Chapter Eight.A Touch of the Sun.Towards morning a thought came to Annie. She could not quite tell when it first darted through her brain. Perhaps it came in a dream. She was never quite certain, but it certainly caused her to jump, and it made her heart beat tumultuously.“I wonder,” she said aloud; and then she added, “The very thing!” Then she said once more, “I will do it, or my name is not Annie Brooke.”That morning the mistress and the girls missed the pleasant face of Annie Brooke from the breakfast-table. Mabel Lushington, as her greatest friend, was begged to go to her room to see if anything was the matter. She tapped at Annie’s door. A very faint reply came, and Mabel entered in much consternation. She found her friend lying in bed, a handkerchief wrung out of eau-de-Cologne and water on her brow, her hair dishevelled, her face pale.“Oh Annie, you are ill!” said poor Mabel. “What is wrong?”“My head, dear; it aches so badly.”“Oh, I am sorry!” said Mabel. “Mrs Lyttelton sent me upstairs to know what is wrong.”“Tell her she must not be at all alarmed,” said Annie. “It is just one of my very worst headaches, no more. I sha’n’t be able to do any lessons to-day. But I will creep out into the garden presently. I want air and perfect quiet. I’ll get into one of the hammocks in the garden and lie there. Tell them all not to be a bit anxious, for I know what I want is rest.”“You do look bad,” said Mabel. “Dear Annie, I know I am the cause of it.”“You are most truly,” thought Annie under her breath. But aloud she said, “No, dear, not at all; I am subject to headaches.”“I never knew you with one before,” said Mabel.“I have kept them to myself, darling; but Mrs Lyttelton knows, for I told her. This is just worse than the others, and I can’t keep it to myself. If Miss Phillips likes to come up, she might bring me a cup of tea and a little toast. I couldn’t eat anything else, indeed. Now, love, go down; don’t be distressed; your Annie will be all right in the afternoon.”Mabel longed to say, “What are you going to do about the poem?” but in sight of that pale presence with its look of suffering, and the bondage on the head, she thought that such a remark would be quite too heartless. She stepped, therefore, very softly out of the room, and going downstairs, made a most effective announcement with regard to Annie.“She says it is nothing,” remarked Mabel, who was almost in tears; “but she looks quite dreadful—so ghastly white.”Little did Mabel know that Annie had smeared powder over her face to give it that death-like appearance. She had managed it with great skill, and trusted to its not being noticed.“Miss Phillips,” said Mrs Lyttelton, “will you go and see what is wrong? If Annie is feverish we must get a doctor. She may have a little touch of the sun, my dears; it is always unwise to be out too much this hot weather.”“She looked awfully flushed,” said one girl, “when we met her in the High Street yesterday. It was after she had been with Mrs Priestley.”“It must be a touch of the sun,” said Mrs Lyttelton; “perhaps I had better go to her myself.”“Let me go first, dear Mrs Lyttelton,” said Miss Phillips; “I can soon let you know if there is anything wrong.”Accordingly, Miss Phillips went gently upstairs Annie had the curtains drawn at the windows, but the windows themselves had their sashes open. She was lying in such a position that the powder on her face could not be noticed. When Miss Phillips came in Annie uttered a groan.“Oh, why do you trouble?” she said, opening half an eye and looking at the mistress.Her dread was that Mrs Lyttelton herself might appear. It would be difficult to hide the powder from her. Old Phillips, however, as she termed her, was a person easily imposed upon. “Don’t fuss about me, please,” said Annie. “I have just a bad headache. I am sorry I can’t be in the schoolroom this morning; but I just can’t. I am not a bit hot—not a bit—but my head is dreadful. I want to go out and lie in one of the hammocks in the garden. Do you think Mrs Lyttelton will let me?”“Indeed she will, poor dear!” said Miss Phillips. “She is ever so sorry for you. You do look bad, Annie. Wouldn’t you like me to draw back the curtain, dear? Your room is so dark.”“Oh, please don’t!” said Annie. “I can’t bear the light.”“Well, my dear—well, of course—how thoughtless of me! I have brought you some tea.”“Thank you; I shall be glad of a cup.”“Poor child! Then you wouldn’t like to see Mrs Lyttelton herself?”“Not for the world,” said Annie with unnecessary vehemence. But then she added prettily, “It is so sweet of her to think of it, and for little me—as if I were of any consequence. It’s just a headache, and I’ll be all right in the garden, and at dinner-time you will see me looking just as usual.”“I hope so, indeed,” said Miss Phillips, who went downstairs to report that Annie was singularly pale, but not in the least feverish, and that her great desire was to lie in a hammock during the entire morning in the shady garden.“Go up at once and tell her that she has my permission,” said Mrs Lyttelton.Miss Phillips opened the door very softly. Annie was still lying with her eyes shut, the bandage at once shading and concealing her face; but the cheeks, the tip of the little nose, and the chin were all dreadfully white; only the pretty lips were still rosy.Annie just opened languid eyes.“I am better, really,” she said in the faintest and most patient voice.“You poor, sweet thing,” said Miss Phillips. “How I sympathise with you! I get those frantic headaches myself sometimes.”“It hurts me even to talk,” said Annie. “I do value your sympathy, but I can’t express what I feel. May I go into the garden? Did you find out?”“Yes; Mrs Lyttelton has given you her permission. I am so sorry, dear, that none of us will be able to be with you. Mrs Lyttelton herself is going to drive to London, and of course the rest of us will be busy; but if you want any one, love, I could send one of the maids to you.”“I shall want nothing,” said Annie, whose voice, in her eagerness, had suddenly become strong. Any one who was not poor Phillips would have been suspicious on the spot. “I am so dreadfully sorry,” said Annie, “that you should be put out about me; but if I am allowed to treat my headache in my own way, I shall be all right by early dinner. Now go, dear, won’t you? I will get dressed and creep down to the garden as soon as lessons begin.”“You are such a thoughtful, unselfish girl,” said Miss Phillips. “Anybody else who looked so terribly ill would make a fuss.”“Sweet Miss Phillips!” murmured Annie; and with these words sounding in her ear Miss Phillips left the room.The moment she did so Annie sprang to a sitting position on her bed. She flung the bandage across the room with a petulant movement, and the next instant she had locked the door and begun an active and hurried toilet. The powder was removed. The small, fair face assumed its normal complexion, and by the time prayers were over and the girls were all assembled in the different class-rooms, Annie, in her neat cotton dress, wearing a big shady hat, with gloves drawn over her small white hands, and a parasol ready to shade her from the sun, stood waiting by her open window.Presently she heard a welcome sound—the noise of wheels disappearing down the avenue. Now was her time. Across the lawn she went. The hammocks were there, but Annie had no use for them at present. Until she was well out of sight of the house she did not dare to run, but when a depression in the ground hid the house from view she put wings to her feet, and flew panting and racing along by the shrubbery, until, at the farthest end, she found a small postern door.This door opened by means of a certain catch, so that to the uninitiated it always seemed locked, whereas to the initiated it would open any minute. Annie was one of the initiated. She let herself out being very careful to close the door after her, so that it would respond to that same apparently gentle touch when she wished to come back. It was most important that she should make all things right with regard to the door, as by that means she saved at least half-an-hour of her precious—her most precious time. Oh, if only Miss Phillips could see her now! Where was the pallid, suffering girl? Surely she was not represented by this red-faced, panting, strong-looking creature who was careering along the dusty roadsen routefor Hendon.By-and-by she reached the suburbs, turned down a side street, and knocked loudly at a little green door. The door was opened by a woman who was evidently at once the owner of the house and her own servant.“How do you do, Miss Brooke?” she said, looking at Annie in some astonishment. “I am very sorry indeed, miss, but Susie has been having her bad days, and your dresses are not ready for you. She’ll send them down this evening, if possible; but when her back aches at its worst she cannot manage the machine, miss; so I do hope, Miss Brooke, that you won’t be hard on her.”“Not at all; I am very sorry for her,” said Annie in her gentle voice. “May I go in and talk to her for a few minutes, Mrs Martin?”“To be sure, miss; you will find her upstairs in the sewing-room.”Annie seemed to know her way quite well about this house. She ran up some very steep stairs and entered a low room which had at the end a sloping roof. There was a bed tucked as it were out of sight under the eaves; but right in the fall blaze of the summer sun, and where the room was most stiflingly hot, sat a very pallid girl with a large, over hanging brow, pale, tired-looking eyes, and a sensitive mouth.The girl was bending over a large sewing-machine, the work of which she was guiding with her hand, while her feet worked the treadles. The moment she saw Annie she looked at her with a great rush of colour spreading over her face.“Why, Miss Brooke!” she said.“Ah,” said Annie, “you are behaving very badly indeed to me, Susie. I have just seen your mother, and she says that your back is so bad you can’t do your machining, and in consequence my work—mine, Susan—is not finished. Oh Susan! it is somebody else’s dress you are making now, and you are quite well enough to do your machining. I am surprised.”“It is true what mother said, all the same, miss,” replied the girl, interrupting her words as she spoke with a great and exhausting fit of coughing. “I ain’t fit for no work, and this room is that stifling with the sun pouring in and no means of opening more than that little crack of the window. I haven’t done your work, miss, for I knew you ’ud be kind, and Mrs Hodge at the mill is so cross if I don’t carry out her least wish. But I meant—I did indeed, miss—to go on with your things this afternoon. I did most truly, miss, for it’s a real pleasure to work for you, Miss Brooke.”“Never mind my things to-day,” said Annie; “you’re not fit, and that is the simple truth. You ought to go downstairs, Susan, and get your mother to take you into the park; that is what you want.”“I may want it, miss,” said Susan, “but I won’t get it, for mother have her hands full with the parlour lodger and the drawing-room lodger. Much time she do have for walking out with me as though I were a fine lady.”“Poor Susie!” said Annie; “and you so clever, too.”