy. Cecil was not easily repelled, and she guessed only too surely that Hester’s proud heart was suffering much. She was puzzled, however, how to approach her, and had almost made up her mind to go away and beg of kind-hearted Miss Danesbury to see if she could come and do something, when through the open window there came the shrill sweet laughter and the eager, high-pitched tones of some of the youngest children in the school. A strange quiver passed over Hester’s face at the sound; she sat up in bed, and gasped out in a half-strangled voice —
“Oh! I can’t bear it – little Nan, little Nan! Cecil, I am very, very unhappy.”
“I know it, darling,” said Cecil, and she put her arms round the excited girl. “Oh, Hester! don’t turn away from me; do let us be unhappy together.”
“But you did not care for Nan.”
“I did – we all loved the pretty darling.”
“Suppose I never see her again?” said Hester half wildly. “Oh, Cecil! and mother left her to me! mother gave her to me to take care of, and to bring to her some day in heaven. Oh, little Nan, my pretty, my love, my sweet! I think I could better bear her being dead than this.”
“You could, Hester,” said Cecil, “if she was never to be found; but I don’t think God will give you such a terrible punishment. I think little Nan will be restored to you. Let us ask God to do it, Hetty – let us kneel down now, we two little girls, and pray to Him with all our might.”
“I can’t pray; don’t ask me,” said Hester, turning her face away.
“Then I will.”
“But not here, Cecil. Cecil, I am not good – I am not good enough to pray.”
“We don’t want to be good to pray,” said Cecil. “We want perhaps to be unhappy – perhaps sorry; but if God waited just for goodness, I don’t think He would get many prayers.”
“Well, I am unhappy, but not sorry. No, no; don’t ask me, I cannot pray.”
Chapter Forty Three
Susan
Mrs Willis came back at a very late hour from Sefton. The police were confident that they must soon discover both children, but no tidings had yet been heard of either of them. Mrs Willis ordered her girls to bed, and went herself to kiss Hester and give her a special “good-night.” She was struck by the peculiarly unhappy, and even hardened, expression on the poor child’s face, and felt that she did not half understand her.
In the middle of the night Hester awoke from a troubled dream. She awoke with a sharp cry, so sharp and intense in its sound that had any girl been awake in the next room she must have heard it. She felt that she could no longer remain close to that little empty cot. She suddenly remembered that Susan Drummond would be alone to-night: what time so good as the present for having a long talk with Susan and getting her to clear Annie? She slipped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and softly opening the door, ran down the passage to Susan’s room.
Susan was in bed, and fast asleep. Hester could see her face quite plainly in the moonlight, for Susan slept facing the window, and the blind was not drawn down.
Hester had some difficulty in awakening Miss Drummond, who, however, at last sat up in bed, yawning prodigiously.
“What is the matter? Is that you, Hester Thornton? Have you got any news of little Nan? Has Annie come back?”
“No, they are both still away. Susy, I want to speak to you.”
“Dear me! what for? must you speak in the middle of the night?”
“Yes, for I don’t want anyone else to know. Oh, Susan, please don’t go to sleep.”
“My dear, I won’t, if I can help it. Do you mind throwing a little cold water over my face and head? There is a can by the bed-side. I always keep one handy. Ah, thanks – now I am wide awake. I shall probably remain so for about two minutes. Can you get your say over in that time?”
“I wonder, Susan,” said Hester, “if you have got any heart – but heart or not, I have just come here to-night to tell you that I have found you out. You are at the bottom of all this mischief about Annie Forest.”
Susan had a most phlegmatic face, an utterly unemotional voice, and she now stared calmly at Hester and demanded to know what in the world she meant.
Hester felt her temper going, her self-control deserting her. Susan’s apparent innocence and indifference drove her half frantic.
“Oh, you are mean,” she said. “You pretend to be innocent, but you are the deepest and wickedest girl in the school. I tell you, Susan, I have found you out – you put that caricature of Mrs Willis into Cecil’s book; you changed Dora’s theme. I don’t know why you did it, nor how you did it, but you are the guilty person, and you have allowed the sin of it to remain on Annie’s shoulders all this time. Oh, you are the very meanest girl I ever heard of!”
“Dear, dear!” said Susan, “I wish I had not asked you to throw cold water over my head and face, and allow myself to be made very wet and uncomfortable, just to be told I am the meanest girl you ever met. And pray what affair is this of yours? You certainly don’t love Annie Forest.”
“I don’t, but I want justice to be done to her. Annie is very, very unhappy. Oh, Susy, won’t you go and tell Mrs Willis the truth?”
“Really, my dear Hester, I think you are a little mad. How long have you known all this about me, pray?”
“Oh, for some time since – since the night the essay was changed.”
“Ah, then, if what you stale is true, you told Mrs Willis a lie, for she distinctly asked you if you knew anything about the ‘Muddy Stream,’ and you said you didn’t. I saw you – I remarked how very red you got when you plumped out that great lie! My dear, if I am the meanest and wickedest girl in the school, prove it – go, tell Mrs Willis what you know. Now, if you will allow me, I will get back into the land of dreams.”
