A World of Girls: The Story of a School

“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.

Chapter Forty Six

For Love Of Nan

Now was Annie’s time. “Tiger,” she said, for she had heard the men calling the dog’s name. “I want to go right down into that hole in the ground, and you are to come with me. Don’t let us lose a moment, good dog.”

The dog wagged his tail, capered about in front of Annie, and then with a wonderful shrewdness ran before her to the broken wall, where he stood with his head bent downwards and his eyes fixed on the ground.

Annie pulled and tugged at the loose stones; they were so heavy and so cunningly arranged that she wondered how the little maid, who was smaller than herself, had managed to remove them. She saw quickly, however, that they were arranged with a certain leverage, and that the largest stone that which formed the real entrance to the underground passage, was balanced in its place in such a fashion that when she leant on a certain portion of it, it moved aside, and allowed plenty of room for her to go down into the earth.

Very dark and dismal and uninviting did the rude steps, which led nobody knew where, appear. For one moment Annie hesitated; but the thought of Nan hidden somewhere in this awful wretchedness nerved her courage.

“Go first, Tiger, please,” she said, and the dog scampered down, sniffing the earth as he went. Annie followed him, but she had scarcely got her head below the level of the ground before she found herself in total and absolute darkness; she had unwittingly touched the heavy stone, which had swung back into its place. She heard Tiger sniffing below, and, calling to him to keep by her side, she went very carefully down and down and down, until at last she knew by the increase of air that she must have come to the end of the narrow entrance passage.

She was now able to stand upright, and raising her hand, she tried in vain to find a roof. The room where she stood, then, must be lofty. She went forward in the utter darkness very, very slowly; suddenly her head again came in contact with the roof; she made a few steps farther on, and then found that to proceed at all she must go on her hands and knees. She bent down and peered through the darkness.

“We’ll go on, Tiger,” she said, and, holding the dog’s collar and clinging to him for protection, she crept along the narrow passage.

Suddenly she gave an exclamation of joy – at the other end of this gloomy passage was light – faint twilight surely, but still undoubted light, which came down from some chink in the outer world. Annie came to the end of the passage, and, standing upright, found herself suddenly in a room; a very small and miserable room, certainly, but with the twilight shining through it, which revealed not only that it was a room, but a room which contained a heap of straw, a three-legged stool, and two or three cracked cups and saucers. Here, then, was Mother Rachel’s lair, and here she must look for Nan.

The darkness had been so intense that even the faint twilight of this little chamber had dazzled Annie’s eyes for a moment; the next, however, her vision became clear. She saw that the straw bed contained a bundle; she went near – out of the wrapped-up bundle of shawls appeared the head of a child. The child slept, and moaned in its slumbers.

Annie bent over it and said, “Thank God!” in a tone of rapture, and then, stooping down, she passionately kissed the lips of little Nan.

Nan’s skin had been dyed with the walnut-juice, her pretty soft hair had been cut short, her dainty clothes had been changed for the most ragged gipsy garments, but still she was undoubtedly Nan, the child whom Annie had come to save.

From her uneasy slumbers the poor little one awoke with a cry of terror. She could not recognise Annie’s changed face, and clasped her hands before her eyes, and said piteously —

“Me want to go home – go ’way, naughty woman, me want my Annie.”

“Little darling!” said Annie, in her sweetest tones. The changed face had not appealed to Nan, but the old voice went straight to her baby heart; she stopped crying and looked anxiously toward the entrance of the room.

“Turn in, Annie – me here, Annie – little Nan want ’oo.”

Annie glanced around her in despair. Suddenly her quick eyes lighted on a jug of water. She flew to it, and washed and laved her face.

“Coming, darling,” she said, as she tried to remove the hateful dye. She succeeded partly, and when she came back, to her great joy, the child recognised her.

“Now, little precious, we will get out of this as fast as we can,” said Annie, and clasping Nan tightly in her arms, she prepared to return by the way she had come. Then and there, for the first time, there flashed across her memory the horrible fact that the stone door had swung back into its place, and that by no possible means could she open it. She and Nan and Tiger were buried in a living tomb, and must either stay there and perish, or await the tender mercies of the cruel Mother Rachel.

Nan, with her arms tightly clasped round Annie’s neck, began to cry fretfully. She was impatient to get out of this dismal place; she was no longer oppressed by fears, for with the Annie whom she loved she felt absolutely safe; but she was hungry and cold and uncomfortable, and it seemed but a step, to little inexperienced Nan, from Annie’s arms to her snug, cheerful nursery at Lavender House.

“Turn, Annie – turn home, Annie,” she begged, and, when Annie did not stir, she began to weep.

In truth, the poor, brave little girl was sadly puzzled, and her first gleam of returning hope lay in the remembrance of Zillah’s words, that there were generally two entrances to these old underground forts. Tiger, who seemed thoroughly at home in this little room, and had curled himself up comfortably on the heap of straw, had probably often been here before. Perhaps Tiger knew the way to the second entrance. Annie called him to her side.

“Tiger,” she said, going down on her knees, and looking full into his ugly but intelligent face, “Nan and I want to go out of this.”

Tiger wagged his stumpy tail.

“We are hungry, Tiger, and we want something to eat, and you’d like a bone, wouldn’t you?”

Tiger’s tail went with ferocious speed, and he licked Annie’s hand.

“There’s no use going back that way, dear dog,” continued the girl, pointing with her arm in the direction they had come. “The door is fastened, Tiger, and we can’t get out. We can’t get out because the door is shut.”

The dog’s tail had ceased to wag; he took in the situation, for his whole expression showed dejection, and he drooped his head.

It was now quite evident to Annie that Tiger had been here before, and that on some other occasion in his life he had wanted to get out and could not because the door was shut.

“Now, Tiger,” said Annie, speaking cheerfully, and rising to her feet, “we must get out. Nan and I are hungry, and you want your bone. Take us out the other way, good Tiger – the other way, dear dog.”

She moved instantly toward the little passage; the dog followed her.

“The other way,” she said, and she turned her back on the long narrow passage, and took a step or two into complete darkness. The dog began to whine, caught hold of her dress, and tried to pull her back.

“Quite right, Tiger, we won’t go that way,” said Annie instantly. She returned into the dimly-lighted room.

“Find a way – And a way out, Tiger,” she said.

The dog evidently understood her; he moved restlessly about the room. Finally he got up on the bed, pulled and scratched and tore away the straw at the upper end, then, wagging his tail, flew to Annie’s side. She came back with him. Beneath the straw was a tiny, tiny trap-door.