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Title: Harebell's friend
Author: Amy Le Feuvre
Illustrator: Gordon Browne
Release date: February 16, 2024 [eBook #72970]
Language: English
Original publication: London: The Religious Tract Society, 1914
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAREBELL'S FRIEND ***
Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: "I SHOULD SAY YOUR WORK WAS TONGUE-WAGGING," SAID ANDY.]
HAREBELL'S FRIEND
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
AUTHOR OF
"A LITTLE LISTENER," "LADDIE'S CHOICE,"
"PROBABLE SONS," ETC., ETC.
LONDON:
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 BOUVERIE ST. AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. NOT WANTED
II. FIRST DAYS
III. CHRYSOPRASUS
IV. TOM
V. AN ACCIDENT
VI. AN ADVENTUROUS DAY
VII. A LETTER TO TOM
VIII. A NEW UNCLE
IX. IN DISGRACE
X. A LITTLE RUNAWAY
XI. TOM'S LAST EFFORT
HAREBELL'S FRIEND
CHAPTER I
NOT WANTED
SHE stood watching the crowd on the pier; a slim upright little figure,
in a shabby waterproof, and a woollen cap crammed down on her head, and
hiding the soft silky curls underneath it.
Her small face with its clear pallor, dark speaking eyes, and sensitive
lips, struck more than one observer with peculiar interest.
"An intelligent child that," remarked the ship's doctor, as he lounged
over the bulwarks, waiting for the gangway to connect them with the
shore; "but it's a type that is bound to suffer—too much feeling!"
His companion—a pretty woman of uncertain age—gazed at the small girl
reflectively.
"She will be one of the many lonely unattached women, I suppose. No
parents or brothers and sisters, I hear; being brought home by the
Commissioner of the district in which her parents died. He seems
rather in a quandary about her, for there is a doubt as to whether any
relatives will turn up. Poor mite! I suppose a school or orphanage will
be her fate."
Their voices reached the child's ears. She did not turn her head, but
big tears rose to her eyes. Then she brushed them away with the back of
her hand. Another voice, and a hand on her shoulder, made her glance
up, and in an instant her face was glowing and radiant with delight.
"Well, little Harebell, we're home at last! Now for a scrimmage at the
Customs, and then we'll dine together at some hotel! We won't think
about to-morrow, will we? I don't fancy anybody on the pier belongs to
you, do you think so?"
The big Commissioner—six foot in his stockings—glanced down at his
protégée with laughing eyes; but there was a big pity at the bottom
of his heart for her future. She slipped her hand into his with great
content.
"We'll have a beautiful evening," she said in clear soft tones. "And do
you think we might have ice-pudding to-night?"
"We'll have the best of everything! A perfect feast! Now then—come
along!"
There was a rush to the gangway; laughter, tears, and fervent embraces
were in the atmosphere around them; but he piloted her safely through
the crowd. He cast a quick glance around him. Was there any one ready
to greet this lonely little one? He had decided in his own mind that
there was not.
"I believe you'll have to come to Scotland with me to see my old
mother," he said cheerily.
Harebell laughed aloud at the thought. It was what she had been hoping.
She cried fervently:
"Oh, I do hope there's nobody here who wants me!"
And neither of them noticed that at the sound of the child's clear
voice, a tall stately figure moved towards them.
Mr. Graham was startled when he was confronted by a very beautiful
woman, with a cold grave face.
Her tone was haughty in the extreme:
"May I ask if that child belongs to you?"
"I wish she did, madam; but she is in my charge."
"Is her name Felicia Darrell?"
"It is, though she is accustomed to be called Harebell."
"I am her aunt, Mrs. Keith. Mr. Capel has forwarded me your letters."
"Ah, yes. Well, I was her father's executor! He was ill but twelve
hours, poor chap! And I had only the address of his lawyer. I did not
know of any relation—there seemed to be no letters—I'm glad she'll have
some one to look after her—"
"I was her mother's sister," said Mrs. Keith severely, "but we never
corresponded."
Harebell looked up at her new aunt with wondering eyes, then drew back,
and clung with a desperately tight grasp to her friend the Commissioner.
"I don't know you," she said falteringly. "Please don't take me."
There was not a glimmer of a smile upon her aunt's face.
She held out her hand.
"You will soon learn to know me," she said.
And Harebell, somehow or other, dared not resist any longer. With
drooping head she dropped Mr. Graham's hand, and placed her own in her
aunt's firm clasp. They all went together to the Customs, Harebell's
luggage was found, and transferred to a cab awaiting them. There was
a hurried agonising farewell taken of Mr. Graham, and a few minutes
after, the child found herself driving in a taxi alone with her aunt.
She gazed at her with frightened, miserable eyes. Mrs. Keith looked out
of the window and said nothing. She was handsomely dressed in velvet
and furs. It was a March day, and cold enough to make the Indian child
shiver.
Tears came to Harebell's eyes again, and rolled down her cheeks.
Suddenly Mrs. Keith turned to her, and spoke very sharply.
"When did your mother die?"
"Long, long ago," said Harebell, choking down a sob. "I was very
little, for I didn't know she died at all; I thought she had just
walked away to heaven—"
"And your father? How long has he been dead?"
"Oh, it seems a long time too, but they say it's only ten months."
"I need not get you any black clothes, then," her aunt said decisively.
Harebell stared at her. Black garments were unknown to her. She
wondered what they were like.
The taxi took them to another station, and then a long railway journey
began. Mrs. Keith was silent most of the time. Harebell, from her
corner seat, surveyed the strange country with eager interested eyes.
She did not want to talk; she was entirely wrapped up in the present.
Childlike, she accepted the inevitable, and had no anxiety about the
future. Her aunt was merely an aunt, and a grown-up; a necessary
belonging, not half so interesting as the plump little lambs playing
in the fields, the rabbits darting along a hedge-side, and the quaint
country cottages and farms.
But as time went on, Harebell's head and back began to ache, then her
eyes were too weary to gaze out any more, and finally sleep came to her.
She was barely conscious of being helped out of the train and placed in
a country fly.
As they rumbled along the country roads, she slept again, and it was
only when they reached her future home, that she thoroughly roused
herself.
Mrs. Keith did not live in a big house, but it was comfortable, and had
a rambling garden surrounded with high red-brick walls. When the door
opened to them, an old man-servant appeared, and Harebell, looking at
him, loved him on the spot.
He was a short square-built man, with grey hair and a round smiling
face, and the merriest eyes that Harebell had ever seen.
She looked up at him with confidence, and then to her astonishment, he
winked one of his eyes slowly at her.
Then Harebell laughed aloud. Her aunt turned upon her sharply.
"What is the matter?"
"He is so funny!" said Harebell, pointing with her finger to the old
man, who was now shouldering her heavy luggage as if it were only a
featherweight.
"Do you mean Andrews? It is rude to laugh at people, even if they be
servants."
Harebell's smile disappeared at once. She followed her aunt up a short
wide staircase, and was shown into a room. It was small, but there was
a blazing fire in it; bright pictures were on the walls, a little white
bed in the corner, and flowered chintz curtains hung in the windows.
"Is this for me?" Harebell asked timidly.
"It is your room, and I shall expect you to keep it tidy."
Then Harebell wheeled round upon her aunt with clasped hands.
"It is beautiful," she cried with shining eyes; "and I think you
beautiful too!"
Mrs. Keith stared at her in silence; then turned round and swept out of
the room. Speaking over her shoulder, she said:
"Wash your face and hands, and take off your hat and coat, then come
downstairs to supper."
Harebell waited till the door was closed upon her. A little ache
and longing was in her heart for one kind word. But she had never
remembered a mother's love, and was accustomed to grave grown-up
society. She never expected much from any one. Now she began to dance
in the middle of her room. And as she danced she chanted some words she
had learnt from her ayah:
"It's good to be happy and sing—
The birds and the flowers agree—
There's music to make for us all,
And some must be made by me."
Her cap and her coat had been flung off. She was dressed in a soft
blue woollen frock; her small head of curls, rather a delicate little
neck, and her fragile wisp of a body impressed one who was looking on
as peculiarly appropriate to her name. She looked like a nodding blue
harebell swaying in the wind.
"Not hungry or tired! How wonderful children are!"
Harebell started, and stopped her dance in an instant. A grave
motherly-looking woman stood in the doorway. She wore a lace cap, and
for a moment Harebell wondered if she were another aunt. She saw she
had kind eyes, and precipitated herself into her arms without any
hesitation.
"I've been so frightened, it's all so strange, but I feel happiness in
the room; it has come to me, and so I can't help dancing."
"Bless your little heart, I'm glad to think you're so easy made happy!
I'm your aunt's maid and housekeeper, dear; I've been with her twenty
years, and I don't know which I loved best when they were little girls,
she or your dear mother. You must call me Goody, the same as they
did—my name is Goodheart, but I'm still Goody. And I shall have time to
slip in and wait on you and dress you. It will be like old times. We're
not a very big household. There's only Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and Lucy
and myself. Now let me put a brush to your curls."
"I'm glad you're in the world," said Harebell, as she resigned herself
into Goody's hands at once. "I shall be able to talk to you; that lady
who brought me here is like a princess in my fairy book. 'Slowly,
slowly she turned into stone, very beautiful but cold she was, her face
got stiller and whiter, when she spoke she hardly seemed to breathe.'
Shall I go on? I know it by heart, and then one day she gets soft, you
know! I shall be looking for that day, won't you? What is her name?"
"Your aunt? Dear me, I feel quite bewildered with such talk. Your Aunt
Diana she is. Now you must walk downstairs nicely like a little lady,
for it's getting late, and supper has been ready this half-hour or
more."
Harebell slipped downstairs without another word. In the hall she met
Andrews. He took her little hand in his.
"You're going to be friends with old Andy, I know," he said, and
his eyes began to twinkle again. "He's an old sailor, and an 'Andy
man, see the joke? 'Tis no use dressing him up as a sober butler, he
can't play the part! But he's butler and gardener, and carpenter and
jack-of-all-trades here. And now he has the honour to tell you that
supper is served."
His tone turned from gay to grave, and at the same moment, Mrs. Keith
crossed the hall. Harebell followed her into the dining-room.
It was a long low room with red walls and dark oak panelling. Harebell
seated herself opposite her aunt, and Andrews waited upon them in
deferential silence. Some hot soup, chicken, and a sponge-cake pudding
refreshed and exhilarated Harebell so much that silence seemed
impossible.
"I like it here, aunt! I like my room, and Goody and Andy, but I want
to see Mr. Graham again. Will you ask him to come and stay here?"
Her aunt looked at her slowly and reflectively; then she said shortly:
"No."
Harebell's little head dropped at once. She spoke no more, but when the
meal was over, her aunt took her into another room. It was daintily
furnished. Mrs. Keith took a seat by the fire, then she made Harebell
stand in front of her.
"I want you to understand," she said, "that I am willing to give you a
home on certain conditions. I am not fond of children. I have taken you
in because you have no other relations, not because I wished to have
you. If you are obedient and truthful, you can make this your home;
if I ever find you out in a lie, or any kind of deceit, I shall send
you off to a boarding-school, which will become your home until you
can earn your own living. You will have to do that, for your father's
affairs are in a shocking state; and there will be no money left for
you after his debts are paid."
Harebell knitted her brows, then she looked up and said quietly:
"I suppose a boarding-school is a dreadful place? We haven't got
them in India, not for white children. Is a mission school a
boarding-school? I think they're made with boards, but I'm not sure."
"We won't discuss the matter," Mrs. Keith said coldly. "I have told you
the conditions under which you stay in my house."
Harebell looked at her aunt in silence for a minute. Her extreme
composure irritated her aunt.
"If you understand me, you had better go to bed. It is getting very
late."
"I have told lies," Harebell said slowly and thoughtfully. "When I was
very little I did. I had an ayah who frightened me, and I said I hadn't
picked some flowers when I had. I'll try not to tell any to you. Daddy
told me it wasn't playing the game if I did. Good-night, Aunt Dinah."