Susan curled herself up once more in her bed, wrapped the bedclothes tightly round her, and was to all appearance oblivious of Hester’s presence.
Chapter Forty Four
Under The Hedge
It is one thing to talk of the delights of sleeping under a hedge-row and another to realise them. A hayfield is a very charming place, but in the middle of the night, with the dew clinging to everything, it is apt to prove but a chilly bed; the most familiar objects put on strange and unreal forms, the most familiar sounds become loud and alarming. Annie slept for about an hour soundly; then she awoke, trembling with cold in every limb, startled and almost terrified by the oppressive loneliness of the night, sure that the insect life which surrounded her, and which would keep up successions of chirps, and croaks, and buzzes, was something mysterious and terrifying. Annie was a brave child, but even brave little girls may be allowed to possess nerves under her present conditions, and when a spider ran across her face she started up with a scream of terror. At this moment she almost regretted the close and dirty lodgings which she might have obtained for a few pence at Oakley. The hay in the field which she had selected was partly cut and partly standing. The cut portion had been piled up into little cocks and hillocks, and these, with the night shadows round them, appeared to the frightened child to assume large and half-human proportions. She found she could not sleep any longer. She wrapped her shawl tightly round her, and, crouching into the hedge-row, waited for the dawn.
That watched-for dawn seemed to the tired child as if it would never come; but at last her solitary vigil came to an end, the cold grew greater, a little gentle breeze stirred the uncut grass, and up in the sky overhead the stars became fainter and the atmosphere clearer. Then came a little faint flush of pink, then a brighter light, and then all in a moment the birds burst into a perfect jubilee of song, the insects talked and chirped and buzzed in new tones, the hay-cocks became simply hay-cocks, the dew sparkled on the wet grass, the sun had risen, and the new day had begun.
Annie sat up and rubbed her tired eyes. With the sunshine and brightness her versatile spirits revived; she buckled on her courage like an armour, and almost laughed at the miseries of the past few hours. Once more she believed that success and victory would be hers, once more in her small way she was ready to do or die. She believed absolutely in the holiness of her mission. Love – love alone simple and pure, was guiding her. She gave no thought to after-consequences, she gave no memory to past events: her object now was to rescue Nan, and she herself was nothing.
Annie had a fellow-feeling, a rare sympathy with every little child; but no child had ever come to take Nan’s place with her. The child she had first begun to notice simply out of a naughty spirit of revenge, had twined herself round her heart, and Annie loved Nan all the more dearly because she had long ago repented of stealing her affections from Hester, and would gladly have restored her to her old place next to Hetty’s heart. Her love for Nan, therefore, had the purity and greatness which all love that calls forth self-sacrifice must possess. Annie had denied herself, and kept away from Nan of late. Now, indeed, she was going to rescue her; but if she thought of herself at all, it was with the certainty that for this present act of disobedience Mrs Willis would dismiss her from the school, and she would not see little Nan again.
Never mind that, if Nan herself was saved. Annie was disobedient, but on this occasion she was not unhappy; she had none of that remorse which troubled her so much after her wild picnic in the fairies’ field. On the contrary, she had a strange sense of peace and even guidance; she had confessed this sin to Mrs Willis, and, though she was suspected of far worse, her own innocence kept her heart untroubled. The verse which had occurred to her two mornings before still rang in her ears —
“A soul which has sinned and is pardoned again.”
The impulsive, eager child was possessed just now of something which men call True Courage; it was founded on the knowledge that God would help her, and was accordingly calm and strengthening.
Annie rose from her damp bed, and looked around her for a little stream where she might wash her face and hands; suddenly she remembered that face and hands were dyed, and that she would do best to leave them alone. She smoothed out as best she could the ragged elf-locks which the gipsy maid had left on her curly head, and then, covering her face with her hands, said simply and earnestly – “Please, my Father in heaven, help me to find little Nan;” then she set off through the cornfields in the direction of the gipsies’ encampment.
Chapter Forty Five
Tiger
It was still very, very early in the morning, and the gipsy folk, tired from their march on the preceding day, slept. There stood the conical, queer-shaped tents, four in number; at a little distance off grazed the donkeys and a couple of rough mules; at the door of the tents lay stretched out in profound repose two or three dogs.
Annie dreaded the barking of the dogs, although she guessed that if they set up a noise, and a gipsy wife or man put out their heads in consequence, they would only desire the gipsy child to lie down and keep quiet.
She stood still for a moment – she was very anxious to prowl around the place and examine the ground while the gipsies still slept, but the watchful dogs deterred her. She stood perfectly quiet behind the hedge-row, thinking hard. Should she trust to a charm she knew she possessed, and venture into the encampment? Annie had almost as great a fascination over dogs and cats as she had over children. As a little child going to visit with her mother at strange houses, the watch-dogs never barked at her; on the contrary, they yielded to the charm which seemed to come from her little fingers as she patted their great heads. Slowly their tails would move backwards and forwards as she petted them, and even the most ferocious would look at her with affection.
Annie wondered if the gipsy dogs would now allow her to approach without barking. She felt that the chances were in her favour; she was dressed in gipsy garments, there would be nothing strange in her appearance, and if she could get near one of the dogs she knew that she could exercise the magic of her touch.