“Ah, miss, nothing frets mother like me thinking myself clever. She says that all I want is to know the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic—that’s how she calls ’em. She hates my books, miss; and as to my thoughts—oh, dear Miss Brooke! you are the only one in all the world as knows about them.”“And I want to help you,” said Annie. “I have come here all the way this morning to ask you to lend me that manuscript book of yours. I mean to show your lovely poems to a great, clever, and learned man, and if by chance he should publish any of them, you would be famous, Susan, and you need never do this horrible grinding work any more.”“Oh, miss,” said the poor girl, “you don’t say so!”“I do say so, Susie; and I suppose I ought to know. Give me the book, dear, at once; don’t keep me, for I haven’t a minute. These are school hours, and I had to pretend I had a headache in order to get away to see you. You must let me manage about your poetry, Susie; and of course you will never tell.”“Why, miss, is it likely?”“Well, fetch the book, then.”Susie crossed the room, went on her knees before an old chest of drawers, and with the colour now high in her wasted cheeks and her light eyes darker with emotion, she presented the treasured book to Annie.“There is my last bit, miss; you will find it at the end. It’s ‘Thoughts on the Sunset’ I was thinking them in reference to my own early death, miss, and they’re very affecting indeed. Perhaps you will show them the first, miss, for they seem to me the very best I have done.”Susie looked with a world of pathos at Annie. Her eyes said as plainly as eyes could speak, “Oh! do read the poem before you go, and tell me what you think of it.” Annie read the message in the eyes, but had not an idea of acceding to poor Susie’s wish.“You will have your book back in a few days,” she said, “and I do hope I’ll have good news for you; and here is half-a-crown, and you needn’t hurry about my things. Good-bye, Susie. Do go into the park if you can.”Susan nodded. She felt so grateful to Annie, and so excited, that she could not speak. With the book tucked under her arm, Annie flew downstairs.She was much annoyed at being intercepted in the passage by Mrs Martin.“I do ’ope, miss,” said that poor woman, “that you ain’t been ’ard on my girl. She does do her very best; for, what with the unpickin’ of your old dresses, and what with tryin’ to turn ’em into new ones, it don’t seem as though it were worth while. You pays her very little, miss; and what with never givin’ her anythin’ new, it don’t seem worth the trouble, that it don’t.”“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Annie, who in her moment of victory was inclined to be kind to any one; “but, you see, I take an interest in Susan for other matters. She is not well, and she wants rest. I am so glad to have some one to alter my old things, and if I did not give the work to Susan, I should have to employ a girl I know at home. But I will try—I really will—to give her some new plain cotton dresses to make for me later on. In the meantime, Mrs Martin, I have been recommending her to go for a walk in the park. She has great talent, and her life ought not to be sacrificed.”“There, miss!” said Mrs Martin, putting her arms akimbo and looking with great dissatisfaction at Annie. “It’syouas encourages her in scribblin’ of that poetic stuff. Never did I hear such rubbish in all my born days. If it wasn’t for you, miss, she would burn all the stuff instead of sittin’ up a-composin’ of it. What with sunsets, and deathbeds, and heartaches, and green grass, and other nonsense, I don’t know where I be when I listen to her words; I don’t really. I see you’ve got the book under your arm now, miss; and I do wish you’d burn it—that I do!”“It would hurt her very much indeed if I did,” said Annie; for a further thought had darted through her brain at Mrs Martin’s words. Here would be an easy way to hide her own deed for ever and ever. If Mrs Martin sanctioned the burning of her daughter’s book, surely Annie’s wicked scheme would be concealed for ever.“I agree with you,” said Annie, “that it is bad for poor Susan to write so much poetry. Her heart is set on it, I know; still, if you disapprove—”“That I do, miss; I wish you’d give me the book now, and I’ll keep it under lock and key.”“No, no,” said Annie eagerly. “Don’t do that on any account whatever. I have thought of a much better plan. She has lent me the book, for I promised to read her poems, poor girl! and to talk them over with a friend of mine. I need not give them back to her for the present.”“Oh, miss! I’d bethatgrateful if you’d keep them altogether.”“I don’t see that I can quite do that. Still, if you wish it—”“I do, miss; that I do.”“Well, good-bye for the present. You mustn’t keep me now, as I am in a great hurry.”Mrs Martin moved aside, and once more Annie pursued her way up the dusty road. The postern door presented no hindrance when she reached it, and by-and-by, with a sigh of relief, she found herself in the cool shade of the grounds. How inviting looked that hammock under the trees! But she had not a moment of time to indulge in rest just then. Unperceived by any one, she managed to reach her room. She locked the door. She made a quick selection from poor Susan’s verses. She then calmly dressed, washed her face and hands, and when early dinner was announced, took her place at table.The girls were all pleased to see her, and when she assured them that she was as well as ever they all congratulated her. Priscilla Weir sat at table near Annie. Priscilla was not looking well. The headache which Annie pretended to have was in reality possessed by poor Priscilla. She was easily startled, too, and changed colour when any one addressed her in a hurry.Towards the end of the meal, as the girls were about to leave the room, she bent towards Annie and said:“Is it really true that Mabel Lushington is going to read some poems at four o’clock this afternoon?”“She is going to read some of herownpoems. Why not?” said Annie. She spoke defiantly.“Her own poems?” echoed Priscilla, a world of scorn in her voice.“Yes. Why not?” said Annie.Priscilla was silent for a minute. Then she said in a very low voice:“I know how clever you are; but even your genius cannot rise to this. I have seen you struggle to make even the slightest rhyme when we have been playing at making up verses. You can’t manage this.”“Never mind,” said Annie. She jumped up almost rudely. The next minute she had seized Mabel by the arm. “We have half-an-hour. Come with me at once to my room.”Mabel did so. When they reached the room Annie locked the door.“Now then,” she said, “who’s a genius? I said I would find a way out. Sit down immediately before my desk and write what I tell you.”“Oh Annie, what do you mean?”“I mean exactly what I say, and the fewer questions you ask the better. I will dictate the poem, and you shall copy it.”“But—but,” said Mabel, turning from red to white—“it isn’t, I hope, from a printed book. I have thought of that I have been so frightfully miserable that I’ve thought of everything; but that would be so terribly unsafe.”“This is not unsafe at any rate,” said Annie, “Now you begin. Write what I tell you.”Annie’s look of triumph and her absolutely fearless manner impressed Mabel. She wrote as best she could to Annie’s dictation, and soon two of poor Susan Martin’s attempts at verse were copied in Mabel’s writing.“There you are!” said Annie. “That ‘sunset’ one will take the cake, and that pretty little one about ‘my favourite cat’ will come home to every one.”“But I haven’t a favourite cat,” said Mabel, “and why ever should I write about it?”“Did you never in the whole course of your life,” was Annie’s answer, “hear of a poet’s licence? You can write on anything, you know, if you are a poet.”“Can I?” replied Mabel. “Then I suppose the cat will do.”“It will do admirably.”“I hope,” said Mabel, “they won’t question me afterwards about the animal. It sounds exactly as though it were my own cat, and every one in the school knows that I can’t even touch a cat.”“What a pity you didn’t tell me that before,” said Annie, “and I would have chosen something else! But there’s no time now; we must fly downstairs immediately.”“You are clever, Annie. I can’t think how you got these poems. But the ‘sunset’ one sounds dreadful too. I never even looked at a sunset. And then there’s the thoughts about dying—as if—as if Icouldknow anything of that.”“You must read them as pathetically as you can,” said Annie, “and make the best of a bad job. I believe they’ll go down admirably. Now then, fold them up and put them away; and don’t let’s be found closeted together here.” Sharp at four that afternoon Mabel appeared before her assembled schoolfellows and read—it must be owned rather badly—first some “Lines to a Favourite Cat,” and then “Thoughts on the Sunset.” The poems were not poetry in any sense of the word; nevertheless, there was a vague sort of far-off suggestion of poetry about them. It is true the girls giggled at the thought of Mabel and her cat, and were not specially impressed by the violet and rose tints of the sunset, or by the fact that florid, large, essentially living-looking Mabel should talk of her last faint breath, and of the time when she lay pale and still and was a corse.She read the lines, however, and they seemed thoroughly genuine. When she had finished she looked at her companions.“Well, I’d like to say, ‘I’m blowed!’” said Agnes; while Constance Smedley, the head-girl of the school, said in a low tone:“I congratulate you, Mabel; and I’m very much surprised. There is no saying what you will do in the future, only I hope you won’t speak of dead people as corses, for I dislike the term.”“And of course after this,” said a merry, round-faced girl who had hitherto not spoken, “we will expect to have further lines on pussie, poor, pussie; and, oh, Mabel,whata cheat you are! And you always said you loathed cats!”At this instant one of the youngest girls in the school rushed up and flung a tabby-cat into Mabel’s lap. The cat was large; a very rough specimen of the race. Being angry at such treatment, it unsheathed all its claws. Mabel shrieked with terror, and flung the poor animal aside with great vehemence.“Oh, poor pussie, poor pussie!” laughed the others; “but she loves you all the same.“When pussy comes, so sleek and warm,And rubs against my knee,I think we’re safe from every harm,My pretty cat and me.“Oh Mabel, Mabel! you are a humbug.”“I hate cats!” burst from Mabel.Annie turned pale for a minute; but her self-composure did not long desert her. “Being a poet, you know, you’re quite certain to be a little mad at times,” she remarked. “All poets are. I suppose you had a mad fit, dear Mabel, when you wrote about your favourite cat. I thought so.”