"My name is Diana. Good-night."
She did not offer to kiss her. Harebell went upstairs very slowly.
There was a little choke in her throat. She suddenly felt an
overwhelming sense of loneliness and misery come over her. She crept
into her little bedroom; then throwing herself down on the hearthrug
before the fire, she burst into a passion of tears.
"Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do! Nobody loves me here; nobody
wants me! Oh, I wish I could run away to Mr. Graham. I wish he'd taken
me to see his old mother!"
She was tired and overwrought. Half an hour later, Goody found her
lying in the same position, but she had sobbed herself asleep. It was
with difficulty that she roused her sufficiently to undress her.
"I never knew you had come to bed. I meant to have sent Lucy to you.
We have been having our supper. It's so strange to have a child in the
house that I keep on forgetting it. Now won't you say your prayers
before you get into bed? You do say some prayers, don't you?"
"Who to?" asked Harebell, looking at Goody with wistfulness. "I used to
say them to daddy, but he has gone away, and I haven't said any prayers
since!"
"But you say your prayers to God," said Goody in shocked tones; "don't
you know that?"
Harebell shook her head.
"I talk to God very often," she said; "but I don't say my prayers to
Him. It was 'Our Father' I used to say to daddy. I never did understand
what it meant, but I learnt it when I was a baby, and he liked to hear
me say it."
Goody looked quite horrified, but she tried to give a satisfactory
explanation.
"Saying your prayers is talking to God; asking Him to forgive you for
being naughty, and begging Him to watch over you while you sleep."
"I don't talk like that," said Harebell with a superior smile.
"Well, kneel down now," said Goody, impatiently.
"I talk to God in bed. I don't kneel. I only used to kneel to daddy."
"It's most irreverent not to kneel; you kneel to God in church."
"So I do!" said Harebell, a light springing in upon her. "So I do. I
never thought of that."
She went down on her knees at once, closed her eyes, and began to
whisper. Goody folded up her clothes, but she was rather scandalized at
scraps she heard the little girl say.
"I expect you laughed when you made him, God, but I'm so glad he has
such a funny face—and if I could find a spell to melt her—would you
advise me not to think about it? I should like it soon, please—I must
have something to cuddle!"
As the whisper went on, Goody cleared her throat, then coughed.
Harebell looked up.
"Do you want to speak to me? It doesn't matter interrupting; God is
dreadfully accustomed to interrupting. You see, such millions of people
are talking to Him all day long!"
"I think you had better get into bed," said Goody severely.
Harebell meekly obeyed her, but the whispering went on even after she
had left the room.
"Never in my life have I seen such a child," was Goody's verdict
downstairs. "I would say one minute she was fifty years old, and the
next as ignorant as a savage! Uncanny, I call her! And yet I feel my
heart warm towards her!"
Later that evening Mrs. Keith visited her small niece, candle in hand.
She looked down upon the sleeping child with cold bitterness.
"More like her mother than father. I suppose deceit and dissimulation
is ingrained in her nature. She will be a continual reminder to me of
how I was duped."
Harebell's tired little face looked very sweet and content in her
sleep; her dark silky curls clustered round her forehead, and
accentuated the whiteness of her skin. She turned over on her side,
muttering:
"She turned into stone."
Mrs. Keith hastily left the room.
CHAPTER II
FIRST DAYS
HAREBELL arrived downstairs the next morning in the best of spirits.
Andy and she had managed to have a good deal of talk together before
Mrs. Keith came into the dining-room. They had discussed the weather,
the neighbourhood, the difference between black and white skins, the
cure for snake bites, and the possibility of a puppy taking up its
abode at Gable Lodge. Prayers were had; then Andy brought in the
breakfast, and when he had left the room, Mrs. Keith addressed her
niece.
"Till I find a governess for you, you can amuse yourself as you like.
I am always busy in the morning, and I do not wish to be disturbed. In
the afternoon you will walk out with me. There is a small sitting-room
at the end of this passage which has been got ready for your use. I
expect you to be tidy and always punctual at meals."
Harebell listened attentively. She nodded when her aunt had finished
speaking.
"It sounds very nice," she said, "but there's only one thing in the
world I want here, and I really don't know how I'm going to live
without it—I could do with a very little tiny one! And Andy thinks it
could be got if you let him look for it."
She paused, but Mrs. Keith was not in a mood to guess at a child's
requirements; so there was absolute silence for a moment or two.
"Quite a baby would do," Harebell went on insinuatingly, with her
head on one side; "before its eyes were open, and that would make it
cheaper."
"I don't know what you are talking about," said her aunt sharply; "but
I must insist upon your talking straightforwardly, and not beating
about the bush. It is a most objectionable practice."
"It's a puppy."
Harebell's tone was desperate; then she added hastily:
"I had to leave all my pets behind. I had a white kid, and a kitten,
and three dogs and a puppy, and my pony, and you see they all knew me,
and we always talked together. I feel like—you read at prayers this
morning—'Rachael weeping for her children, and not being comforted.'
I'm simply thirsting for a puppy."
"I never have any animals about the house," was the stern response.
"But—"
"Do not argue. Be silent. Finish your breakfast."
For a moment, Harebell looked as if she meditated a rush from the room.
Her cheeks got scarlet, and she stamped with her foot under the table.
Her aunt wisely took no notice of it. In a few minutes the cloud of
passion passed away from Harebell's face.
She crept away from the table very silently when breakfast was over.
She passed Andy in the hall.
"It's no use," she said tragically; "I shan't be able to live here. I
shall die of a broken heart!"
"Oh!" said Andy with his merry twinkle. "You won't die of it with me
at hand. I know how to mend hearts when they're broken. I can mend
most things, and people's hearts are stronger than they think. Mostly
cracks, not breakages."
Harebell looked at him with eager interest.
"How do you know the difference?" she said. "My fairy book tells me of
broken hearts—it says nothing of cracks."
"Ah!" said Andy with a nod. "You let me feel yours later in the day,
when my work is done, I'll soon tell you; but I'm clearing away the
breakfast now."
He went on into the dining-room. Harebell gave a little skip along the
passage; her heart felt lighter already. She put her small hands upon
it, or upon the place in her chest in which she thought it was.
"I suppose it isn't exactly broken yet," she said to herself, "but I
never know how soon it will be, if I don't get a puppy!"
She went on into the little room that was to be her schoolroom. Andy
had let her see it before breakfast.
It was plainly furnished; a square table, an armchair, and two others,
a cupboard in the wall, and a bookshelf, but the window opened out
upon a green lawn, and there were bright crocuses and hyacinths in the
flower-beds.
Harebell went straight to the bookcase. A very dingy row of books
were there, and though she took them down one by one, there was not
one story-book amongst them. The only book she thought might prove
interesting was an illustrated encyclopædia. That she decided she
would look at and read some other day. She opened the low window, but
shivered at the cold blast of air which swept into the room. Then she
ran out into the passage again and up the stairs.
In a very few minutes, she got into her warm coat and cap, and a little
later was dancing and skipping round the old garden. Presently she
came to a green door in the old wall. She tried to open it, then found
it was bolted, but after a few valiant efforts she unbolted it, and
discovered that it led out into the road.
"Now," she said to herself, "I am going to see what England is like!"
England seemed extremely dull, as she walked along, for it was a
country road, and the two tall hedges on either side quite prevented
her from seeing over the tops of them.
"I haven't anybody to talk to," she said, with a pang of self-pity;
"all my darlings left in India, and I'm sick, quite sick of grown-up
people! They don't understand, and they never will!"
She walked along discontentedly; then suddenly looked up in delight.
Round a corner, came a little girl and boy followed by a lady. In an
instant Harebell had darted forward, and had held out her hand.
"How do you do?" she said to the little girl. "What is your name? Mine
is Harebell, and I only came to England yesterday."
The little girl stared at her, and then smiled in a hesitating sort of
way. She was shorter than Harebell, and much fatter; she had pretty
flaxen hair which fell down to her waist.
The boy was very much the same height and had the same colouring. He
laughed out loud at Harebell's speech.
"Where do you come from? Timbuctoo? Isn't she a funny-looking girl,
Miss Forster?"
But the lady, who was the children's governess, passed on.
"Hush!" she said. "Don't be so rude, Peter; and how often am I to tell
you that you are to take no notice of strange children."
"But she isn't a common child. Who is she?"
This much Harebell heard, but no more. They passed her by as if she had
been a stone upon the road. She looked wistfully after them.
"In India, I would have asked them to spend the day with me, and they
would have been glad. They're very rude and horrid!"
Tears came to her eyes.
"I shan't be able to live, unless I find somebody to play with. Oh,
I wish I had a puppy! I wish I had something to cuddle in my arms,
something that would be able to look at me with living eyes!"
She retraced her steps. It seemed no good to go farther on. Evidently
people would not make friends with her in England!
"I shall have to make up a friend," she said to herself, and before she
had reached her aunt's house she was in the world of dreams.
At lunch she asked her aunt about the children whom she had met.
"They are the Rectory children," said her aunt. "Of course they would
not speak to you. They did not know who you were."
"But I could have told them in a minute," said Harebell promptly; "I
was ready to tell them everything."
"You ought not to have spoken to them at all. We don't do those kind of
things in England."
Harebell said no more. In the afternoon she walked out with her aunt,
and for the greater part of the time they walked in silence.
At last Harebell gave a little chuckling laugh.
"I can't help it," she said, looking up, and seeing her aunt's glance
of surprise; "we never do this kind of thing in India, except the
natives, when they're doing a pilgrimage. I was pretending to myself
that you and me was doing one; and I wondered when we should stop, and
then I began to count your slow, solemn steps, and it made me think of
a walking doll I had; and then I thought p'r'aps you walked out for
your sins; my ayah told me of some fakirs who did it, and I wondered
what your sins were like, and then I laughed, for I was making up some
for you!"
She paused for breath.
"I don't think you are called upon to tell me all your thoughts," her
aunt said gravely.
"But I shall really burst if I don't. I feel just like that, unless you
would tell me yours. That would be most interesting!"
"If you want to talk," her aunt said, "you can repeat me the dates of
the Kings of England, or the multiplication tables."
"Oh," cried Harebell, "I don't know any of them. I won't talk another
word! I'll think hard instead."
The walk was over at last. They only met a few countrymen with waggons,
and when Harebell returned home, she flew out to the garden, where Andy
was weeding. Then her tongue rattled away at an alarming pace; but Andy
talked quite as hard, and worked too.
"You'd best help me with my work if I help you with yours," he said.
"What is my work?" said Harebell.
"I should say 'twas tongue-wagging," said Andy promptly.
Harebell felt snubbed; but she set to weeding under his direction, and
enjoyed herself thoroughly until tea-time.
Her aunt talked a little more to her then, and asked her many questions
about her life in India.
She was astonished to hear that Harebell had never held a needle in her
hand, and after tea was over, gave her her first lesson in sewing. At
half-past seven she sent her to bed.
Upstairs Harebell told Goody what she thought of her first day in
England.
"It's very amusing to see all the new ways and things," she confided to
her; "but this is a very dull house—at least it's a frozen one—that's
what I call it. Andy is the only one who can laugh. You must be frozen
if you can't laugh. And Aunt Diana is the snow queen; she'll slowly
freeze me as she froze poor little Kay. Do you know Hans Andersen,
Goody? Gerda found Kay at last, and melted him. I think she did it by
crying over him. Kay had got a heart of ice. I couldn't cry over Aunt
Diana if I tried ever so! I simply couldn't do it, so she must just go
on as she is. But I won't get frozen myself if I can help it. Oh dear,
it just seems like a year to-day. Will every day be the same, Goody?"
"I really can't keep pace with you, child! Never did I hear such a
chatterer; and you mustn't talk of your aunt so. It isn't nice. She's
very kind to have you in her house at all. She was never one for
children, and she's lived too long alone now to get any different."
Goody sighed as she spoke. Harebell looked at her very gravely.
"I don't think you're frozen," she said slowly; "but I can't say
anything but that this is a very dull, frozen house!"