Her object, then, was to approach one of the tents very, very quietly – so softly that even the dog’s ears should not detect the light footfall. If she could approach close enough to put her hand on the dog’s neck all would be well. She pulled off the gipsy maid’s rough shoes, hid them in the grass where she could find them again, and came gingerly, step by step, nearer and nearer the principal tent. At its entrance lay a ferocious-looking half-bred bull-dog. Annie possessed that necessary accompaniment to courage – great outward calm; the greater the danger, the more cool and self-possessed did she become. She was within a step or two of the tent when she trod accidentally on a small twig: it cracked, giving her foot a sharp pain, and, very slight as the sound was, causing the bull-dog to awake. He raised his wicked face, saw the figure like his own people, and yet unlike, but a step or two away, and, uttering a low growl, sprang forward.
In the ordinary course of things this growl would have risen in volume and would have terminated in a volley of barking; but Annie was prepared: she went down on her knees, held out her arms, said, “Poor fellow!” in her own seductive voice, and the bull-dog fawned at her feet. He licked one of her hands while she patted him gently with the other.
“Come, poor fellow,” she said then in a gentle tone, and Annie and the dog began to perambulate round the tents.
The other dogs raised sleepy eyes, but seeing Tiger and the girl together, took no notice whatever, except by a thwack or two of their stumpy tails. Annie was now looking not only at the tents, but for something else which Zillah, her nurse, had told her might be found near to many gipsy encampments. This was a small subterranean passage, which generally led into a long-disused underground Danish fort. Zillah had told her what uses the gipsies liked to make of these underground passages, and how they often chose those which had two entrances. She told her that in this way they eluded the police, and were enabled successfully to hide the goods which they stole. She had also described to her their great ingenuity in hiding the entrances to these underground retreats.
Annie’s idea now was that little Nan was hidden in one of these vaults, and she determined first to make sure of its existence, and then to venture herself into this underground region in search of the lost child.
She had made a decided conquest in the person of Tiger, who followed her round and round the tents, and when the gipsies at last began to stir and Annie crept into the hedge-row, the dog crouched by her side. Tiger was the favourite dog of the camp, and presently one of the men called to him; he rose unwillingly, looked back with longing eyes at Annie, and trotted off, to return in the space of about five minutes with a great bunch of broken bread in his mouth. This was his breakfast, and he meant to share it with his new friend. Annie was too hungry to be fastidious, and she also knew the necessity of keeping up her strength. She crept still farther under the hedge, and the dog and girl shared the broken bread between them.
Presently the tents were all astir; the gipsy children began to swarm about, the women lit fires in the open air, and the smell of very appetising breakfasts filled the atmosphere. The men also lounged into view, standing lazily at the doors of their tents, and smoking great pipes of tobacco. Annie lay quiet. She could see from her hiding-place without being seen. Suddenly – and her eyes began to dilate, and she found her heart beating strangely – she laid her hand on Tiger, who was quivering all over.
“Stay with me, dear dog,” she said.
There was a great commotion and excitement in the gipsy camp; the children screamed and ran into the tents, the women paused in their preparation for breakfast, the men took their short pipes out of their mouths; every dog, with the exception of Tiger, barked ferociously. Tiger and Annie alone were motionless.
The cause of all this uproar was a body of police, about six in number, who came boldly into the field, and demanded instantly to search the tents.
“We want a woman who calls herself Mother Rachel,” they said. “She belongs to this encampment. We know her: let her come forward at once; we wish to question her.”
The men stood about; the women came near; the children crept out of their tents, placing their fingers to their frightened lips, and staring at the men who represented those horrors to their unsophisticated minds called Law and Order.
“We must search the tents. We won’t stir from the spot until we have had an interview with Mother Rachel,” said the principal member of the police force.
The men answered respectfully that the gipsy mother was not yet up; but if the gentlemen would wait a moment she would soon come and speak to them.
The officers expressed their willingness to wait, and collected round the tents.
Just at this instant, under the hedge-row, Tiger raised his head. Annie’s watchful eyes accompanied the dog’s. He was gazing after a tiny gipsy maid who was skulking along the hedge, and who presently disappeared through a very small opening into the neighbouring field.
Quick as thought Annie, holding Tiger’s collar, darted after her. The little maid heard the footsteps: but seeing another gipsy girl, and their own dog, Tiger, she took no further notice, but ran openly and very swiftly across the field until she came to a broken wall. Here she tugged and tugged at some loose stones, managed to push one away, and then called down into the ground —
“Mother Rachel!”
“Come, Tiger,” said Annie. She flew to a hedge not far off, and once more the dog and she hid themselves. The small girl was too excited to notice either their coming or going; she went on calling anxiously into the ground —
“Mother Rachel! Mother Rachel!”
Presently a black head and a pair of brawny shoulders appeared, and the tall woman whose face and figure Annie knew so well stepped up out of the ground, pushed back the stones into their place, and, taking the gipsy child into her arms, ran swiftly across the field in the direction of the tents.