“I think so, and I think I am mad now,” said Mabel, marching away from the others as she spoke, and plunging into the cool depths of the paddock.At that moment, more than cats, she hated herself; she hated Annie; she hated Priscilla. What an awful tissue of lies she was weaving round herself! Surely another year at Mrs Lyttelton’s school would have been much better than this. But, alas! it is not given to us to retrace our steps. Mabel had taken up a position, and there was nothing for it now but to abide by it. To confess all that she had done, to demand the money back from Priscilla, to stay on at school, were greater feats than she had courage to perform; and even if she were willing to do this, was not Annie always by her side—Annie, who did not repent, who was feathering her own nest so nicely, and who was priding herself on having overcome the immense difficulty of proving poor, stupid Mabel a poet?The great day of the prize-giving followed soon after, and, to the unbounded astonishment of the girls, Mabel Lushington’s essay on “Idealism” won the first literature prize.The essays were not read by the girls themselves, but by one of the teachers who had a beautiful voice and that dear enunciation which makes every word tell. The vote in favour of Mabel was unanimous. Her paper had thought; it had even style. In all respects it was far above the production of an ordinary schoolgirl, and beyond doubt it was far and away the best essay written.Priscilla’s paper passed muster, but it did not even win the second prize. Mabel looked quite modest and strikingly handsome when the great prize was bestowed upon her—a magnificent edition of all the great English poets, bound in calf and bearing the school coat-of-arms.Mrs Lyttelton, more astonished than pleased, was nevertheless forced to congratulate Mabel. She turned soon afterwards to one of the girls.“I must confess,” she said, “that I never was so surprised in my life.”“I should have been just as amazed as you,” answered Constance, “but for the fact that there is far more in Mabel than any one has the least idea of. She is a poet, you know.”“A poet, my dear?”“Yes; indeed she is. We simply would not believe it; but she read us some of her verses. A few, of course, were nothing but drivel; but there were lines on the sunset which quite amazed me, for they were full of thought.”“I am glad to hear it, Constance; nevertheless, I may as well confess to you that my feelings at the present moment are mingled ones. I wanted Priscilla to win the prize.”Meanwhile Mabel, surrounded by glory—her schoolfellows and the different visitors who had come to the school for the occasion crowding round her and congratulating her—had no longer any feeling of remorse. She acknowledged that Annie was right, and loved Annie, for the time being, with all her heart.It was Annie herself who took the telegram to the post-office to convey the great information to Lady Lushington. It was Annie herself who was the happy recipient of the reply which came later on that evening. The words of Lady Lushington’s telegram were brief:“Congratulation. True to my word. Join me in Paris on Friday. Writing to Mrs Lyttelton.”The three girls with whom this story first opened were together once more in the private sitting-room at Lyttelton School. When Mabel had read her telegram she flung it across to Priscilla.“Then all is well,” she said; “and we owe it to Annie.”“Yes,” said Priscilla. “And I have had a telegram,” she added, “an hour ago. It is from Uncle Josiah. He wishes me to remain with Mrs Lyttelton daring the vacation. He doesn’t care that I should return home at present.”“Well, that will suit you exactly, won’t it?” said Annie.“I suppose so. I only wonder what Mrs Lyttelton will say.”“And I am going to my uncle. We all break up to-morrow; but you and I shall meet again in the autumn, Priscilla. You will have to say good-bye to dear old Mabel now.”“You must wish me luck,” said Mabel. “I won’t forget my part; you need have no anxiety about your school fees.”“Uncle Josiah seems pleased on the whole that I should remain,” answered Priscilla, “although I cannot make out the wording of his telegram; but I do wonder what arrangement he will make for paying Mrs Lyttelton.”“If he cannot pay her you ought to go back,” said Annie, who did not at all wish to have this additional expense laid at Mabel’s door. She wished as much as possible of Mabel’s money should be devoted to herself. “But I suppose you will hear in the morning.”“Yes; I suppose so,” said Priscilla.“You look pretty miserable, Priscie. I wonder why, seeing all that Mabel and I have done for you.”“All thatIhave done foryou, you mean,” said Priscilla.“Well, I like that,” said Annie.“I will speak out for once,” said Priscilla, her eyes flashing fire and her pale face becoming suffused with colour. “I have gone under, and I hate myself. The hour of triumph to-day ought to have been mine. Don’t you suppose that I feel it? I loathe myself so deeply that I don’t think I am even a good enough girl to help my aunt in the house-work at home; and I pity the village dressmaker who would have me apprenticed to her. I am so bad that I loathe myself. Oh, you think that I shall be happy. You don’t know me; I can never be happy again!”Mabel’s face immediately became pale. She looked at Priscilla as though she were going to cry. It was Annie who took the bull by the horns.“Now, this is sheer nonsense,” she said. “You know perfectly well, Priscilla, that no better thing could have been done than what has happened to-day. In the first place, you are not disgraced, for the essay you read was quite creditable. It ought to have been, indeed, seeing that it was my work. And, in the second place, you have a year’s schooling guaranteed. With your brains, think what you will achieve—a fine scholarship at least, and then Girton as your reward. You mean to say that for the sake of some little pricks of conscience you would not take these advantages? Of course you will! Indeed, you have done so, so there’s no good saying anything more about it.”“I know there isn’t,” said Priscilla. “I don’t expect sympathy; I deserve all that I can get.” She left the room as she spoke.“Oh, isn’t she quite too dreadful?” said Annie.“I don’t know,” answered Mabel; “I expect I’d feel much the same if I were she.”The next day Priscilla received a letter from her uncle. She had written to tell him that the funds for another year’s schooling had been provided for her.“My dear Priscilla,” he wrote, “I am more disappointed than glad at your news; but of course, if a friend wants to pay for your schooling, I don’t interfere. You say that you hope to win a scholarship at the end of the term. That may or may not be the case. All that I can say is that I hope you will get it, for it is my intention to wash my hands of you. I made you a sensible offer, and you have rejected it. Your aunt and I agree that as you are too grand for us,we, on our part, are too poor for you. Henceforth you may look to your father in India for any assistance you may require. But as I don’t want to be hard on you, I am willing to pay a small sum for your support during the coming holidays, which I wish you to spend at Lyttelton School. I enclose money herewith—five pounds. I have no doubt the mistress will keep you for that for it will more than cover your consumption of food.“Good-bye, my dear Priscilla. I look upon you as an instance of want of gratitude. You are too fine a lady for your aunt and me.—Your uncle, Josiah.”
Towards morning a thought came to Annie. She could not quite tell when it first darted through her brain. Perhaps it came in a dream. She was never quite certain, but it certainly caused her to jump, and it made her heart beat tumultuously.
“I wonder,” she said aloud; and then she added, “The very thing!” Then she said once more, “I will do it, or my name is not Annie Brooke.”
That morning the mistress and the girls missed the pleasant face of Annie Brooke from the breakfast-table. Mabel Lushington, as her greatest friend, was begged to go to her room to see if anything was the matter. She tapped at Annie’s door. A very faint reply came, and Mabel entered in much consternation. She found her friend lying in bed, a handkerchief wrung out of eau-de-Cologne and water on her brow, her hair dishevelled, her face pale.
“Oh Annie, you are ill!” said poor Mabel. “What is wrong?”
“My head, dear; it aches so badly.”
“Oh, I am sorry!” said Mabel. “Mrs Lyttelton sent me upstairs to know what is wrong.”
“Tell her she must not be at all alarmed,” said Annie. “It is just one of my very worst headaches, no more. I sha’n’t be able to do any lessons to-day. But I will creep out into the garden presently. I want air and perfect quiet. I’ll get into one of the hammocks in the garden and lie there. Tell them all not to be a bit anxious, for I know what I want is rest.”
“You do look bad,” said Mabel. “Dear Annie, I know I am the cause of it.”
“You are most truly,” thought Annie under her breath. But aloud she said, “No, dear, not at all; I am subject to headaches.”
“I never knew you with one before,” said Mabel.
“I have kept them to myself, darling; but Mrs Lyttelton knows, for I told her. This is just worse than the others, and I can’t keep it to myself. If Miss Phillips likes to come up, she might bring me a cup of tea and a little toast. I couldn’t eat anything else, indeed. Now, love, go down; don’t be distressed; your Annie will be all right in the afternoon.”
Mabel longed to say, “What are you going to do about the poem?” but in sight of that pale presence with its look of suffering, and the bondage on the head, she thought that such a remark would be quite too heartless. She stepped, therefore, very softly out of the room, and going downstairs, made a most effective announcement with regard to Annie.
“She says it is nothing,” remarked Mabel, who was almost in tears; “but she looks quite dreadful—so ghastly white.”
Little did Mabel know that Annie had smeared powder over her face to give it that death-like appearance. She had managed it with great skill, and trusted to its not being noticed.
“Miss Phillips,” said Mrs Lyttelton, “will you go and see what is wrong? If Annie is feverish we must get a doctor. She may have a little touch of the sun, my dears; it is always unwise to be out too much this hot weather.”
“She looked awfully flushed,” said one girl, “when we met her in the High Street yesterday. It was after she had been with Mrs Priestley.”
“It must be a touch of the sun,” said Mrs Lyttelton; “perhaps I had better go to her myself.”
“Let me go first, dear Mrs Lyttelton,” said Miss Phillips; “I can soon let you know if there is anything wrong.”
Accordingly, Miss Phillips went gently upstairs Annie had the curtains drawn at the windows, but the windows themselves had their sashes open. She was lying in such a position that the powder on her face could not be noticed. When Miss Phillips came in Annie uttered a groan.
“Oh, why do you trouble?” she said, opening half an eye and looking at the mistress.
Her dread was that Mrs Lyttelton herself might appear. It would be difficult to hide the powder from her. Old Phillips, however, as she termed her, was a person easily imposed upon. “Don’t fuss about me, please,” said Annie. “I have just a bad headache. I am sorry I can’t be in the schoolroom this morning; but I just can’t. I am not a bit hot—not a bit—but my head is dreadful. I want to go out and lie in one of the hammocks in the garden. Do you think Mrs Lyttelton will let me?”
“Indeed she will, poor dear!” said Miss Phillips. “She is ever so sorry for you. You do look bad, Annie. Wouldn’t you like me to draw back the curtain, dear? Your room is so dark.”
“Oh, please don’t!” said Annie. “I can’t bear the light.”
“Well, my dear—well, of course—how thoughtless of me! I have brought you some tea.”
“Thank you; I shall be glad of a cup.”