The next few days passed in much the same way. A little dressmaker,
from the village near, came to measure Harebell for new frocks. She was
slightly deformed, but had a good patient face, and Harebell suddenly
informed her that she loved her.
"There's a look in your eyes which I haven't seen since a nice
missionary lady in India took me on her lap and talked to me about
heaven," she said.
Miss Triggs smiled at the little girl.
"I'm glad you've had talks about heaven," she said, taking some pins
out of her mouth and pausing in her fitting. "Is it your home, dearie?
It's mine."
"It belongs to all of us," said Harebell, "doesn't it?"
Miss Triggs shook her head.
"Well, it ought to by rights, but there's some who would feel mighty
strange there, and 'tis only for the children of the Kingdom—them that
have stepped through the Door?"
"What door?" asked Harebell interested at once.
"The Lord Jesus Christ is the Door," said the little dressmaker
gravely. "Don't you know He says: 'I am the Door, by Me if any man
enter in, he shall be saved'?"
"I don't see how Jesus Christ can be a door," said Harebell slowly and
reflectively.
Then she looked up at Miss Triggs, smiling.
"I think I know how it's done. He holds out his arms and we run
underneath them."
"You run into them, dearie, that's it. 'He shall gather the lambs with
His arm, and carry them in His bosom.'"
Harebell was silent for a moment.
"I like that idea about the door," she said. "I always love strange
doors, and I always try to get through them to the other side. I wonder
if I'm through the Door, Miss Triggs?"
"You can go through to-night," said Miss Triggs.
Goody interrupted the conversation at this point, and Harebell's frock
was discussed.
When Miss Triggs went away, Harebell said:
"It's a funny thing, Goody, but there's something in the eyes of people
that tells you when they're good. Do you think God is inside them, and
looks out now and then?"
Goody was, as usual, shocked by Harebell's speeches. The little girl
was so much in earnest that she could not see why she was wrong in
speaking so, and then Goody went on to talk about Miss Triggs.
"She is a good little woman if ever there was one. She keeps an old
mother and a worthless scamp of a drunken brother on what she earns,
and the house is like a new pin, never a speck of dust to be seen. She
do suffer cruelly, sometimes from her back—and that was done as a child
by her drunken father. She's always suffered for the sins of others, I
say, and always smiling and happy. If everybody lived as she lives, the
world would be a different place."
"I should like to go and see her," said Harebell thoughtfully; "and I'd
like to see her brother too. I'm so interested in wicked people. All
drunkards are wicked, aren't they?"
But Goody went away. She told Andy downstairs that Harebell gave her
such continual shocks when she talked to her, that she was quite
"dumbfounded to hear her."
The day after this, Mrs. Keith said to Harebell at breakfast:
"I have made arrangements for you to do lessons with the Rectory
children. You are to be at the Rectory every morning at nine o'clock,
and leave again at half-past twelve. I hope you will be very good
and give no trouble to their governess. It is very kind of her to
be willing to take another pupil. Mrs. Garland will be here this
afternoon; she wants to see you."
"Is Mrs. Garland the governess?"
"No, the Rector's wife."
Harebell's eyes shone with joy.
"It will be perfect!" she exclaimed. "And now those children will have
to speak to me, and I shall have somebody to talk to. Shan't I do
lessons with them in the afternoon?"
"You may have to go for music lessons in the afternoon, but that has
still to be settled. I have another matter to speak to you about. Mr.
Graham has written to me, and wants to come down to see you, as he is
passing through this part of the country this week. I have asked him to
lunch to-morrow."
"Oh, it's too much!" cried Harebell. "Why does it all come at once? And
this morning when I got up, I thought you and me were going to live
alone together for ever. Isn't it strange how sudden things alter! What
a happy time I'm going to have!"
She could hardly finish her breakfast for excitement. She ran out into
the garden afterwards and worked off her superfluous spirits by racing
round and round the paths.
Then she went to find Andy, who was busy in his pantry.
"Of course," he said; "I knowed good times would come. They always does
to all of us. The most dismal day in the year isn't more'n twelve hours
long; you go to sleep and, like a Jack-in-the-box, a fresh day is on
you, bringing you all sorts of surprises!"
"Do you know the Rectory children, Andy?"
"You've asked me that dozens o' times, and I tells you 'Yes' and
'No.' They be ordinary children, mischievous at times, and forgettin'
their manners, but their mother be a fine woman. She has the ways of
the quality, for she's one of 'em. Used to live at Cumberstone Hall,
fifteen mile from here—her father were my father's squire—and I well
remember our school treats at the Hall when Miss Mary used to come and
join us—a pretty little maid in white frocks and golden curls."
"Mrs. Garland is coming to see me this afternoon," said Harebell,
importance in her tone. "But that's nothing, when I think of my dear
Mr. Graham coming to-morrow!"
Mrs. Garland appeared at tea-time, and Harebell came into the
drawing-room in her new blue serge frock. She held herself very
straight, and put out one little slim hand in silence.
Mrs. Garland was a youngish woman still, and had a good deal to say for
herself. She had a bright kind face, and drew Harebell towards her,
giving her a kiss.
"Why, Diana, I can see Frances over again! She's the image of what her
mother used to be."
Mrs. Keith did not seem pleased at the resemblance, but she said
nothing.
Something in Harebell's eyes made Mrs. Garland add:
"But her eyes are her father's. Well, little one, we shall welcome you
for your parents' sakes here. Do you like the idea of coming to learn
with my boy and girl?"
Harebell squeezed her hands tightly together.
"I'm simply yearning for it!" she said.
Mrs. Garland looked at her with the greatest amusement.
"And are you yearning for lessons? I must tell my youngsters that."
"Oh no," said Harebell hastily. "I don't know anything about them, but
it's the company I want."
Her aunt looked at Mrs. Garland with a slight smile.
"Harebell is a great talker," she said, "and wants more outlet for her
tongue than she can get in this house."
"Oh, well," said Mrs. Garland quickly, "children will be children, and
ought to be amongst their kind. We're poor company for them, Diana. But
this seems a bit of originality. I hope she'll do my little ones good.
They're hardly brilliant—I must own it! I suppose I expect too much;
and, after all, genius brings much danger in its path. They're dears,
both of them!"
Then she took hold of Harebell's hand and patted it.
"You want fattening up," she said; "too thin! She's much too thin,
Diana. Have you tried Grape-nuts? And Benger's Food?"
Harebell looked horrified.
"I've come from India," she said; "it's only babies and old people who
are fat there!"
"She has a good appetite," said Mrs. Keith indifferently.
"What is your little girl's name?" Harebell asked, looking up at Mrs.
Garland with earnest eyes.
"Not such a pretty name as yours. We call her Nan. Her real name is
Anne, and my boy is Peter. There are a good many Peters in the world
just now."
"Do you think they like me coming to lessons? I saw them out the other
day, and they wouldn't speak to me. It was a dreadful disappointment;
it almost broke my heart. You see, I was simply longing to talk to
them."
"They told me about it; but they did not know who you were."
"But they could see I wasn't a native," said Harebell quickly.
Mrs. Garland laughed.
"You must tell us all about India. I suppose you love it, don't you?"
Harebell's eyes grew misty. She looked across at her aunt, who had
moved to the other end of the room on purpose that Mrs. Garland and
Harebell should talk together.
"I feel quite sick for India," she said, putting one small hand on her
chest. "It's a frozen house here. Do you think Aunt Diana will ever
melt? She's the snow queen, and isn't she beautiful?"
A light kindled in her eyes. She went on in an earnest whisper:
"Some day she will melt, when she can get anybody to cry over her."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Garland, catching her breath, "you are a little witch,
I believe! How much do you know, I wonder! More of people than of
books, I expect. I wish I was going to teach you. Well, Diana, I must
be going."
Harebell was dismissed. When she had left the room, Mrs. Garland said:
"She is a most interesting study, Diana. Don't you like having her?"
Mrs. Keith spoke almost fiercely:
"You know how I dislike children. It's a daily penance to me. I mean
to do my duty by her, but nothing else. Do you forget that her mother
stole my lover? I find myself looking for the same traits in the child.
My sister deceived me systematically for two years. She lied and
hoodwinked me with a smiling face. Is it any wonder that I cannot bring
myself to fondle her daughter?"
"Poor motherless mite!" said Mrs. Garland; but she knew it was useless
to say any more.
CHAPTER III
CHRYSOPRASUS
MR. GRAHAM arrived the next day. Harebell flew into his arms with a
little choking sob.
"I've not properly enjoyed myself once, since we said good-bye," she
cried pathetically; "and England isn't 'home' as everybody calls it in
India. It isn't one bit home to me! And I haven't even seen an animal
since I came! Not a single one!"
Mrs. Keith had left the room, so Harebell poured out her soul with
perfect freedom.
"How very disobliging of the animals!" said Mr. Graham with twinkling
eyes. "For we do have some in England, you know."
"There ought to be horses, and cows, and cats, and dogs, and all kinds
of pigs and chickens," went on Harebell gravely. "I've seen them in
books that come from England, so I know. And there isn't one; no, not a
little one in this house!"
She spread out her small hands tragically.
"At the bottom of the garden there is a stable," she continued. "Andy
uses it for wood, and all kinds of rubbish. He says when this house was
first built, the man of it kept a horse and trap. Aunt Diana doesn't
like animals; but then, she can't like anything, poor thing—"
Harebell dropped her voice to a whisper.
"She's the snow queen, and has a lump of ice where her heart used to
be!"
With big eyes she waited to see the result her statement would have
upon Mr. Graham.
He looked at her gravely; then he said:
"Ice is easily melted, you know."
"By tears, hot tears," said Harebell very thoughtfully; "or by fire and
sun. That's what people tell me. I haven't seen any ice yet, you know.
But I feel it from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. It's
all over the house."
Here she waved her hands again.
"And, Mr. Graham, I'm getting silenter and silenter; and if it wasn't
for doing lessons with the Rectory children, I think my heart would
break."
"It's only grown-up hearts that break," said Mr. Graham. "I assure you
that yours will be quite safe for a long time yet."
"That's how Andy talks; but I thought you'd understand better. Andy
laughs at everything I say—every single thing!"
"I'm not laughing, but I'm glad to hear about the Rectory children. Who
are they?"
"Well, you see, I haven't really got to know them yet; but they're sure
to be nice, don't you think so? The boy is called Peter, that's an ugly
name I think. I wonder and wonder who will be my real friend. I don't
think I can like them both; not for a private and special friend, you
know. It must be one or the other."
"I should think you and the girl would chum up; you would have the same
tastes."
"But we mightn't at all," said Harebell hastily. "I like animals, not
dolls; and I like men and boys much better than women and girls. I
always wish I'd been born a boy."
"You're a thorough little woman," said Mr. Graham emphatically. "Don't
you make any mistake about it. You're mass of contradiction and moods."
Harebell's under-lip quivered.
In moment Mr. Graham altered his tone.
"My dear child, you'll enjoy both your young friends. And now listen to
an idea that has just come into my head!"
Harebell brightened up and clapped her hands.
"There! That's how you used to speak on board! And your ideas were
always lovely."
"I know what a daring little rider you were in India. Supposing I were
to produce a small pony from somewhere, do you think your aunt would
give him a home in her stable?"
Of course Harebell went into ecstasies. She danced up and down and
flung her arms round Mr. Graham's neck.
"Oh, you darling! Oh, what a glorious idea! Oh, let me call Aunt Diana
at once!"
"No, no; I am a prudent man. I will talk to her about it when you are
not here."
She sobered down then, but her tongue went chattering on, and when Mrs.
Keith came back into the room, she could not keep it still.
Mr. Graham stayed to lunch, and then had his private interview with
Mrs. Keith. She was very hard to persuade.
"I have no one to attend to a pony."
"Couldn't a lad come in from the village? Let me stand the extra
expense. She has always ridden. It seems a pity to drop it."
"She will not be able to indulge in such expensive tastes when she
grows up."
"We will hope her future husband may be able to gratify them," said Mr.
Graham. "I don't think Harebell is the sort to remain unmarried for
long."
Mrs. Keith looked very stern; then suddenly she gave way.
"If you really wish to make her a present of a pony, I will make
arrangements for its keep. But I do not know who will accompany her
when she rides out."
"Let her trot about the country lanes alone. It won't hurt her. Limit
her to a certain time and locality, if you like. You will find her
obedient; but she needs a certain amount of freedom to grow. I have
known her since she was a baby."
He got his way, and his departure was sweetened to Harebell by the
thought of the pleasure in front of her. She got hold of her aunt's
hand and squeezed it in her excitement.
"I do thank you. I shall always and for ever be good now. A pony of
my own will be simply glorious! You see, Aunt Diana, horses really
understand you if you talk to them; they're like dogs, and I do want
somebody to talk to."
"You will have the Rectory children as companions," said her aunt
coldly. "I want you to understand that this pony must not distract you
from your lessons. You are a very ignorant little girl, and have a
great deal of lost time to make up."
Harebell could not be quenched. She fled out to Andy and informed him
that she was simply "riotously happy."
"I can't think where you get your words from!" he said, shaking his
head. "'Happy' is good enough for any one."
"Daddy used to say 'riotously.' I've heard him often. It means, Andy,
that I'm bursting with joy! Just think what I've got in front of me!"
In a few days' time her lessons began. She walked to the Rectory one
bright morning and was received by Mrs. Garland, who took her straight
to the schoolroom. It was not yet nine o'clock. The governess was not
there; but Peter and Nan came forward and shook hands with her.
"You'll have to know me now," said Harebell with twinkling eyes.
Mrs. Garland left them together. The little girls eyed each other
silently.
"I wish you were a boy," said Peter gloomily.
Harebell laughed.
"So do I! But I like to play with boys. I knew two boys in India; they
had a screechy whiny sister, who always wanted to play with us, and
then cried when she did. They had to go to school in England. I was
sorry when they went."
"I'm not a screechy whiny sister," said Nan, tossing her head like a
war horse. "I can do everything the same as Peter, and I can run as
fast."
Then Harebell began to tell them of the pony she was going to have.
"I feel he'll be a more deep friend than you," she announced. "Because
he'll belong to me, and to no one else."
"We have a donkey," said Nan, "who gallops faster than a horse."
"Then we can have races."
Miss Forster's entrance at this moment stopped further conversation.
She greeted Harebell kindly, but in a business-like fashion, and
lessons began without further delay.
Of course Harebell was woefully backward, though in reading and writing
she was as good as the other two children. But though backward, she was
intelligent, and interested in everything that she was told. In the
middle of lessons, she suddenly looked up at the governess with her
bright eyes.
"I suppose you know all about everything?" she said.
"Not by any means. I only know so much more than you do, that it is my
business to teach you."
Harebell thought over this, then she leant her arms on the table and
asked earnestly:
"Are there enough books in the world to tell you about everything?
There are simply thousands of things I want to know!"
"Take your arms off the table and go on with your sum. After lessons
are over, you can ask me questions."
Harebell obeyed instantly, but she was ready with her questions before
she went home.
"Grown-up people always turn away when I ask them about things, or they
laugh," said Harebell. "Now you promise not to do either, will you?"
Miss Forster promised, a glint of amusement in her eyes, which happily
Harebell did not see. Nan and Peter stared at her with open mouth and
eyes. She talked to their governess as if she were her equal.
"The first thing I want to know is about spells," Harebell said
earnestly. "Spells for making ice people melt specially. There must be
some. And spells for making poor dumb things talk; or for making us
understand what they say. Chairs and tables have their lives as well
as us, haven't they? They were alive and moving when they were trees.
You see, I like talking, and if I'm in a room by myself, I look round
to see who I'd like to talk to. But they never answer back, and I'm
perfectly certain if I could find the right spell, they would. Perhaps
I mean I want to break the spell and make them speak; that's what I
want."
"You're a funny child," Miss Forster said gravely. "I suppose you
believe in witches, and fairies, and all that sort of thing?"
Harebell's eyes glowed. She gave a little mysterious nod.
"In India I've seen—oh, I can't tell you—but I know there are fairies
in England! Dad used to tell me about them. They dance in the woods. I
haven't seen a wood yet. It's like a jungle without the wild beasts and
snakes. Do tell me if there's a book of spells."
"Oh yes, there are a good many," said Miss Forster; "but they belong to
a past age. I can give you a spell for making an ice person melt—only
one thing will do it."
"Do tell me."
"I'll write it on a paper and give it to you. You can read it, and
think over it, and try it when you get home."
Harebell was enchanted. She hardly spoke to Nan and Peter, but trotted
home with a piece of paper squeezed tightly in her hand. When she got
up to her room she read it. Only two words:
"Love them."
She was very disappointed at first; then she thought about it, and
nodded approval.
"Gerda loved Kay, and I have to love Aunt Diana, but mustn't say
anything about it to any one. I must do it in secret. I don't quite
know how to do it, but I'll try."
It was a happy day when her pony arrived. Andy insisted on taking
charge of it himself. He only asked his mistress for a little lad,
three days a week, to help him in the garden.
"I was brought up in a stable myself," said Andy proudly, as he patted
the brown, silky coat of the little Welsh pony. And Harebell promptly
added:
"Like Jesus Christ. I'm sure you must have been a very good child,
Andy. You ought to have been."
"There you go now," remonstrated Andy, "like lightning for coupling up
things, and never very seemly or respectful to the Almighty, I says! My
father was head groom to Lord Walters, and I sat on a horse afore I was
in breeches."
Mrs. Keith inspected the pony in silence. Harebell covered him with
kisses.
"I am so glad Mr. Graham did not tell me his name. For I shall choose
one myself for him. He is my pony and he must have a beautiful name."
When she went to the Rectory the next day her thoughts were full of
it. The children had half an hour's interval in the morning, when
they generally played in the garden; but it was wet, and Harebell was
perfectly content to be in the schoolroom.
"I have to find a name for him, and I shall get it from the Bible," she
announced. "It's sure to be a good one, then."
"There are no ponies mentioned in the Bible," said Peter. "I can give
you a dozen. 'Soft Eye,' Tommy, Brownie, Silky. Is he a he?"
Harebell nodded.
"I shall choose it from the Revelations," she said, "because that's the
book of glories."
She took hold of her Bible, which was in her satchel, and sat down on
the floor by the window to study it.
"Let me help you," said Nan.
But Harebell shook her off.
"You don't understand what I want, Nan; it must be a name which no one
else on earth has. He is so very special!"
"You make such a fuss over everything," said Nan a little sulkily.
She and her brother were not quite sure whether they liked this new
comrade of theirs. She was so very self-sufficient and dictatorial.
They longed to snub her, but at present were rather afraid of her. The
half-hour had nearly gone, before Harebell found her name, then she
lept to her feet.
"Hurrah! I've found it. I shall call him 'Chrysoprasus.'"
She could hardly pronounce the word.
"I've never heard that before," said Peter.
"It's almost the last chapter; it's one of the precious stones in the
beautiful city. I love a long name, don't you? A precious stone is a
jewel. All the natives have lots of jewels in India. I know all about
them, and my pony is a jewel to me, and very, very, very precious."
Then her thoughts took another turn.
"Do you know Miss Triggs? She likes Revelations, she told me so. She
talks very interesting about heaven."
"She's a dressmaker," said Nan; "what a funny girl you are, to talk to
a dressmaker about heaven!"
"Why? She likes it. She was talking to me of the Door into the Kingdom.
Have you got through yet? Sometimes I think I have, and sometimes I
think I haven't!"
"What door?" asked Nan with interest.
"The Door," replied Harebell a little impatiently. "We're all outside
or inside the Kingdom, and the Door gets us in."
"Do you mean the Kingdom of England?" questioned Peter. "We only read
about kingdoms in our history-books."
"No, I mean God's kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven."
"We can't get into heaven before we die," said Peter conclusively.
"We can get into this kingdom any day we want to; Miss Triggs said so."
Harebell was beginning to get rather hot in the discussion. Then Miss
Forster came into the room, and lessons were recommenced. When they
were over, Harebell put on her hat and coat to return home, and Peter
and Nan accompanied her to the garden gate. They met the Rector who was
coming in. He always had a kindly word for Harebell, and she at once
seized the opportunity.
"Mr. Garland, you know all about God's Kingdom, don't you? And what you
say must be right. Peter and Nan won't believe me. Can't we get into
the Kingdom of Heaven before we die?"
"Indeed you can," said the Rector, smiling down upon the eager face
uplifted to him. "We ought to be the subjects of that kingdom down
here."
Then he looked at the children in front of him, and said: "Of such is
the Kingdom of Heaven."
"And we ought to get inside it, oughtn't we?" pursued Harebell. "Not
stay outside."
"I hope you are inside it," said the Rector gravely.
Harebell shook her head doubtfully. "I'm not so sure about it."
Then she remembered her pony, and flew off along the road, waving a
farewell to the children.
"She's a funny girl," said Peter, "her mind is all tumbled up and pours
out anyhow!"
His father laughed.
"I think I like her," said Nan, "because she says things so different
to everybody else; but, dad dear, she's going to call her pony a most
awful name in Revelations—a Chris—something!"
"That doesn't tell me much," said the Rector. "Now run along in, I want
to speak to your mother."
"Aunt Diana," said Harebell at dinner; "do you know much about
christenings? When I was in India a lady—the governor's wife—christened
a yacht. There were pictures of it, and dad told me she poured a bottle
of wine over it. Babies have water—what should my pony have? Would it
be wicked to christen him like a baby? God made him, didn't he? He
belongs to God just as much as a baby does."
"Don't you know that animals have no souls?" said Mrs. Keith. "You
cannot play at such games. Ponies don't require christening."
"But I'm giving him a name," said Harebell. "Couldn't I have a little
drop of wine, just in a medicine bottle?"
"Most certainly not. You are talking nonsense. Go on with your dinner."
Harebell next consulted Andy.
"I don't see why Chrysoprasus shouldn't have a proper christening. Will
you come into the stable this afternoon and let us do it?"
"Oh, I'll come fast enough. But I don't like your name. 'Tis a foreign
one, reckon. Indian, I should say."
"It's in the Bible; it's a beautiful one."
She insisted upon having a ceremony, and dragged Andy off with her.
Then she persuaded Lucy, the housemaid, to come as a looker-on. She
robed herself in a soft Indian shawl, and having coaxed Mrs. Andrew
to give her some home-made lemonade in a bottle, she poured it very
solemnly over her pony's head.
"I name thee Chrysoprasus. And Chrysoprasus thou shalt be called to the
end of thy life."
Then she made Lucy and Andy cry out with her: "Long life to
Chrysoprasus! Hip, hip, hurrah!"
And after this performance was over she went out for her first ride.
Her Aunt had stipulated that Andy should go with her for the first
time. The old man came back and informed his mistress that Harebell was
a born rider, and had a perfect seat and hand.
"And the pony is as quiet with her as a sheep," he ejaculated. "She
won't come to harm in our quiet lanes."
So Harebell was allowed an hour's ride every day, directly after lunch
in the afternoon, and that hour was a golden time with her. Her cheeks
began to get rosy, and her thin little face to fill out.
Mrs. Keith took very little notice of her, beyond seeing her at her
meals, and for a short time in the evening before she went to bed.
Harebell grew accustomed to her aunt's silent ways, and lost her first
awe of her; but she told herself over and over again that she could
never love her. She talked a great deal to her pony, and no longer felt
lonely.
And her lessons at the Rectory became more and more interesting to her.
Peter, Nan, and herself soon became the greatest friends.
"England is a very nice place after all," she told Goody one day.
And Goody assented to the sentiment with much fervour.
CHAPTER IV
TOM
ONE day Harebell paid a visit to Miss Triggs. She rode over to the
village to post a letter for her aunt, and saw the little dressmaker at
her cottage door. It was a very easy matter to tie Chrysoprasus to the
gate-post.