“Poor child! Then you wouldn’t like to see Mrs Lyttelton herself?”
“Not for the world,” said Annie with unnecessary vehemence. But then she added prettily, “It is so sweet of her to think of it, and for little me—as if I were of any consequence. It’s just a headache, and I’ll be all right in the garden, and at dinner-time you will see me looking just as usual.”
“I hope so, indeed,” said Miss Phillips, who went downstairs to report that Annie was singularly pale, but not in the least feverish, and that her great desire was to lie in a hammock during the entire morning in the shady garden.
“Go up at once and tell her that she has my permission,” said Mrs Lyttelton.
Miss Phillips opened the door very softly. Annie was still lying with her eyes shut, the bandage at once shading and concealing her face; but the cheeks, the tip of the little nose, and the chin were all dreadfully white; only the pretty lips were still rosy.
Annie just opened languid eyes.
“I am better, really,” she said in the faintest and most patient voice.
“You poor, sweet thing,” said Miss Phillips. “How I sympathise with you! I get those frantic headaches myself sometimes.”
“It hurts me even to talk,” said Annie. “I do value your sympathy, but I can’t express what I feel. May I go into the garden? Did you find out?”
“Yes; Mrs Lyttelton has given you her permission. I am so sorry, dear, that none of us will be able to be with you. Mrs Lyttelton herself is going to drive to London, and of course the rest of us will be busy; but if you want any one, love, I could send one of the maids to you.”
“I shall want nothing,” said Annie, whose voice, in her eagerness, had suddenly become strong. Any one who was not poor Phillips would have been suspicious on the spot. “I am so dreadfully sorry,” said Annie, “that you should be put out about me; but if I am allowed to treat my headache in my own way, I shall be all right by early dinner. Now go, dear, won’t you? I will get dressed and creep down to the garden as soon as lessons begin.”
“You are such a thoughtful, unselfish girl,” said Miss Phillips. “Anybody else who looked so terribly ill would make a fuss.”
“Sweet Miss Phillips!” murmured Annie; and with these words sounding in her ear Miss Phillips left the room.
The moment she did so Annie sprang to a sitting position on her bed. She flung the bandage across the room with a petulant movement, and the next instant she had locked the door and begun an active and hurried toilet. The powder was removed. The small, fair face assumed its normal complexion, and by the time prayers were over and the girls were all assembled in the different class-rooms, Annie, in her neat cotton dress, wearing a big shady hat, with gloves drawn over her small white hands, and a parasol ready to shade her from the sun, stood waiting by her open window.
Presently she heard a welcome sound—the noise of wheels disappearing down the avenue. Now was her time. Across the lawn she went. The hammocks were there, but Annie had no use for them at present. Until she was well out of sight of the house she did not dare to run, but when a depression in the ground hid the house from view she put wings to her feet, and flew panting and racing along by the shrubbery, until, at the farthest end, she found a small postern door.
This door opened by means of a certain catch, so that to the uninitiated it always seemed locked, whereas to the initiated it would open any minute. Annie was one of the initiated. She let herself out being very careful to close the door after her, so that it would respond to that same apparently gentle touch when she wished to come back. It was most important that she should make all things right with regard to the door, as by that means she saved at least half-an-hour of her precious—her most precious time. Oh, if only Miss Phillips could see her now! Where was the pallid, suffering girl? Surely she was not represented by this red-faced, panting, strong-looking creature who was careering along the dusty roadsen routefor Hendon.
By-and-by she reached the suburbs, turned down a side street, and knocked loudly at a little green door. The door was opened by a woman who was evidently at once the owner of the house and her own servant.
“How do you do, Miss Brooke?” she said, looking at Annie in some astonishment. “I am very sorry indeed, miss, but Susie has been having her bad days, and your dresses are not ready for you. She’ll send them down this evening, if possible; but when her back aches at its worst she cannot manage the machine, miss; so I do hope, Miss Brooke, that you won’t be hard on her.”
“Not at all; I am very sorry for her,” said Annie in her gentle voice. “May I go in and talk to her for a few minutes, Mrs Martin?”
“To be sure, miss; you will find her upstairs in the sewing-room.”
Annie seemed to know her way quite well about this house. She ran up some very steep stairs and entered a low room which had at the end a sloping roof. There was a bed tucked as it were out of sight under the eaves; but right in the fall blaze of the summer sun, and where the room was most stiflingly hot, sat a very pallid girl with a large, over hanging brow, pale, tired-looking eyes, and a sensitive mouth.
The girl was bending over a large sewing-machine, the work of which she was guiding with her hand, while her feet worked the treadles. The moment she saw Annie she looked at her with a great rush of colour spreading over her face.
“Why, Miss Brooke!” she said.
“Ah,” said Annie, “you are behaving very badly indeed to me, Susie. I have just seen your mother, and she says that your back is so bad you can’t do your machining, and in consequence my work—mine, Susan—is not finished. Oh Susan! it is somebody else’s dress you are making now, and you are quite well enough to do your machining. I am surprised.”
“It is true what mother said, all the same, miss,” replied the girl, interrupting her words as she spoke with a great and exhausting fit of coughing. “I ain’t fit for no work, and this room is that stifling with the sun pouring in and no means of opening more than that little crack of the window. I haven’t done your work, miss, for I knew you ’ud be kind, and Mrs Hodge at the mill is so cross if I don’t carry out her least wish. But I meant—I did indeed, miss—to go on with your things this afternoon. I did most truly, miss, for it’s a real pleasure to work for you, Miss Brooke.”
“Never mind my things to-day,” said Annie; “you’re not fit, and that is the simple truth. You ought to go downstairs, Susan, and get your mother to take you into the park; that is what you want.”
“I may want it, miss,” said Susan, “but I won’t get it, for mother have her hands full with the parlour lodger and the drawing-room lodger. Much time she do have for walking out with me as though I were a fine lady.”
“Poor Susie!” said Annie; “and you so clever, too.”
“Ah, miss, nothing frets mother like me thinking myself clever. She says that all I want is to know the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic—that’s how she calls ’em. She hates my books, miss; and as to my thoughts—oh, dear Miss Brooke! you are the only one in all the world as knows about them.”
“And I want to help you,” said Annie. “I have come here all the way this morning to ask you to lend me that manuscript book of yours. I mean to show your lovely poems to a great, clever, and learned man, and if by chance he should publish any of them, you would be famous, Susan, and you need never do this horrible grinding work any more.”
“Oh, miss,” said the poor girl, “you don’t say so!”
“I do say so, Susie; and I suppose I ought to know. Give me the book, dear, at once; don’t keep me, for I haven’t a minute. These are school hours, and I had to pretend I had a headache in order to get away to see you. You must let me manage about your poetry, Susie; and of course you will never tell.”
“Why, miss, is it likely?”
“Well, fetch the book, then.”
Susie crossed the room, went on her knees before an old chest of drawers, and with the colour now high in her wasted cheeks and her light eyes darker with emotion, she presented the treasured book to Annie.
“There is my last bit, miss; you will find it at the end. It’s ‘Thoughts on the Sunset’ I was thinking them in reference to my own early death, miss, and they’re very affecting indeed. Perhaps you will show them the first, miss, for they seem to me the very best I have done.”
Susie looked with a world of pathos at Annie. Her eyes said as plainly as eyes could speak, “Oh! do read the poem before you go, and tell me what you think of it.” Annie read the message in the eyes, but had not an idea of acceding to poor Susie’s wish.
“You will have your book back in a few days,” she said, “and I do hope I’ll have good news for you; and here is half-a-crown, and you needn’t hurry about my things. Good-bye, Susie. Do go into the park if you can.”
Susan nodded. She felt so grateful to Annie, and so excited, that she could not speak. With the book tucked under her arm, Annie flew downstairs.
She was much annoyed at being intercepted in the passage by Mrs Martin.
“I do ’ope, miss,” said that poor woman, “that you ain’t been ’ard on my girl. She does do her very best; for, what with the unpickin’ of your old dresses, and what with tryin’ to turn ’em into new ones, it don’t seem as though it were worth while. You pays her very little, miss; and what with never givin’ her anythin’ new, it don’t seem worth the trouble, that it don’t.”
“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Annie, who in her moment of victory was inclined to be kind to any one; “but, you see, I take an interest in Susan for other matters. She is not well, and she wants rest. I am so glad to have some one to alter my old things, and if I did not give the work to Susan, I should have to employ a girl I know at home. But I will try—I really will—to give her some new plain cotton dresses to make for me later on. In the meantime, Mrs Martin, I have been recommending her to go for a walk in the park. She has great talent, and her life ought not to be sacrificed.”
“There, miss!” said Mrs Martin, putting her arms akimbo and looking with great dissatisfaction at Annie. “It’syouas encourages her in scribblin’ of that poetic stuff. Never did I hear such rubbish in all my born days. If it wasn’t for you, miss, she would burn all the stuff instead of sittin’ up a-composin’ of it. What with sunsets, and deathbeds, and heartaches, and green grass, and other nonsense, I don’t know where I be when I listen to her words; I don’t really. I see you’ve got the book under your arm now, miss; and I do wish you’d burn it—that I do!”
“It would hurt her very much indeed if I did,” said Annie; for a further thought had darted through her brain at Mrs Martin’s words. Here would be an easy way to hide her own deed for ever and ever. If Mrs Martin sanctioned the burning of her daughter’s book, surely Annie’s wicked scheme would be concealed for ever.
“I agree with you,” said Annie, “that it is bad for poor Susan to write so much poetry. Her heart is set on it, I know; still, if you disapprove—”
“That I do, miss; I wish you’d give me the book now, and I’ll keep it under lock and key.”
“No, no,” said Annie eagerly. “Don’t do that on any account whatever. I have thought of a much better plan. She has lent me the book, for I promised to read her poems, poor girl! and to talk them over with a friend of mine. I need not give them back to her for the present.”
“Oh, miss! I’d bethatgrateful if you’d keep them altogether.”
“I don’t see that I can quite do that. Still, if you wish it—”
“I do, miss; that I do.”