"May I come in and see your little house?" Harebell asked.
Miss Triggs led the way proudly into her best parlour. The window was
shrouded with flowers and muslin curtains. There were fashion papers on
the round table, and an unfinished dress or two hanging up on the wall.
Harebell thought it a very pretty room; she admired the dried grasses
on the chimneypiece, and the bright-coloured pictures on the walls.
Then she looked at an illuminated text over the door.
"'He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me
with the robe of righteousness.'"
"Is that a text?" she asked.
"Yes, isn't it a nice one for a dressmaker?" said Miss Triggs brightly.
"I make clothes for people's bodies, but the Lord makes clothes for our
souls."
Harebell looked at her with bright grave eyes.
"You're a very good person," she said reflectively. "Do you know,
I don't know whether I'm through the Door or not. I have asked God
to take me through, but I don't feel any different. How do you know
whether you're through or not?"
"That's where faith comes in," said Miss Triggs, with a beautiful smile
on her face.
"If you kneel down and ask Jesus to take you through, He will. And you
must believe He has done it. Why, my dear, you've just to hold out your
arms to Him. He loves you; He wants to have you in His Kingdom. Of
course He does. He opened the Door into the Kingdom when He died upon
the Cross. It has been standing wide open ever since for us all to go
through. You won't have any difficulty in getting through—but there's a
lot of difficulties after."
"Tell me."
"Well, p'r'aps I shouldn't say so, for He makes it easy. 'Tis the life
of the Kingdom. We have to live like children of the Kingdom."
"Subjects," corrected Harebell. "A king has subjects in his Kingdom;
Mr. Garland said so. I like the word subject much better than a child.
It—it sounds more important and grown-up. I'm a subject if I'm through."
"You'll have to obey the laws, and fight and work for your King."
Harebell nodded.
"I know what the laws are—the ten commandments."
Then, with a child's inconsequence, she changed the subject.
"I want to see your brother. Is he here?"
Miss Triggs' bright smile faded.
"No, dear, he isn't. He spends most of his time away from me. Will you
come in and see my mother? She dearly loves a visitor."
So Harebell went into a bright shining kitchen at the back of the
house. There was a sewing-machine in one corner and a table littered
with work. Miss Triggs' mother sat in an armchair by the fire. She was
very old, but she looked at Harebell with bright eyes.
Harebell shook hands with her, and began to talk.
Miss Triggs went away for a few minutes, and in her absence Harebell
asked eagerly:
"Mrs. Triggs, who do you like best, your wicked son or your good
daughter?"
The old lady raised her head.
"I'll have nobody comin' here and abusin' my son, that I won't. He may
be foolish, but he be my boy, and he be very good to his old mother."
"Oh!" said Harebell, abashed. "I—I—thought he was a drunkard. I would
like to see him."
But Mrs. Triggs muttered angrily to herself, and when Miss Triggs came
back, she could not soothe her.
"'Tis you a-callin' your brother such names and tellin' the whole place
of his failin'. Take the little maid away. She be like the rest, just
abusin' of him, like as you've teached her!"
Harebell retreated to the door, frightened at the old woman shaking her
fist in her face.
"Tell her I'm sorry, Miss Triggs."
Miss Triggs led her out of the cottage.
"Yes—yes, dear, 'tis only mother's way. She loves my brother like a
mother, you know, and can't bear any one to miscall him."
Harebell mounted her pony and rode thoughtfully away. But a little
farther on, she happened to meet Tom Triggs. He was slouching along
with his hands in his pocket. For a moment he looked up and eyed her.
Harebell's spirits rose at once.
"Are you Miss Triggs' brother? I hoped I would see you. I've been to
see your cottage."
"Seen the old woman? Yes, I be Tom Triggs right enough. A thorough bad
un, so they say."
He gave a surly laugh.
"But your old mother is very angry with me," said Harebell looking at
him with interest. "Because—you promise not to be angry—I called you
her wicked son."
The man's surliness vanished. His eyes twinkled. "You were a bold
little un. An' what did her say?"
"I can't tell you, but she was very angry, and Miss Triggs says she
loves you, and that's why it was." Then Harebell said cautiously: "Do
you drink all day long? Isn't it rather difficult? Now I like eating
better than drinking. I wonder if I was to eat all day long whether
it would be wicked? I should have to choose my food, for I certainly
couldn't eat porridge or bread-and-butter all that time. I think I
could manage a good many jam tarts."
Tom Triggs laughed; he straightened himself up and stroked the nose
of her pony. Then Harebell told him his name, and they were deep in
talk over ponies' names and their habits and tricks, when the Rector
came up. Tom Triggs lowered his head, and slouched off, but not before
Harebell had called after him:
"Good-bye; I hope I shall see you another day."
Then, with an explanatory wave of her hand after the retreating figure,
she said:
"It's Miss Triggs' brother, and I like him. I think he and me are going
to be friends."
"I wish he could be persuaded to do some work," said Mr. Garland rather
sadly.
"Has he got any he ought to do?" asked Harebell.
"He's a carpenter by trade. But nobody will employ him, as he won't
stick at any job, and lives half his days at the 'Black Swan,' spending
his sister's hard-earned money."
"Can't you tell him not to?" said the little girl with knitted brows.
The Rector looked at her with a smile and sigh.
"I am afraid my words are wasted. He and I have had many a talk. When a
man makes drink his master, he cannot get away from it."
"I suppose," said Harebell softly, "God could get him away."
"Yes, little one. God alone can help him now."
"If he gets through the Door, he'll be all right. I'll ask him."
The Rector did not quite understand her. Then he asked after her aunt.
"Aunt Diana is always well, I think, like me. She hasn't melted yet."
The Rector shook his head at her.
"Ah! You little know your aunt's troubles," he said, and then with a
nod, he passed on, and Harebell rode home very thoughtfully.
She tackled Andy as he was cleaning the silver in the pantry after tea.
"Andy, what are Aunt Diana's troubles? I didn't know she had any."
"Most on us have troubles," said Andy slowly; "and some take 'em
softly, and some hardly, but have 'em we must."
"I haven't any just now," said Harebell. "Of course I've had a
lot—chiefly in India, you know—mostly deaths I've had. They get killed
so quickly in India—'specially puppies. Has Aunt Diana had many deaths
belonging to her?"
Andy shook his head mysteriously.
"Ay, death would have been better, I'm thinkin'; 'twas a bad time
for her. But there, I reckon she'd rather have it over again than be
without the master as she is."
"Who is the master?"
"Why, Colonel Keith, to be sure."
"Is he dead?"
Andy lowered his voice.
"Hush you now, and don't be speakin' of it to a soul. The Colonel
is not dead—just away in foreign parts. You see, he were very
strong-willed, and so is she, and they are both hot-tempered, and he
used to struggle hard—that I know to be a fact—to get the better of it,
but her sharp words didn't help, and then one day there were a fine
rumpus, and she said she'd rather be chained to a brute beast than
to him—I heard her myself; but she were so hot that she didn't know
rightly what she were saying, and he says:"
"'All right, I snap your chains, and you are free!'"
"With that he walks right out of the door, and never comes back again,
nor sends her one word, and that were six years ago last Christmas. But
I knows, he be alive, for he always giv' me a pocket gardener's di'ry
every Christmas. Me and him were very good friends; and if you believe
me, that pocket di'ry have never missed coming to me every Christmas
since he went."
Harebell's face was a study; surprise, excitement, and keen interest
flitted across it.
"Oh," she said, "poor Aunt Diana! How she must want to see him!"
"She's turned hard and cold, but her heart inside be right," said Andy.
"I seed her take up my di'ry one day when I laid it on my pantry table,
and when she put it down, her lips were all of a quiver."
"Could we write to him and ask him to come back?"
"Bless your little heart, nobody knows which quarter of the globe he be
in—"
"What relation is he of mine?"
"I s'pose as how he be an uncle, eh?"
"Uncle what?"
"Uncle Herbert; but don't you go for to mention his name, or you'll get
old Andy into trouble."
"I'll only mention him to God," said Harebell, rather loftily; "and
I'll ask God not to tell anybody, if you like."
Andy turned away his head.
"'Tis something scandalous the way she talks of the Almighty," he
informed Goody later on; "and yet 'tis done quite innocent like. 'Tis
to be hoped the Almighty understands her, for I'm sure I don't."
"A good lot has happened to me to-day, darling Chris," said Harebell
softly in the ear of her pony, as she wished him good-night that
evening. She was getting quite accustomed to give him her confidences.
"It's a great comfort to tell secrets to some one who can't talk," she
said to herself.
"You see, Chris, I've heard about one new man, and I've made friends
with another, and it's very exciting to hear about an uncle of mine
who I never knew belonged to me. I'm very sorry Uncle Herbert was so
cross and ran away, but I dare say he's quite good now, sitting in
some corner by himself and thinking about Aunt Diana. It's dreadful
not to be able to tell him how unhappy she is without him. If he knew
she wanted him, he would come tearing back to-morrow. Of course my
best plan will be to ask God if He will be kind enough to make him
understand. In a dream, or something like that. But I'll leave Him to
do it the way He likes best. Isn't it nice, Chris, to have God knowing
about everybody and everything and able to speak all over the world in
the same minute? wonder if you understand about Him? He made you, so I
expect He speaks to you sometimes."
She was a long time over her prayers that evening. Goody waxed rather
impatient.
"It's just chattering, not praying that you're doing," she said a
little severely, when at last with a happy sigh, Harebell got up from
her knees.
Harebell looked up at her solemnly.
"Why, I've been pouring out, simply pouring," she said. "I had an awful
lot to pray about."
Goody shook her head in disapproval, but she had learnt not to argue
with Harebell.
Harebell never rested till she had another interview with Tom Triggs;
and this time she was perched on the garden wall, when he slouched by.
Mrs. Keith had gone out to tea, and Harebell was left to play alone in
the garden. She beamed all over when she saw who it was.
"If I jumped, could you catch me?" she asked.
Tom looked quite alarmed.
"You'd break your legs. Don't ye try it."
"But if there was a fire, and this was a window, you'd have to catch
me," said Harebell.
"But there ain't a fire," argued Tom.
She sat swinging her small legs to and fro, looking down upon him with
bright interested eyes.
"I wish," she said slowly, "that you would have a sweet little cottage
of your own, Tom, with some nice little children, then you could ask me
to tea. I should love to come."
Tom laughed. He took out his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco
from a greasy tin box in his pocket.
"Cottages and children cost money," he said. "I'm stony broke."
"But you could work for money, couldn't you? And give up drinking beer,
that costs a lot of money."
"Ah," said Tom, "this 'ere pipe and a mug o' beer be better company
than anybody else. The women and children be only a burden."
"I didn't say anything about women," said Harebell; "but I s'pose you'd
have to have a wife to mind the children when you went to work."
Tom looked at her with twinkling eyes. Then his mood changed. He
clenched one on his fists.
"Little missy, I'd give this 'ere right hand o' mine to be quit o' the
drink sometimes. There was a lass once who loved me. She and me had
set our hearts on that there cottage top o' village agen the old oak.
We was for havin' our banns cried, an' I were so dazed wi' the luck in
front o' me, I went and drunk more'n a man ought, and then visited my
maid, afore the stuff had worked itself out o' me. She were one o' the
Maxworthy stock, and held her head high, an' she sent me off, and would
have none o' me. So that sent me to the devil!"
"Oh," interrupted Harebell, "I'm sure you didn't go to him. He doesn't
live in this world, you know."
"But he does, right enough, missy. He have a tight hold of me—he and
the drink together."
Harebell looked startled, then she smiled reassuring. "I know Somebody
Who'll make you all right, and so do you."
Tom shook his head; he was ashamed of himself for giving his confidence
to this small maiden; but he was attracted by her earnest trustful
eyes, and did not seem able to help himself.
[Illustration: "I'D GET SOME GLUE, I THINK, AND STICK MY LIFE
TOGETHER," SAID HAREBELL.]
"Why, of course, God will. He always helps us to be good. I know what
I'd do if I were you."
"What?"
"I'd get some glue, I think, and stick my lips together, and put some
cotton-wool up my nose, and then I would walk past the public-house
six times running, and say a kind of spell. I'll make up one for you
and bring it to you to-morrow. Will you promise to meet me outside the
cottage you meant to live in? I will go with Chris. I know the old oak—"
"I'll be there—what time?"
"It mustn't be after four. Half-past three, because I ride then—"
Tom nodded, then slouched off; and Harebell watched till he was out of
sight.
"What a funny man he is!" she said to herself. Then she settled down on
the wall to compose a "spell." From a tiny child on her father's knee
she had been accustomed to help him make up rhymes, and after a good
deal of frowning and muttering, she evolved the following:—
Beer, beer!
Call me not here!
I shall drink no more,
For it makes me poor.
Beer, beer!
Though you're so near,
I can say good-bye
Without a cry.
So never no more
Will I cross the door
Where beer is sold
Till I'm dead and cold.
Beer, beer, you've spoilt my life,
And now I'll go and get a wife.
She was very pleased with this composition, and climbing down from the
wall, she ran indoors, and copied it out in her best handwriting, on
the largest sheet of paper she could find. It was shown to Andy, who
was awestruck at such a production, as Harebell hoped he would be.
"It's a piece of po'try, Andy. You didn't know I could write po'try,
did you? I shall write book upon book when I grow up. It's a kind of
spell, you know. To say to yourself when you're passing public-houses
and want to have a glass of beer."
"But what on earth do you know about beer?" questioned Andy.
"I have friends," said Harebell in a remote tone.
Andy shook his head slowly backwards and forwards.
"You'll never grow up," he muttered. "Your head be too big for your
body."
CHAPTER V
AN ACCIDENT
HAREBELL arrived first at the little cottage the next day. It was a
picture, with its thatched roof, and beehives against the wall, and
spring bulbs pushing themselves out of the ground. An old bed-ridden
woman lived there, with a niece who looked after her.
The oak was magnificent, and spread its branches in all directions.
Tom appeared, still smoking his pipe. He looked heavy-eyed and rather
surly, but could not keep away from Harebell, and when she presented
her rhyme to him, he read it slowly through, weighing every word.
She drew up her pony on the secluded side of the oak-tree. Tom leant
against the old trunk, and scratched his head as he slowly read the
verses.
"Hum!" he remarked, "I don't understand this here!"
"So never no more
Will I cross the door
Where beer is sold
Till I'm dead and cold."
"Will I be doin' it after I'm dead, d'you mean?"
"Oh no," said Harebell earnestly. "I hope you'll be in heaven then. You
see 'cold' goes with 'sold'; if people are dead they're quite cold—my
ayah told me they were. It means you'll never go into a public-house
for all your life."
"That do seem hard," said Tom thoughtfully; then he read the last two
lines and brightened up.
"Aye, that be it, missy. 'I'll go and get a wife.' First-rate poet you
be!"
He chuckled and repeated several times:
"Beer, beer, you've spoilt my life,
And now I'll go and get a wife."
"Then you'll have a dear little cottage and some work," said Harebell.
"Will you promise me you'll say this over, while you walk outside the
'Black Swan' to-day? It's a spell—it will work, I know it will."
Tom rubbed his head again.
Harebell continued:
"You must get the wife you meant to get. She will forgive you. Where is
she?"
"Bless yer heart, she married five years ago and is in Canada now, I
hear tell, wi' a long fam'ly!"
Harebell's face dropped.
"Well, we must find another. Which shall we find first, Tom? The
cottage, or the wife, or the work? Isn't it a pity, people are living
here. Oh, look! There's a woman coming out!"
The cottage door had opened, and a young woman came down the path; she
had a pleasant smiling face, and carried a basket on her arm. When she
reached the gate, she paused. It was in a rotten condition, and one of
the hinges was off. She had to untie a piece of rope. Tom looked on
with interest.
"Afternoon, Mr. Triggs," the young woman said brightly.
"Arternoon!" was the gruff response. "Seems as if a bit o' carpentering
were wanted there."
"I wish you'd come and do it for us. My aunt would be so glad to have
it mended."
Tom said nothing.
She waited for a moment, smiled at Harebell, then walked away towards
the village. Harebell bent over from her pony and touched Tom's
shoulder.
"You've got your work, Tom; you must mend that gate, and give up beer,
and next week marry that woman, and then come and live in this cottage!
Oh, it's turning out lovely!"
She clapped her hands gaily. Chris started at once for home, but
Harebell pulled him in.
"Tom, promise me you will!" she cried. "Promise!"
Tom shook his head. He bent his eyes upon her paper.
"Beer and I can't do without each other!" he muttered.
Then Harebell grew serious.
"Do you know the old woman who lives there? Let's go and see her."
"No, no, I bain't acquainted, I couldn't make so free of her door!"
Harebell was silent; then suddenly her eyes glowed.
"Oh, Tom! Of course there's a better way for you. The door reminds
me—you must get through the Door of the Kingdom, and then you'll belong
to God, and He will help you. God can do anything, you know."
Tom looked at her in a puzzled sort of way.
Then Harebell began her explanation:
"It's like this," she said, "there's a Door we can't see, but it's wide
open and it leads into God's Kingdom. We've all got to go through it.
Your sister knows about it, for she told me—and I think I'm through. If
you're through you're a subjec'—a King's subjec'—and no King's subjec'
could ever get drunk—it would be so disgraceful, wouldn't it? You just
walk through, Tom—now at once, where you are—it doesn't take any time."
"I don't know what you be driving at!" said Tom. "What door?"
Harebell bent her head and whispered:
"I must say it very soft to be respeck'ful. It's the Lord Jesus Christ,
Tom. I learnt the text, 'I am the Door,' He said, 'by Me, if any man
enter in, he shall be saved.' You've got to shut your eyes and hold
your arms out, and say very soft: 'Take me through, Jesus, I come to
You, and I ask You to take me through!' I did it in bed a few nights
ago. I stood right up in bed and did it. And I feel—I feel I'm through!"
Tom gazed at her in silence.
"You get through to-night, Tom. I'm sure Jesus will let you through; He
says 'any man,' you see, and I wasn't a man at all, and yet I feel I'm
through. You're the proper sort he wants."
Tom turned round.
"Good arternoon, missy—I'll read your po'try, I promise you!"
Harebell looked after his retreating figure wistfully.
"I've muddled it all up, Chris—and I'm sure God can help him better
than my spell."
She did not know that her words, "You're the proper sort he wants,"
rang in poor Tom's ears all that day and night.
"Harebell," said her aunt that same evening, when she was sitting by
her side hemming a towel, "I hear you have been seen talking to a man
called Tom Triggs, a rough bad man. I shall not be able to let you ride
about alone, if you pick up undesirable acquaintances. What possessed
you to speak to such a man at all?"
"Oh, Aunt Diana, I'm getting so fond of him! He is so nice to me—and we
talk about such interesting things—cottages, and wives, and work, and
beer—and even the Kingdom's Door!"
Mrs. Keith looked with cold hard eyes at the little girl.
"Explain yourself more clearly and don't talk so fast. When did you
first meet him?"
"He belongs to Miss Triggs. He's her brother, and Mrs. Triggs was angry
when I called him wicked. I don't think he's really wicked, Aunt Diana;
he wants to give up drinking beer, but he can't. You see, he was going
to have a wife once, but she wouldn't marry him, and then he—he went to
the devil!"
Harebell's voice sank to an awed whisper.
"I don't know quite what that means but he won't be with the devil any
longer if he gets through the Door. I told him about it, and then he
went away from me—and I gave him a spell to say about beer—I made it up
myself. Would you like to hear it?"
"I cannot have you talking to such men. You must have nothing more to
do with him."
"Oh, please let me, Aunt Diana—I'm so very very interested in him!
Please don't say I'm not to speak to him. Why, we've thought of a
cottage, and a wife, and some work—and if he never touches beer again
you'll let me have him for a friend—"
Mrs. Keith's lips compressed themselves together very tightly.
"I never argue. You are never to speak to him again."
Harebell had up to this moment been such a quiet sedate little girl in
her aunt's presence that Mrs. Keith hardly realized how deeply things
touched her.
Her cheeks crimsoned now and her eyes flashed. She brought down one of
her feet on the floor with an angry stamp.
"I shall speak to him! I shall run away from you! I don't like you at
all. You aren't a bit kind to me, like Tom Triggs, and I like him ever
so much better than I do you!"
Then she dashed down her work and fled from the room, banging the door
passionately behind her.
Mrs. Keith sat quite still for a few minutes, then she rang the bell.
Andy appeared with a scared face.
"Send Goodheart to me—"
So Goody was summoned.
"Find Miss Harebell and put her straight to bed. She has been very
naughty."
Then Mrs. Keith took up a library book and tried to dismiss her small
niece from her mind.
Harebell meanwhile was in the stable, sobbing passionately, with her
arms round her pony's neck.
Andy found her and brought her back to the house. She sobbed on till
she reached her bedroom, and then flung herself down on the soft woolly
rug before the fire, refusing to speak to Goody or to be comforted.
"Whatever have you been doing? You're to go to bed at once," said
Goody, looking quite worried, as she drew Harebell towards her and
begun brushing out her hair.
"Oh, Aunt Diana is so cruel! She's just breaking my heart, and Tom will
never be made good—never, never! Me and him were going to plan it all
out, and she says I'm never to speak to him again. I shall! I shall!"
"If it's Tom Triggs you're speaking of, your aunt is quite right. He's
not fit to be with a little girl like you!"
"But he's going to be different."
"It's high time he was, but he'll never alter, never!"
Harebell sobbed on miserably.
When Goody told her to say her prayers, she shook her head.
"I don't want to. I feel so wicked, and I won't be good yet. I—I hate
Aunt Diana! I wish I had never known her!"
"You're a very naughty little girl," said Goody severely. She did not
leave her till she was in bed; then Harebell lay quite still in the
dark, and from being very angry, she now began to feel very lonely and
frightened.
"God has turned His back on me; I know He has. I believe he has put
me outside the Door of His Kingdom. He won't come near me to-night,
and He'll take His angels away, and then the devil will come and get
hold of me. Oh, what shall I do! I must say my prayers, but I expect I
shan't be listened to, as I've been so naughty."
"Say you're sorry and ask to be forgiven," whispered Harebell's
conscience.
But she was not ready yet to say that she was sorry.
She began to pity herself.
"Aunt Diana was very provoking, she made me angry; she's unkind; she
likes to tell me not to do what I want to do; and me and Tom were going
to try to be good, together. She doesn't want Tom to be good, she wants
him to be wicked, and she makes me wicked too!"
"She is your aunt and is grown-up; and you're only a little girl, and
must do what she tells you," said conscience.
"I won't!" said Harebell, and she said it out loud.
Then the door creaked and slowly opened, and in a panic of fright
Harebell hid her head under the clothes.
She heard a slow steady footstep across the room, and then a hand
touched the bed. Harebell was beside herself with terror.
"Go away, devil!" she screamed. "I'm going to be good! Oh, God! God,
come to me! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I will be good! Take the devil away!"
The bedclothes were firmly taken away from her head, and Harebell saw
through half-shut eyes, her aunt standing with a candle in her hand.
The trembling child put out her hand.
"Oh, please forgive me, Aunt Diana! I'm sorry I was naughty. I'm so
glad you're not the devil. I thought it was him!"
Mrs. Keith put her hand on Harebell's forehead; it was moist with
perspiration, and the child's face was a deathly white. Her terror had
been very real. She clung hold of her aunt's hand.
"Just stay with me. I'm so frightened. I have been so wicked, and I
wouldn't say my prayers, and then of course God went away and left me.
Do ask him to come back."
"I'm glad to hear you say you are sorry," said Mrs. Keith in a low even
tone, "for you quite shocked me by your passion."
"Do forgive me."