“Well, good-bye for the present. You mustn’t keep me now, as I am in a great hurry.”
Mrs Martin moved aside, and once more Annie pursued her way up the dusty road. The postern door presented no hindrance when she reached it, and by-and-by, with a sigh of relief, she found herself in the cool shade of the grounds. How inviting looked that hammock under the trees! But she had not a moment of time to indulge in rest just then. Unperceived by any one, she managed to reach her room. She locked the door. She made a quick selection from poor Susan’s verses. She then calmly dressed, washed her face and hands, and when early dinner was announced, took her place at table.
The girls were all pleased to see her, and when she assured them that she was as well as ever they all congratulated her. Priscilla Weir sat at table near Annie. Priscilla was not looking well. The headache which Annie pretended to have was in reality possessed by poor Priscilla. She was easily startled, too, and changed colour when any one addressed her in a hurry.
Towards the end of the meal, as the girls were about to leave the room, she bent towards Annie and said:
“Is it really true that Mabel Lushington is going to read some poems at four o’clock this afternoon?”
“She is going to read some of herownpoems. Why not?” said Annie. She spoke defiantly.
“Her own poems?” echoed Priscilla, a world of scorn in her voice.
“Yes. Why not?” said Annie.
Priscilla was silent for a minute. Then she said in a very low voice:
“I know how clever you are; but even your genius cannot rise to this. I have seen you struggle to make even the slightest rhyme when we have been playing at making up verses. You can’t manage this.”
“Never mind,” said Annie. She jumped up almost rudely. The next minute she had seized Mabel by the arm. “We have half-an-hour. Come with me at once to my room.”
Mabel did so. When they reached the room Annie locked the door.
“Now then,” she said, “who’s a genius? I said I would find a way out. Sit down immediately before my desk and write what I tell you.”
“Oh Annie, what do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I say, and the fewer questions you ask the better. I will dictate the poem, and you shall copy it.”
“But—but,” said Mabel, turning from red to white—“it isn’t, I hope, from a printed book. I have thought of that I have been so frightfully miserable that I’ve thought of everything; but that would be so terribly unsafe.”
“This is not unsafe at any rate,” said Annie, “Now you begin. Write what I tell you.”
Annie’s look of triumph and her absolutely fearless manner impressed Mabel. She wrote as best she could to Annie’s dictation, and soon two of poor Susan Martin’s attempts at verse were copied in Mabel’s writing.
“There you are!” said Annie. “That ‘sunset’ one will take the cake, and that pretty little one about ‘my favourite cat’ will come home to every one.”
“But I haven’t a favourite cat,” said Mabel, “and why ever should I write about it?”
“Did you never in the whole course of your life,” was Annie’s answer, “hear of a poet’s licence? You can write on anything, you know, if you are a poet.”
“Can I?” replied Mabel. “Then I suppose the cat will do.”
“It will do admirably.”
“I hope,” said Mabel, “they won’t question me afterwards about the animal. It sounds exactly as though it were my own cat, and every one in the school knows that I can’t even touch a cat.”
“What a pity you didn’t tell me that before,” said Annie, “and I would have chosen something else! But there’s no time now; we must fly downstairs immediately.”
“You are clever, Annie. I can’t think how you got these poems. But the ‘sunset’ one sounds dreadful too. I never even looked at a sunset. And then there’s the thoughts about dying—as if—as if Icouldknow anything of that.”
“You must read them as pathetically as you can,” said Annie, “and make the best of a bad job. I believe they’ll go down admirably. Now then, fold them up and put them away; and don’t let’s be found closeted together here.” Sharp at four that afternoon Mabel appeared before her assembled schoolfellows and read—it must be owned rather badly—first some “Lines to a Favourite Cat,” and then “Thoughts on the Sunset.” The poems were not poetry in any sense of the word; nevertheless, there was a vague sort of far-off suggestion of poetry about them. It is true the girls giggled at the thought of Mabel and her cat, and were not specially impressed by the violet and rose tints of the sunset, or by the fact that florid, large, essentially living-looking Mabel should talk of her last faint breath, and of the time when she lay pale and still and was a corse.
She read the lines, however, and they seemed thoroughly genuine. When she had finished she looked at her companions.
“Well, I’d like to say, ‘I’m blowed!’” said Agnes; while Constance Smedley, the head-girl of the school, said in a low tone:
“I congratulate you, Mabel; and I’m very much surprised. There is no saying what you will do in the future, only I hope you won’t speak of dead people as corses, for I dislike the term.”
“And of course after this,” said a merry, round-faced girl who had hitherto not spoken, “we will expect to have further lines on pussie, poor, pussie; and, oh, Mabel,whata cheat you are! And you always said you loathed cats!”
At this instant one of the youngest girls in the school rushed up and flung a tabby-cat into Mabel’s lap. The cat was large; a very rough specimen of the race. Being angry at such treatment, it unsheathed all its claws. Mabel shrieked with terror, and flung the poor animal aside with great vehemence.
“Oh, poor pussie, poor pussie!” laughed the others; “but she loves you all the same.
“When pussy comes, so sleek and warm,And rubs against my knee,I think we’re safe from every harm,My pretty cat and me.
“When pussy comes, so sleek and warm,And rubs against my knee,I think we’re safe from every harm,My pretty cat and me.
“Oh Mabel, Mabel! you are a humbug.”
“I hate cats!” burst from Mabel.
Annie turned pale for a minute; but her self-composure did not long desert her. “Being a poet, you know, you’re quite certain to be a little mad at times,” she remarked. “All poets are. I suppose you had a mad fit, dear Mabel, when you wrote about your favourite cat. I thought so.”
“I think so, and I think I am mad now,” said Mabel, marching away from the others as she spoke, and plunging into the cool depths of the paddock.
At that moment, more than cats, she hated herself; she hated Annie; she hated Priscilla. What an awful tissue of lies she was weaving round herself! Surely another year at Mrs Lyttelton’s school would have been much better than this. But, alas! it is not given to us to retrace our steps. Mabel had taken up a position, and there was nothing for it now but to abide by it. To confess all that she had done, to demand the money back from Priscilla, to stay on at school, were greater feats than she had courage to perform; and even if she were willing to do this, was not Annie always by her side—Annie, who did not repent, who was feathering her own nest so nicely, and who was priding herself on having overcome the immense difficulty of proving poor, stupid Mabel a poet?
The great day of the prize-giving followed soon after, and, to the unbounded astonishment of the girls, Mabel Lushington’s essay on “Idealism” won the first literature prize.
The essays were not read by the girls themselves, but by one of the teachers who had a beautiful voice and that dear enunciation which makes every word tell. The vote in favour of Mabel was unanimous. Her paper had thought; it had even style. In all respects it was far above the production of an ordinary schoolgirl, and beyond doubt it was far and away the best essay written.
Priscilla’s paper passed muster, but it did not even win the second prize. Mabel looked quite modest and strikingly handsome when the great prize was bestowed upon her—a magnificent edition of all the great English poets, bound in calf and bearing the school coat-of-arms.
Mrs Lyttelton, more astonished than pleased, was nevertheless forced to congratulate Mabel. She turned soon afterwards to one of the girls.
“I must confess,” she said, “that I never was so surprised in my life.”
“I should have been just as amazed as you,” answered Constance, “but for the fact that there is far more in Mabel than any one has the least idea of. She is a poet, you know.”
“A poet, my dear?”
“Yes; indeed she is. We simply would not believe it; but she read us some of her verses. A few, of course, were nothing but drivel; but there were lines on the sunset which quite amazed me, for they were full of thought.”
“I am glad to hear it, Constance; nevertheless, I may as well confess to you that my feelings at the present moment are mingled ones. I wanted Priscilla to win the prize.”
Meanwhile Mabel, surrounded by glory—her schoolfellows and the different visitors who had come to the school for the occasion crowding round her and congratulating her—had no longer any feeling of remorse. She acknowledged that Annie was right, and loved Annie, for the time being, with all her heart.
It was Annie herself who took the telegram to the post-office to convey the great information to Lady Lushington. It was Annie herself who was the happy recipient of the reply which came later on that evening. The words of Lady Lushington’s telegram were brief:
“Congratulation. True to my word. Join me in Paris on Friday. Writing to Mrs Lyttelton.”
The three girls with whom this story first opened were together once more in the private sitting-room at Lyttelton School. When Mabel had read her telegram she flung it across to Priscilla.
“Then all is well,” she said; “and we owe it to Annie.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “And I have had a telegram,” she added, “an hour ago. It is from Uncle Josiah. He wishes me to remain with Mrs Lyttelton daring the vacation. He doesn’t care that I should return home at present.”
“Well, that will suit you exactly, won’t it?” said Annie.
“I suppose so. I only wonder what Mrs Lyttelton will say.”
“And I am going to my uncle. We all break up to-morrow; but you and I shall meet again in the autumn, Priscilla. You will have to say good-bye to dear old Mabel now.”
“You must wish me luck,” said Mabel. “I won’t forget my part; you need have no anxiety about your school fees.”
“Uncle Josiah seems pleased on the whole that I should remain,” answered Priscilla, “although I cannot make out the wording of his telegram; but I do wonder what arrangement he will make for paying Mrs Lyttelton.”
“If he cannot pay her you ought to go back,” said Annie, who did not at all wish to have this additional expense laid at Mabel’s door. She wished as much as possible of Mabel’s money should be devoted to herself. “But I suppose you will hear in the morning.”
“Yes; I suppose so,” said Priscilla.
“You look pretty miserable, Priscie. I wonder why, seeing all that Mabel and I have done for you.”
“All thatIhave done foryou, you mean,” said Priscilla.
“Well, I like that,” said Annie.
“I will speak out for once,” said Priscilla, her eyes flashing fire and her pale face becoming suffused with colour. “I have gone under, and I hate myself. The hour of triumph to-day ought to have been mine. Don’t you suppose that I feel it? I loathe myself so deeply that I don’t think I am even a good enough girl to help my aunt in the house-work at home; and I pity the village dressmaker who would have me apprenticed to her. I am so bad that I loathe myself. Oh, you think that I shall be happy. You don’t know me; I can never be happy again!”
Mabel’s face immediately became pale. She looked at Priscilla as though she were going to cry. It was Annie who took the bull by the horns.
“Now, this is sheer nonsense,” she said. “You know perfectly well, Priscilla, that no better thing could have been done than what has happened to-day. In the first place, you are not disgraced, for the essay you read was quite creditable. It ought to have been, indeed, seeing that it was my work. And, in the second place, you have a year’s schooling guaranteed. With your brains, think what you will achieve—a fine scholarship at least, and then Girton as your reward. You mean to say that for the sake of some little pricks of conscience you would not take these advantages? Of course you will! Indeed, you have done so, so there’s no good saying anything more about it.”
“I know there isn’t,” said Priscilla. “I don’t expect sympathy; I deserve all that I can get.” She left the room as she spoke.
“Oh, isn’t she quite too dreadful?” said Annie.
“I don’t know,” answered Mabel; “I expect I’d feel much the same if I were she.”
The next day Priscilla received a letter from her uncle. She had written to tell him that the funds for another year’s schooling had been provided for her.
“My dear Priscilla,” he wrote, “I am more disappointed than glad at your news; but of course, if a friend wants to pay for your schooling, I don’t interfere. You say that you hope to win a scholarship at the end of the term. That may or may not be the case. All that I can say is that I hope you will get it, for it is my intention to wash my hands of you. I made you a sensible offer, and you have rejected it. Your aunt and I agree that as you are too grand for us,we, on our part, are too poor for you. Henceforth you may look to your father in India for any assistance you may require. But as I don’t want to be hard on you, I am willing to pay a small sum for your support during the coming holidays, which I wish you to spend at Lyttelton School. I enclose money herewith—five pounds. I have no doubt the mistress will keep you for that for it will more than cover your consumption of food.
“Good-bye, my dear Priscilla. I look upon you as an instance of want of gratitude. You are too fine a lady for your aunt and me.—Your uncle, Josiah.”
Chapter Nine.The Rector.It was a pretty old Rectory to which Annie Brooke was going in order to spend the first week of her holidays. It was situated on the borders of Wales, and the scenery was superb. Mountains surrounded it, and seemed, after a fashion, to shut it in. But these glorious mountains, with their ever-changing, ever-shifting effects of light and shade, their dark moments, their moments of splendour, were all lost upon such a nature as that of Annie Brooke.She hated the Rectory. Her feelings towards Uncle Maurice were only those of toleration.She loathed the time she spent there, and now the one thought in her breast was the feeling that her emancipation was near, and that very soon she would be on her way to gay Paris to join Mabel Lushington.Yes, Annie had achieved much, if those actions of hers could be spoken of in such a light; she had won that which she desired. Priscilla remained at school. Mabel had left Lyttelton School, and she (Annie) was to join her friend on the Continent.Still, of course, there was a small thing to be done. Uncle Maurice must produce the needful. Annie could not travel to Paris without money, and Uncle Maurice must supply it. She did not anticipate much difficulty in getting the necessary sum from her uncle. Her dress was, of course, very unsuitable for the time of triumph she hoped to have in the gay capital and during her time abroad with Lady Lushington and Mabel. But nevertheless, she was not going to fret about these things in advance, and perhaps Uncle Maurice would be good for more than the money for her journey.She was seated now in a high gig, her uncle himself driving her. He had come to meet her at the nearest railway station ten miles away, and as the old horse jogged along and the old gig bumped over the uneven road Annie congratulated herself again and again on having such a short time to spend at home.Mr Brooke was an old clergyman approaching seventy years of age. He had lived in this one parish for over forty years; he loved every stone on the road, every light on the hills, every bush that grew, every plant that flowered; and as to the inhabitants of the little parish of Rashleigh, they were to old Maurice Brooke as his own children.He was pleased to see Annie, and showed it now by smiling at her from time to time and doing his best to make her comfortable.“Is the rug tucked tightly round you, Annie?” he said. “You will feel the fresh air a bit after your time down south. It’s fine air we have in these ports—none finer in the land—but it’s apt to be a little fresh when you come new upon it. And how are you, my dear girl? I’ve been looking, forward to your holidays. There’s a great deal for you to do, as usual.”“Oh uncle!” said Annie, “but you know I don’t like doing things.”“Eh, my love?” said the old clergyman. “But we have to do them, all the same, when they come to us in the guise of duty.”“That is what I hate,” said Annie, speaking crossly. “Don’t let’s worry about them to-night, Uncle Maurice; I have had a long journey, and am tired.”“Poor bit thing!” said the old man. He stopped for a minute to pull the rag up higher round Annie’s knees. “Mrs Shelf is so pleased at your coming back, Annie. She looks to you to help her with the preserving. She is not as young as she was, and her rheumatism is worse.”“Oh, I hate rheumatic old folks!” thought Annie, but she did not say the words aloud.By-and-by they reached the Rectory, and while the rector took old Rover back to his stable Annie ran into the house.The Rectory was large and rambling, and had(This page missing)“You are looking well, my dear,” said the woman, “and I am glad you are back, for we want young life about the old place.”“You won’t have it long,” said Annie.Mrs Shelf took no notice. “The raspberries are past,” she said; “but there are a good few gooseberries still to preserve, and there are the early pears coming on; they make beautiful jam, if boiled whole with cloves and lemon-peel and a little port wine thrown in. But you must stand over them the whole time in order to keep them from breaking. Then there are the peaches; I set store by them, and always put them in bottles and bury them in the garden. There are gherkins, too, for pickling; and there are a whole lot of walnuts. We mustn’t lose a day about pickling the walnuts, or they’ll be spoiled. We might begin over some of the jams to-morrow. What do you think?”“You may if you like, Shelfy,” said Annie; “but I sha’n’t. I have only come here for a visit. I’m off to Paris immediately.”“You off to Paris!” said the old woman. “Highty-tighty! what will your uncle say?”“Uncle Maurice will say just what I like him to say,” answered Annie. “Please have a chop or something nice for my supper, for I can’t stand slops. And is my room ready?”“I hope so, child. I told Peggie to see to it.” Peggie was not the best of servants, and Annie’s room was by no means in a state of immaculate order. It was a large room, but, like the rest of the house, very badly furnished. There was a huge old four-poster for the girl to sleep in, and there was a little rickety table which held a looking-glass with a crack down the middle, and there was a cracked white basin and jug on another table at the farther end of the room. Of wardrobe there was none; but a large door, when opened, revealed some shelves and a hanging press.“Oh! it is just as of old,” thought the girl—“an intolerable, horrid place. I could never live here—never; and what’s more, I won’t. How wise I was to make provision for myself while at school! I declare, bad as I thought the old place, I didn’t imagine it to be quite so ramshackle.”While these thoughts were rushing through Annie’s mind she was brushing out her pretty golden hair and arranging it becomingly round her small head. Then she straightened and tidied her dress, and presently ran downstairs, her trim little figure quite stylish-looking for that old house, and pretty enough, in the rector’s opinion, to gladden any place which she chose to grace.Old Mr Brooke loved Annie. She was all he possessed in the world. He had never married, and when his only brother, on dying, had left the child to his care, he had vowed to be a father to her, to bring her up well, and to do the best he could for her. Annie was the child of an English father and an Italian mother. In appearance she had taken in every respect after her father’s race, being fair, with all the attributes of the Saxon, but in her nature she had some of the craftiness which distinguishes the Italian. Hers was a difficult nature to fathom, and to a very high-minded man like the Rev. Maurice Brooke she was a problem he could never solve. For a couple of years past he had owned himself puzzled by Annie. When she was a little child she delighted him; but more and more, as she returned from school for each holiday, he felt that there was something behind. She was frank with him; she grumbled quite openly in his presence. These things he did not mind, but he was sure there was something behind the grumbling, and that fact puzzled and distressed him.Still, he looked forward to the weeks which Annie spent at Rashleigh Rectory as the golden periods of his life. All the little pleasures and indulgences were kept for this time. “When my niece comes back we’ll do so-and-so,” was his favourite remark. “When Annie comes, Mrs Shelf, we must have that new tarpaulin put down; and don’t you think her room ought to be repapered and painted for her? Girls like pretty things, don’t they?”But Mrs Shelf read Annie’s nature far more correctly than did her old uncle.“If I were you, Mr Brooke,” she said, “I wouldn’t spend money on that girl until I knew what she was after. Maybe she won’t take to the room when it’s painted and papered.”“Won’t take to it?” he replied. “But naturally she’ll take to it, Mrs Shelf, for it will be her own room, where, please God, she will sleep for many long years, until, indeed, she finds another home of her own.”Mrs Shelf was silent when the rector said these things. But, somehow, the room was not papered, nor was the old paint renewed; and Annie failed to notice these facts.“Well, my little girl,” he said on the present occasion, as they both sat down to supper in a small room which opened out of the study, “it’s a sight for sair een to see you back again; and well you look, Annie—well and bonny.” He looked at her admiringly. She was not at all a beautiful girl, but she was beautiful to him. “You have a look of my brother Geoffrey,” he said. “Ah, Geoffrey, dear fellow, was remarkably good-looking. Not that looks signify much, Annie; we ought never to set store by them. It is the beauty of the mind we ought to cultivate, my love.”“Well,” said Annie, “I’d like to be handsome. I don’t see, for my part, why I should not have both. What do you think, uncle?”“That would be as the Almighty chose,” he replied. “But come now, my love; time passes quickly. I often forget, myself, how the years run on. How old are you, my dearie?”“I was seventeen my last birthday, Uncle Maurice; quite grown up, you know.”“Why, to be sure, to be sure,” he replied.“Your mother was married at seventeen, poor young thing! But in these days we are more sensible, and girls don’t take the burden of life on them while they are still children. You are a schoolgirl yet, Annie, and won’t be anything else for another year at least.”