"I will let it pass. We will say no more about it."
"Will God forgive me?"
"Ask Him."
"Don't go away just yet. I won't be long."
Mrs. Keith sat down, and Harebell began to whisper in a shaky voice.
Then she got out of bed and knelt down, and said her evening prayer.
When she was back in bed again, her aunt stooped down and kissed her.
"Good-night, Harebell. Go to sleep."
Harebell took hold of her hand.
"Do you think God is taking care of me again?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I'm so glad."
Her curly head dropped back on her pillow. Exhausted by her grief and
fright, she fell asleep.
The next day found her bright and happy again. She went to her lessons
as usual, but just as she was leaving the Rectory, Mr. Garland called
her.
"I think you're interested in Tom Triggs, aren't you?" he said. "He has
met with an accident, and would like to see you. Would your aunt let
you come with me to see him this afternoon? He has been taken to the
Cottage Hospital!"
"Oh, poor Tom! What's the matter with him?"
"Well, it seems that he was quite sober. In fact, he had been mending
a gate for old Mrs. Crake, and had told her niece he had knocked off
the drink altogether. On his way back, a motor swung round the corner
and nearly killed a child. He saved the child, but got knocked over
himself, and has a leg badly broken."
Tears came into Harebell's eyes.
"Aunt Diana won't let me speak to him ever again. Poor Tom! Is he going
to die?"
"I hope not. Shall I come round this afternoon and ask your aunt to let
you come with me to see him? I quite understand her not wishing you to
be making friends with him, as for some time he has not borne the best
of characters. But he is ill now. It makes a difference."
"Please come. I should love to see him!"
"Very well. I shall call about three o'clock."
Harebell returned home partly comforted.
She told her aunt of the accident at dinner-time.
"I hope it may do him good," said Mrs. Keith unsympathetically; "at all
events, it will stop his drinking for a time. That poor little sister
of his has had a dreadful life of it!"
"He's not going to drink any more," said Harebell with an assured
little nod. "Me and him settled he wouldn't."
"You are too small to have anything to say about such things," said
Mrs. Keith in her cold lifeless tone.
Harebell was silent. She did not mention the Rector's proposed call,
but she ran out to the stable and told Chris the whole story.
"I wish, Chris, that I was grown-up! It must be so lovely to do
whatever you like without asking any one! If Aunt Diana doesn't let me
go and see him, I shall cry buckets. I feel it coming already!"
The Rector came at three o'clock, and after an interview with Mrs.
Keith, Harebell was summoned to the drawing-room.
"You may go to the Cottage Hospital with the Rector," her aunt said.
"I do not mind this in the least, but you are not to go again without
permission."
So Harebell eagerly promised she would not, and ran off joyfully to get
her hat and coat. She chattered incessantly to the Rector the whole way
to the hospital, and told him all the conversation she had had with
Tom. She even repeated her "spell," as she called it, and Mr. Garland
found her very entertaining company.
When they were ushered into the small ward, Harebell's spirits
subsided. There were four white beds in a row, and four heads were
raised simultaneously to gaze at the visitors. Tom Triggs' bed was
farthest off against the wall. He looked quite a different Tom Triggs
to Harebell's old friend. This man had a very clean face and tidy hair;
but his eyes, as they rested on the little girl's face, had the old
familiar twinkle in them.
"Eh, but you're a good little lady to come and see my smash up!" he
said.
"Now, Tom," said the Rector pleasantly, "I'm going to read to old Mrs.
Green in the next ward; I will leave Miss Harebell to talk to you."
He went away. A sudden fit of shyness seized Harebell. She sat down on
a chair by the bedside, and for a moment there was silence.
"Does it hurt very much?" she asked at length.
"Pretty bad just now," was Tom's reply, "but 'tisn't the hurt, 'tis
bein' tied by the leg—and having slops to drink, does for me! Now if
only you could hand me a tankard o' frothy ale, I'd be spry enough!"
Harebell looked at him gravely.
"But you aren't going to drink any more, Tom?"
"Must drink something—an' tea be just p'ison to my system!"
"You're not going to take any more beer, Tom; we settled you wouldn't!"
"Ay! Don't you call the name to me, for my mouth be fair clamouring for
it."
"I expect God made you break your leg!" said Harebell thoughtfully. "He
did it to keep you from going to the 'Black Swan'!"
"The cruellest thing that ever happened to me," said Tom, a little
surlily.
"Oh no," Harebell said cheerfully; "you'll soon be better, won't you?
And then it won't take very long to find a cottage and a wife. I can be
doing that while you're in bed. It will be so nice to think about, Tom.
What shall you wear for the wedding?"
Tom began to smile.
"White waistcoat!" he said. "And white gloves!"
"And a blue tie," said Harebell. "Sky blue, you know, and a rose in
your buttonhole."
"I shall be a reg'lar toff!" said Tom.
Harebell beamed with delight.
"And your wife must be in white, of course. People are always married
in white; only I should like a wreath of pink roses round her waist,
like a sash, you know. Wouldn't they look pretty?"
"That they would."
"And now, who shall she be?" went on Harebell, a serious gleam coming
into her eyes.
"Ah!" said Tom with a little groan. "No lass 'ud have me. That be all
past wi' me. Beer be my best and only friend."
He seemed to be in the depths of despair now.
"You mustn't talk like that," remonstrated Harebell. "You're never
going to touch beer again."
"I shall die if I don't!"
"Oh, Tom, that's really wicked! Have you got through the Door yet?"
"No, nor never shall!" groaned Tom.
Harebell looked down upon him in silence.
Then she said:
"I'm not to speak to you ever again Aunt Diana says, when you get well;
it will be dreadful. She doesn't mind to-day when you're ill. What
shall we do, Tom?"
"Why ain't you to speak to me?"
"Because you drink beer, I s'pose."
"But if I ain't going to touch of it agen?"
"If you had a wife and a cottage," said Harebell craftily, "I'm sure I
could come and see you then. You will let me find them for you, Tom,
won't you?"
"Oh, I'll give you leave to look for 'em!" Tom's eyes were twinkling
again. He added:
"My little sister come to see me this morning!"
"Oh, did she? I quite forgot about her, and what does your mother think
of your accident?"
"She's proper upset. Hessie be too good for her'n me. Mother says she'd
like to get away from her times, and that's what I feels, too!"
"I love Miss Triggs! I think she's sweet!"
Harebell was very loyal to her friends. Then, with a child's
pertinacity, she came back to the subject that never left her thoughts.
"You must get through that Door, Tom; you can get through, as you lie
in bed."
Tom's eyes looked wistful, but his lips smiled.
"That there Door you talk of so much is locked agen me!"
"Oh no, I'm sure it isn't! It's wide open and you'll never want to
drink beer, if you're through," said Harebell.
"Now don't you want to be bad at times?" said Tom.
The colour rose in Harebell's cheeks.
"Yes, and I am bad, too. It's dreadful of me, but I'm usually sorry
after, and you know God does forgive people."
"If I went right into heaven to-day," said Tom solemnly, "I should want
my beer."
"You're disgustin'!" said Harebell, with emphatic scorn.
Tom looked ashamed of himself.
Their talk was over, for the Rector came in; he had a word or two with
Tom, and then brought Harebell away. She was very downhearted.
"Tom will never be good. He doesn't want to be—"
"He's like a crooked tree," said the Rector. "He has been crooked so
long that no one can make him straight."
"Nobody but God."
"No one but God, little one. You are right. You must pray for him."
Harebell nodded and did not speak much till she reached home.
CHAPTER VI
AN ADVENTUROUS DAY
"HAREBELL, I am going away for a short time. I have arranged that you
shall go to the Rectory and sleep there. Mrs. Garland has been kind
enough to say that she will have you."
Mrs. Keith said this at breakfast-time. She had been reading a letter,
and her face was flushed and eyes very bright. Harebell stared at her
for a moment, then said slowly:
"I hope I shall like it."
"It does not matter if you don't," her aunt said quickly. "It is
exceedingly kind of Mrs. Garland to be troubled with you; and you must
be sure to be as good as possible."
"Where are you going, Aunt Diana?"
"Little girls must not ask inquisitive questions."
Harebell was unabashed. She cocked her head on one side, and regarded
her aunt with great interest.
"You look," she said, "as if you're all breaking up and melting inside!"
"Have you finished your breakfast? If so, run and get ready for your
lessons."
Harebell left the dining-room rather reluctantly. She found Goody
upstairs packing her box, and in a great flutter.
"What's the matter, Goody? Where's Aunt Diana going? She won't tell me."
"Then you mustn't ask me," said Goody sternly. "Eh, dear! I'm all in a
tremble! To think that just a letter arriving by post, should shake our
quiet household to the very foundations!"
"Aunt Diana is shaken all up wonderful, isn't she!" said Harebell
quickly. "If you ask me, Goody, I should say the ice was heaving and
cracking and breaking inside her. She has red spots on her cheeks, and
she's like you, all of the tremble! But she's still ice to me. She
won't tell me nothing. It's—horrid of her!"
"Hush now! Be quiet. You'll be late for your lessons. You're to stay to
dinner at the Rectory, and your box will be sent over the first thing
this afternoon."
"Am I going for good now? Then I must say good-bye to everybody, and
what about Chris? Is he coming with me?"
"Of course not. Run down now and say good-bye to your aunt pretty. I
shall never get done in time, and my best bonnet is being cleaned. 'Tis
most vexin'."
"But are you going away, Goody, too?"
"I should think I was! Do you think I'd let your aunt go without me?
I've maided her for over twenty years, and it may be a bit of nursing I
shall have to do. But I'm ready for anything! I always was. And if good
is coming to my dear mistress, and the smiles be coming back to her
face—well, I'd be willing to work myself to the bone."
"Oh, do tell me, darling Goody, what it's all about." Harebell
was frantic with curiosity. She put her small arms round Goody's
substantial waist and held her tight. "Is it anything about—about—a
gentleman?"
She sank her voice to a whisper. Andy's words came back to her. "Don't
you go for to mention his name, or you'll get old Andy into trouble."
Goody broke away from her impatiently.
"Go off to your lessons this minute, and mind you behave yourself at
the Rectory, and have pretty manners like a little lady!"
[Illustration: HAREBELL WAS FRANTIC WITH CURIOSITY.]
Harebell sighed disconsolately. She slipped downstairs. The
drawing-room door was open. She peeped inside, and saw her aunt sitting
at her writing-table, her head bowed in her hands. Some instinct
prevented her from going in. She sang out:
"Good-bye, Aunt Diana. I'm just off!"
Mrs. Keith started, then came forward and bent down and kissed her. As
she did so, a tear fell on Harebell's cheek.
The child said nothing except:
"May I come over and ride Chris, as I always do?"
"If Mrs. Garland likes you to do so. Andy will be here, but you must do
everything that you are told at the Rectory. It is extremely good of
them to have you."
Harebell promised she would, then flew off to Andy.
"It's all coming to pass, Andy," she whispered excitedly. "Tears melt
ice, and I'm sure my lost uncle is coming home."
Andy shook his head. Evidently he was not in the secret.
"Never heard tell of such fuss and nonsense and mystery," he grumbled.
"Mrs. Goodheart is puffed with importance—won't tell a soul what is
taking the mistress away."
When Harebell reached the Rectory, Peter and Nan met her with much
excitement.
"You're going to sleep with me," said Nan. "I've been helping Susan to
make your bed."
"And Nan and I have been making up a new game," said Peter. "If you're
good, we'll let you join!"
There was not much time for talk, for lessons began at once. Harebell
was inattentive and restless that morning. Miss Forster reproved her
sharply more than once. She told her to take her French book to a side
table and learn the verb "aimer." Harebell meekly obeyed, but soon her
eyes were roving out of the window, and her lesson was forgotten.
"What are you doing?" Miss Forster asked sharply.
Harebell started, then said slowly:
"Thoughts."
Peter sniggled.
"Turn your thoughts upon your verb," said Miss Forster.