“Oh, all right, uncle,” said Annie, who had no wish to change Lyttelton School for the dullness of Rashleigh Rectory.“But the months fly on,” said the old man. “Help yourself to a roast-apple, my dear. And before we know where we are,” he continued, “you’ll have left school and be back here with me. I look forward to that time, my little Annie; there will be a power of things for you to do, and the parish will be all the better for your society.”Annie shuffled her feet and grew red. The old rector did not especially notice her. He was absorbed in contemplation. He had eaten his large bowl of Quaker oats, and now he laid the spoon on his plate and gazed into the fire.“It’s a fine thing,” he said, “to be able to help the poor and needy. I always say to myself, ‘When my bit Annie comes back we’ll do so-and-so. We’ll have more mothers’ meetings and classes for young women.’ There are some mill-hands near here, Annie, who are neglected in their spiritual part shamefully. They want a lady like yourself to understand them and to show them what girls ought to know. You might have sewing-classes, for instance; and you might read aloud to them just to interest them, you know. I have been thinking a lot about it. And then what do you say to a Sunday afternoon class, just in one of the big rooms here, for the mill-hands? It would be a pretty bit of work, and I wouldn’t be above catching them, so to speak, by guile—I mean that I would give them tea and cake. Mrs Shelf wouldn’t mind. We’d have to manage her, wouldn’t we, Annie?”“Yes, uncle,” said Annie, yawning; “yes.”“Then there’s a carving-class for the young men.”“I wouldn’t mind that so much as the other,” said Annie suddenly.“Now, that is really nice of you, my child, for those rough mill-hands are often very troublesome. I would always accompany you myself to the carving-class. We’d get our patterns from London, and you would encourage them a bit.”“Only I can’t carve,” said Annie.“Well, well, that needn’t be a difficulty; for it is easy to learn, I am told; and you might have lessons during your last term at school. Oh, there’ll be a deal for you to do, my pretty one, and no minute left unemployed; and you, all the time while you are so busy, the very sunshine of your old uncle’s life.”“Am I, Uncle Maurice?” she asked.“Are you that?” he replied. He rose and held out his arms to her. “Aren’t you just all I’ve got,” he said—“all I have got?”She allowed him to kiss her, and even faintly responded, for she had made up her mind not to trouble him about Paris that night.After a time he allowed her to go to bed, which she was exceedingly glad to do. But when she had flung herself in her bed and was quickly lost in slumber, the old man himself sat up and thought a great deal about her, and prayed for her not a little.“She is a bonny lass, and a pretty one,” he said to himself; “and, thank the Lord! I don’t see a trace of that dark-eyed mother about her. She takes after Geoffrey, the best of men. Yes, she is a good child, and will settle down to my busy life here, I make no doubt, with great equanimity. I have much to be thankful for, and my Annie is the apple of my eye. All the same, I wish—I do wish—that she was just alittlemore responsive.”The next day Annie awoke with the lark. She jumped up, and long before breakfast was out of doors. The house was shabby enough, but the Rectory garden was a place to revel in. The rector cared nothing about indoor decoration, but his hobby was his garden. Lawns with some of the finest turf in England rolled majestically away from the house towards the swift-flowing river at the other end of the grounds. There were gay parterres filled with bright flowers. There were shrubberies and paddocks, and even a labyrinth and an old Elizabethan walk where the yew-trees were cut into grotesque forms of foxes and griffins. There was an old sun-dial, which at one time used to interest Annie but which she had long ceased to notice; and there was a kitchen-garden, which ought to have delighted the heart of any young person; for not only were the vegetables first class, but here was to be found the best fruit in the neighbourhood. The rector was celebrated for his peaches and apricots, his pears, his apples, his nuts. He had a long vinery full of choice grapes, and there were hotbeds containing melons of the finest flavour; and there were even—and these were as a crown of all crowns to the old rector—pines growing here in perfection.Annie was too self-loving and too keenly appreciative of the good things of life not to like the old garden. She forgot some of her grievances now as she walked here and there, helping herself indiscriminately to the ripest and beet fruit.By-and-by the postman was seen coming up the avenue. Annie ran to meet him. She had been delayed for a day in leaving Lyttelton School, and she knew, therefore, that Mabel’s invitation would probably arrive at Rashleigh Rectory this morning. Yes; here it was in Mabel’s own writing. Annie looked at the outside of the envelope for a minute or two with intense appreciation; then she deliberately opened it and took out two letters. The first was from no less a person than Lady Lushington herself:“My dear Miss Brooke,—I write by Mabel’s wish to beg of you to join my niece and myself here early next week. We are going to Switzerland, where we hope you will accompany us, but will remain here at the ‘Grand’ until Wednesday. If you can manage to be with us on Tuesday night, that will be quite time enough. I hope your uncle will spare you to us; and you may assure him that while you are my guest you will be treated as though you were my child, and will have no expense of any sort.“Looking forward to making your acquaintance, and with my compliments to your uncle, believe me, yours sincerely, Henrietta Lushington.”“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried Annie. She read the other letter, but more carelessly; Lady Lushington’s was the important one. Mabel wrote:“Dear Annie,—It is all right. Don’t fail to be with us on Tuesday night. Aunt Henrietta will send Parker to meet you at the Gare du Nord, and you will doubtless find some escort to bring you to Paris. It’s great fun here, although the weather is very hot, and we are dying to be away amongst the cool mountains of Switzerland. Aunt Henrietta goes to all the fashionable hotels, and dresses exquisitely, so if you can screw a little money out of that old flint of an uncle of yours, so much the better; but even if you are shabby, I dare say I can manage to rig you up.—Your affectionate friend, Mabel Lushington.”“P.S.—That awful bill has not come yet! I shake when I think of it.“P.S.Number 2.—I am very glad now that I took your advice. It is heavenly to be emancipated. I wouldn’t be back at that odious school for a kingdom. Do come quickly.”Armed with these letters, Annie now entered the same little room where she and her uncle had partaken of their supper on the previous night.
It was a pretty old Rectory to which Annie Brooke was going in order to spend the first week of her holidays. It was situated on the borders of Wales, and the scenery was superb. Mountains surrounded it, and seemed, after a fashion, to shut it in. But these glorious mountains, with their ever-changing, ever-shifting effects of light and shade, their dark moments, their moments of splendour, were all lost upon such a nature as that of Annie Brooke.
She hated the Rectory. Her feelings towards Uncle Maurice were only those of toleration.
She loathed the time she spent there, and now the one thought in her breast was the feeling that her emancipation was near, and that very soon she would be on her way to gay Paris to join Mabel Lushington.
Yes, Annie had achieved much, if those actions of hers could be spoken of in such a light; she had won that which she desired. Priscilla remained at school. Mabel had left Lyttelton School, and she (Annie) was to join her friend on the Continent.
Still, of course, there was a small thing to be done. Uncle Maurice must produce the needful. Annie could not travel to Paris without money, and Uncle Maurice must supply it. She did not anticipate much difficulty in getting the necessary sum from her uncle. Her dress was, of course, very unsuitable for the time of triumph she hoped to have in the gay capital and during her time abroad with Lady Lushington and Mabel. But nevertheless, she was not going to fret about these things in advance, and perhaps Uncle Maurice would be good for more than the money for her journey.
She was seated now in a high gig, her uncle himself driving her. He had come to meet her at the nearest railway station ten miles away, and as the old horse jogged along and the old gig bumped over the uneven road Annie congratulated herself again and again on having such a short time to spend at home.
Mr Brooke was an old clergyman approaching seventy years of age. He had lived in this one parish for over forty years; he loved every stone on the road, every light on the hills, every bush that grew, every plant that flowered; and as to the inhabitants of the little parish of Rashleigh, they were to old Maurice Brooke as his own children.
He was pleased to see Annie, and showed it now by smiling at her from time to time and doing his best to make her comfortable.
“Is the rug tucked tightly round you, Annie?” he said. “You will feel the fresh air a bit after your time down south. It’s fine air we have in these ports—none finer in the land—but it’s apt to be a little fresh when you come new upon it. And how are you, my dear girl? I’ve been looking, forward to your holidays. There’s a great deal for you to do, as usual.”
“Oh uncle!” said Annie, “but you know I don’t like doing things.”
“Eh, my love?” said the old clergyman. “But we have to do them, all the same, when they come to us in the guise of duty.”
“That is what I hate,” said Annie, speaking crossly. “Don’t let’s worry about them to-night, Uncle Maurice; I have had a long journey, and am tired.”
“Poor bit thing!” said the old man. He stopped for a minute to pull the rag up higher round Annie’s knees. “Mrs Shelf is so pleased at your coming back, Annie. She looks to you to help her with the preserving. She is not as young as she was, and her rheumatism is worse.”
“Oh, I hate rheumatic old folks!” thought Annie, but she did not say the words aloud.
By-and-by they reached the Rectory, and while the rector took old Rover back to his stable Annie ran into the house.
The Rectory was large and rambling, and had
(This page missing)
“You are looking well, my dear,” said the woman, “and I am glad you are back, for we want young life about the old place.”
“You won’t have it long,” said Annie.
Mrs Shelf took no notice. “The raspberries are past,” she said; “but there are a good few gooseberries still to preserve, and there are the early pears coming on; they make beautiful jam, if boiled whole with cloves and lemon-peel and a little port wine thrown in. But you must stand over them the whole time in order to keep them from breaking. Then there are the peaches; I set store by them, and always put them in bottles and bury them in the garden. There are gherkins, too, for pickling; and there are a whole lot of walnuts. We mustn’t lose a day about pickling the walnuts, or they’ll be spoiled. We might begin over some of the jams to-morrow. What do you think?”
“You may if you like, Shelfy,” said Annie; “but I sha’n’t. I have only come here for a visit. I’m off to Paris immediately.”
“You off to Paris!” said the old woman. “Highty-tighty! what will your uncle say?”
“Uncle Maurice will say just what I like him to say,” answered Annie. “Please have a chop or something nice for my supper, for I can’t stand slops. And is my room ready?”
“I hope so, child. I told Peggie to see to it.” Peggie was not the best of servants, and Annie’s room was by no means in a state of immaculate order. It was a large room, but, like the rest of the house, very badly furnished. There was a huge old four-poster for the girl to sleep in, and there was a little rickety table which held a looking-glass with a crack down the middle, and there was a cracked white basin and jug on another table at the farther end of the room. Of wardrobe there was none; but a large door, when opened, revealed some shelves and a hanging press.
“Oh! it is just as of old,” thought the girl—“an intolerable, horrid place. I could never live here—never; and what’s more, I won’t. How wise I was to make provision for myself while at school! I declare, bad as I thought the old place, I didn’t imagine it to be quite so ramshackle.”
While these thoughts were rushing through Annie’s mind she was brushing out her pretty golden hair and arranging it becomingly round her small head. Then she straightened and tidied her dress, and presently ran downstairs, her trim little figure quite stylish-looking for that old house, and pretty enough, in the rector’s opinion, to gladden any place which she chose to grace.
Old Mr Brooke loved Annie. She was all he possessed in the world. He had never married, and when his only brother, on dying, had left the child to his care, he had vowed to be a father to her, to bring her up well, and to do the best he could for her. Annie was the child of an English father and an Italian mother. In appearance she had taken in every respect after her father’s race, being fair, with all the attributes of the Saxon, but in her nature she had some of the craftiness which distinguishes the Italian. Hers was a difficult nature to fathom, and to a very high-minded man like the Rev. Maurice Brooke she was a problem he could never solve. For a couple of years past he had owned himself puzzled by Annie. When she was a little child she delighted him; but more and more, as she returned from school for each holiday, he felt that there was something behind. She was frank with him; she grumbled quite openly in his presence. These things he did not mind, but he was sure there was something behind the grumbling, and that fact puzzled and distressed him.
Still, he looked forward to the weeks which Annie spent at Rashleigh Rectory as the golden periods of his life. All the little pleasures and indulgences were kept for this time. “When my niece comes back we’ll do so-and-so,” was his favourite remark. “When Annie comes, Mrs Shelf, we must have that new tarpaulin put down; and don’t you think her room ought to be repapered and painted for her? Girls like pretty things, don’t they?”
But Mrs Shelf read Annie’s nature far more correctly than did her old uncle.
“If I were you, Mr Brooke,” she said, “I wouldn’t spend money on that girl until I knew what she was after. Maybe she won’t take to the room when it’s painted and papered.”
“Won’t take to it?” he replied. “But naturally she’ll take to it, Mrs Shelf, for it will be her own room, where, please God, she will sleep for many long years, until, indeed, she finds another home of her own.”
Mrs Shelf was silent when the rector said these things. But, somehow, the room was not papered, nor was the old paint renewed; and Annie failed to notice these facts.
“Well, my little girl,” he said on the present occasion, as they both sat down to supper in a small room which opened out of the study, “it’s a sight for sair een to see you back again; and well you look, Annie—well and bonny.” He looked at her admiringly. She was not at all a beautiful girl, but she was beautiful to him. “You have a look of my brother Geoffrey,” he said. “Ah, Geoffrey, dear fellow, was remarkably good-looking. Not that looks signify much, Annie; we ought never to set store by them. It is the beauty of the mind we ought to cultivate, my love.”
“Well,” said Annie, “I’d like to be handsome. I don’t see, for my part, why I should not have both. What do you think, uncle?”
“That would be as the Almighty chose,” he replied. “But come now, my love; time passes quickly. I often forget, myself, how the years run on. How old are you, my dearie?”
“I was seventeen my last birthday, Uncle Maurice; quite grown up, you know.”
“Why, to be sure, to be sure,” he replied.
“Your mother was married at seventeen, poor young thing! But in these days we are more sensible, and girls don’t take the burden of life on them while they are still children. You are a schoolgirl yet, Annie, and won’t be anything else for another year at least.”
“Oh, all right, uncle,” said Annie, who had no wish to change Lyttelton School for the dullness of Rashleigh Rectory.
“But the months fly on,” said the old man. “Help yourself to a roast-apple, my dear. And before we know where we are,” he continued, “you’ll have left school and be back here with me. I look forward to that time, my little Annie; there will be a power of things for you to do, and the parish will be all the better for your society.”
Annie shuffled her feet and grew red. The old rector did not especially notice her. He was absorbed in contemplation. He had eaten his large bowl of Quaker oats, and now he laid the spoon on his plate and gazed into the fire.
“It’s a fine thing,” he said, “to be able to help the poor and needy. I always say to myself, ‘When my bit Annie comes back we’ll do so-and-so. We’ll have more mothers’ meetings and classes for young women.’ There are some mill-hands near here, Annie, who are neglected in their spiritual part shamefully. They want a lady like yourself to understand them and to show them what girls ought to know. You might have sewing-classes, for instance; and you might read aloud to them just to interest them, you know. I have been thinking a lot about it. And then what do you say to a Sunday afternoon class, just in one of the big rooms here, for the mill-hands? It would be a pretty bit of work, and I wouldn’t be above catching them, so to speak, by guile—I mean that I would give them tea and cake. Mrs Shelf wouldn’t mind. We’d have to manage her, wouldn’t we, Annie?”
“Yes, uncle,” said Annie, yawning; “yes.”
“Then there’s a carving-class for the young men.”
“I wouldn’t mind that so much as the other,” said Annie suddenly.
“Now, that is really nice of you, my child, for those rough mill-hands are often very troublesome. I would always accompany you myself to the carving-class. We’d get our patterns from London, and you would encourage them a bit.”
“Only I can’t carve,” said Annie.
“Well, well, that needn’t be a difficulty; for it is easy to learn, I am told; and you might have lessons during your last term at school. Oh, there’ll be a deal for you to do, my pretty one, and no minute left unemployed; and you, all the time while you are so busy, the very sunshine of your old uncle’s life.”
“Am I, Uncle Maurice?” she asked.
“Are you that?” he replied. He rose and held out his arms to her. “Aren’t you just all I’ve got,” he said—“all I have got?”
She allowed him to kiss her, and even faintly responded, for she had made up her mind not to trouble him about Paris that night.
After a time he allowed her to go to bed, which she was exceedingly glad to do. But when she had flung herself in her bed and was quickly lost in slumber, the old man himself sat up and thought a great deal about her, and prayed for her not a little.
“She is a bonny lass, and a pretty one,” he said to himself; “and, thank the Lord! I don’t see a trace of that dark-eyed mother about her. She takes after Geoffrey, the best of men. Yes, she is a good child, and will settle down to my busy life here, I make no doubt, with great equanimity. I have much to be thankful for, and my Annie is the apple of my eye. All the same, I wish—I do wish—that she was just alittlemore responsive.”
The next day Annie awoke with the lark. She jumped up, and long before breakfast was out of doors. The house was shabby enough, but the Rectory garden was a place to revel in. The rector cared nothing about indoor decoration, but his hobby was his garden. Lawns with some of the finest turf in England rolled majestically away from the house towards the swift-flowing river at the other end of the grounds. There were gay parterres filled with bright flowers. There were shrubberies and paddocks, and even a labyrinth and an old Elizabethan walk where the yew-trees were cut into grotesque forms of foxes and griffins. There was an old sun-dial, which at one time used to interest Annie but which she had long ceased to notice; and there was a kitchen-garden, which ought to have delighted the heart of any young person; for not only were the vegetables first class, but here was to be found the best fruit in the neighbourhood. The rector was celebrated for his peaches and apricots, his pears, his apples, his nuts. He had a long vinery full of choice grapes, and there were hotbeds containing melons of the finest flavour; and there were even—and these were as a crown of all crowns to the old rector—pines growing here in perfection.
Annie was too self-loving and too keenly appreciative of the good things of life not to like the old garden. She forgot some of her grievances now as she walked here and there, helping herself indiscriminately to the ripest and beet fruit.
By-and-by the postman was seen coming up the avenue. Annie ran to meet him. She had been delayed for a day in leaving Lyttelton School, and she knew, therefore, that Mabel’s invitation would probably arrive at Rashleigh Rectory this morning. Yes; here it was in Mabel’s own writing. Annie looked at the outside of the envelope for a minute or two with intense appreciation; then she deliberately opened it and took out two letters. The first was from no less a person than Lady Lushington herself:
“My dear Miss Brooke,—I write by Mabel’s wish to beg of you to join my niece and myself here early next week. We are going to Switzerland, where we hope you will accompany us, but will remain here at the ‘Grand’ until Wednesday. If you can manage to be with us on Tuesday night, that will be quite time enough. I hope your uncle will spare you to us; and you may assure him that while you are my guest you will be treated as though you were my child, and will have no expense of any sort.
“Looking forward to making your acquaintance, and with my compliments to your uncle, believe me, yours sincerely, Henrietta Lushington.”
“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried Annie. She read the other letter, but more carelessly; Lady Lushington’s was the important one. Mabel wrote:
“Dear Annie,—It is all right. Don’t fail to be with us on Tuesday night. Aunt Henrietta will send Parker to meet you at the Gare du Nord, and you will doubtless find some escort to bring you to Paris. It’s great fun here, although the weather is very hot, and we are dying to be away amongst the cool mountains of Switzerland. Aunt Henrietta goes to all the fashionable hotels, and dresses exquisitely, so if you can screw a little money out of that old flint of an uncle of yours, so much the better; but even if you are shabby, I dare say I can manage to rig you up.—Your affectionate friend, Mabel Lushington.”
“P.S.—That awful bill has not come yet! I shake when I think of it.
“P.S.Number 2.—I am very glad now that I took your advice. It is heavenly to be emancipated. I wouldn’t be back at that odious school for a kingdom. Do come quickly.”
Armed with these letters, Annie now entered the same little room where she and her uncle had partaken of their supper on the previous night.