"That's just what I'm doing," said Harebell. "I meant to aimer Aunt
Diana, but I've never managed to do it yet, and p'r'aps she's gone away
from me for good. There is no telling what is going to happen. Even
Andy feels that."
"Don't talk any more, but learn your verb."
Miss Forster was very patient with Harebell that morning. She saw her
aunt's sudden departure had upset her. When she took the children out
at twelve o'clock, she made Harebell walk with her, and let her chatter
freely of all that was in her mind. Dinner came, and then lessons till
three o'clock. After that the children were free.
Peter and Nan dragged Harebell out into the garden and down to the
field where they played cricket.
"Now look here," said Peter. "Listen to our game. You two girls are to
be my slaves. I'm going to set you some tasks, and I will stand over
you with a whip."
"That doesn't sound at all nice," said Harebell. "What tasks are you
going to set us?"
"You'll have to pick blades of grass and fill some baskets. It isn't
grass—it's cotton flax. And all the time you're picking, you must
settle together how you'll run away from me, I shall be walking up and
down slashing my whip. And then you must make up something to send me
away, and then I'll give you a quarter of an hour's start. You must go
off, and I'll track your footsteps, and if I find you, I warn you, I
shall tie you to a tree and flog you to death!"
Nan opened her eyes in horror. Harebell laughed.
"It's very nice for you," she said, "but you and Nan can be the slaves,
and I'll be the master!"
Both Peter and Nan exclaimed:
"That would never do. A girl couldn't be a slave master!"
"I could!" said Harebell with great assurance.
Peter felt that if he did not assert himself now, Harebell would prove
too much for him.
"If you don't play as I say, I shan't play at all. I shall go for a
ride on the donkey!"
"Oh, do play, Harebell! It will be such fun," said Nan, "and he'll
never catch us if we get away a quarter of an hour before he does."
Harebell wavered. Then she saw enchanting possibilities, and agreed to
join in the game.
Peter got his whip and cracked it in a bloodcurdling way over their
heads, whilst they picked the grass, and put it into some baskets which
were fetched from the coach-house.
"Now, you lazy lubbers, look alive! No stopping to sneeze or cough! On
you go!"
"Yes, yes!" said Nan nervously.
Harebell giggled. Then she stood up. "Look! Your house is on fire and
your wife and children are screaming at the windows!"
Peter looked wildly round, then tore into the house. The little girls
raced across the field and got out in the road, then they faced each
other breathless.
"Where shall we go?" asked Nan.
"Oh, come on to Aunt Diana's! Andy will hide us. He will never come
there. No, I tell you a better plan still. You can ride, can't you? Can
you stick on behind me if we ride Chris? It will be such fun! He will
never track us if we ride away on horseback."
Nan clapped her hands.
"How lovely! Come on, let us run as fast as ever we can."
They reached the house unseen. Harebell gave a peal at the bell which
brought Andy in an instant to the door; but he did not look very
pleased to see the children.
"Now, Miss Harebell! No sooner gone than back again! What do you want?
My orders is not to let any one in!"
"I only want Chris? We are going for a ride on him."
"I knowed I would have you round after that there 'orse. Well, come
along; s'pose I shall have to saddle him."
In five minutes' time, both Nan and Harebell were seated astride on
Chris, Nan clinging for dear life, with her arms round Harebell's
waist. And then away at a gallop they went, down the country lane, past
the end of the village, and then along a quiet road, between woods on
either side.
[Illustration: NAN WAS CLINGING FOR DEAR LIFE, HER ARMS AROUND
HAREBELL'S WAIST.]
"It's like riding through the jungle!" exclaimed Harebell.
Her eyes and cheeks were bright with colour and excitement; Nan was
every bit as eager and delighted as she was.
"Faster! Faster!" she urged, "Or we shall be caught!"
Chris had not been out of the stable for two days. He was fresh, and he
knew how to go. They passed the woods, then came out on an open common.
Chris loved the fresh green turf underfoot. Then they came to cross
roads, but neither of them cared where they were going, and straight
ahead the pony carried them.
At last he began to flag.
"It's a regular John Gilpin's ride," gasped Nan. "Don't you think we
might stop now?"
"Yes."
Harebell pulled up her steed, and both the children slipped off to the
ground.
Chris seemed only too glad to rest by the roadside, and was soon
munching tufts of grass in a ditch.
"Where do you think we are?" questioned Nan a little anxiously, "I've
never been as far as this before."
"In Yorkshire, p'r'aps," said Harebell cheerfully. "We've had a jolly
ride, haven't we?"
Nan assented heartily. They were on the high-road, but there were no
houses in sight; the trees on either side of them were already bursting
into leaf, and in the hedges were sweet-scented clumps of primroses.
"What fun if we were to lose ourselves!" said Harebell.
"I don't see how we could," said Nan in an old-fashioned way. "You see,
we must be in a parish, and if we go to the clergyman, he's sure to
know father, and would send us home."
"But we've got away from parishes."
"You can't. Dad told us all England is divided up into parishes, and
every one belongs to some clergyman."
"How funny!" said Harebell. "And if you have forests and jungles, do
they belong to clergymen?"
"We haven't got those kind of wild places."
Then Nan mounted a bank, and peered over the hedge.
"Do you know, Harebell, I believe there are cowslips over in that other
field. It looks just like them. Do come and see."
Harebell had never seen cowslips. It was the work of a moment to
clamber over a gate and scamper across the field. Nan was right and the
two little girls set to work to pick the flowers at once.
"We'll get back in time for tea," said Nan. "What fun! Peter will be
looking for us everywhere."
"I hope Chris hasn't moved," said Harebell. "He wouldn't go on without
us, would he? He's too sensible for that."
But that was exactly what Chris had done; and when they got back to the
road, there was no sign of him. The little girls looked at each other
with blank dismay.
"He's gone home," said Harebell, "and now we shall have to walk all the
way."
"It's too bad of him! He might have waited for us!" wailed Nan.
"I ought to have tied him up. Now what shall we do? We'd better walk
back the way we came, as fast as we can."
They started, but the road seemed unending; and when they came to the
cross roads, they were in doubt, as they had not noticed, when they
passed them so quickly, which road they had taken.
"I'm sure I remember that gate," said Nan, pointing one way.
"And I'm sure I remember that tree," said Harebell, pointing another
way.
But she gave in to Nan.
"Trees are commoner than gates."
The signpost was an old one, and the name on it conveyed nothing to
their minds.
They trotted on, not liking to confess to each other how tired they
were feeling; but presently they came to a small village.
"I'm perfectly certain we didn't pass this," said Harebell.
"Never mind! Look, there is a church! We'll ask the way to the Rectory."
This was done. A small boy driving a flock of sheep pointed it out to
them, and Harebell brightened up.
"This is a kind of adventure," she said. "Do you think they will give
us tea?"
They turned in at a large white gate and walked up a well-kept drive. A
long, low white house lay before them.
Nan pulled the bell. She was taking things into her own hands; for she
felt that she knew about English clergy better than Harebell did.
"Is the Rector in?" she asked grandly.
"The Vicar is," said the servant. "Do you want to see him?"
"Tell him Miss Garland and Miss Darrell are here."
Nan pursed her mouth importantly as she spoke. Harebell began to giggle
nervously.
They were shown through a wide hall into the Vicar's study, which was
empty.
"Don't you feel rather frightened?" said Harebell.
"Just a little—in my throat!" said Nan.
The door opened and a white-haired old gentleman came in.
He peered at them through his glasses in perplexity.
"I'm afraid, my dears, I don't know you. Are you out of school. What is
it you want?"
"We've come for you to help us," said Nan, trying to speak bravely. "We
aren't quite sure how to get home, and our pony has run away!"
Her voice quavered a little. Harebell broke in:
"We simply don't know where we are, and it's tea-time, and if Chris
tears home without us, they'll think we've fallen off him and been
killed on the very spot."
"Ah, that will be very unfortunate! Where do you live?"
"At Little Barcome Rectory," said Nan.
"Why, you must be Garland's little girls! Do you know you're ten miles
from home?"
He looked perplexed.
"I don't keep a carriage. My wife is in London. I have only my old
horse upon which I ride about, and he isn't fit for you to ride. Sit
down, little ones, and I will go out into the village and see what can
bedone—"
"There, you see," said Nan triumphantly, "it is quite easy! I told you
any clergyman would look after us. And we found one easily."
An elderly servant came into the room a few minutes later, and supplied
them with glasses of milk and some cake, which she said her master had
ordered for them.
Harebell began to enjoy herself.
"I do love seeing strange rooms and people," she said. "We're having
a jolly time, aren't we, Nan? Of course, there's poor Chris, but I'm
quite sure he'll go straight home. He's too sensible to lose himself."
"Perhaps a gipsy will steal him on the way," said Nan. "You see, he is
sure to be stopped by some one. Horses don't take walks by themselves
with saddles on."
Harebell's spirits fell. This was a new fear. When the Vicar returned
she looked up at him anxiously.
"It's all right," he said cheerfully; "I've wired to your father to
tell him that you're safe with me. And in half an hour, a farmer will
call here and take you home in his cart. He is passing through your
village to see a sick brother of his there. But it will be a long
drive. I must lend you some wraps, for the evenings are still chilly."
"I'm afraid mother will be vexed with us," said Nan with a long face.
Harebell seemed in a dream. Her eyes and attention were riveted on a
picture hanging up.
There was an Eastern shepherd standing at the entrance to a sheepfold.
His flock were coming in for the night, and he was holding out his
arms. They were passing in under them. The picture was called "I am the
door."
"Do you like that picture?" asked the Vicar.
"Ever so much," responded Harebell. "I'm so interested about the Door.
But I do think some people want a push in. Tom does. He seems as if he
can't go in of his own accord—"
"Who is Tom?"
"He's a great friend of mine, who has drunk too much beer, but now he's
ill in hospital, and I'm trying to find a cottage and a wife for him;
only Aunt Diana says I'm never to speak to him again."
She sighed, then she shook her head with vigour. "But talking is no
good. I'm sure he wants a push!"
Then, upon encouragement from the Vicar, she plunged into the story of
Tom Triggs. He was interested.
"Tell him he has only one step to take; but it is a step down, and he
must bend his head, or he will never get through. A good many are too
proud to bend, and so they remain outside."
"But I mustn't talk to him," said Harebell miserably.
"Perhaps your aunt would let you write him a letter."
"Oh, that's a lovely thought! I'll write directly I get back. Can't we
go now?"
"Very soon," said the Vicar smiling.
And in a short time, the little girls were packed into a high dog-cart,
which a sturdy farmer drove swiftly along in the direction of home.
CHAPTER VII
A LETTER TO TOM
IT was a long drive, and both children slept soundly on the way.
At last they reached the Rectory. Mrs. Garland came out to meet them.
"Oh, you pickles!" she said, "Did you realise how anxious you were
making us? If the telegram had not come, we should all be out now,
scouring the country!"
"Did Chris come home?" asked Harebell.
"No. Did you not have him with you? Andrews has been round here
inquiring for you; but thanks to the wire, I was able to tell him you
were safe."
"Oh!" cried Harebell in real distress, "Chris is lost, what shall I do!"
Nobody seemed to care much about Chris. The farmer was given many
thanks, and some refreshment; the little girls were given some supper
and packed off to bed. Peter did not greet them very pleasantly.
"Girls never can play the game!" he said. "Sneaking off and getting on
horseback! It wasn't fair a bit!"
"Slaves would get on anything to get away," said Harebell sharply.
"They don't stop to think; you could have got on the donkey. But oh,
dear! Nothing matters but Chris, where can he be!"
She tossed restlessly about in bed, and had a wakeful night. At six
o'clock she slipped out of bed, dressed herself, and set off to see
Andy.
He was very angry when he heard about the lost pony.
"I thought for sure you would put him up for the night somewhere! You
don't deserve to be given a smart little pony like that, to go off and
leave him loose on a high-road. Shame on you, Miss Harebell!"
Harebell began to cry. She returned to the Rectory disconsolately. Miss
Forster scolded her for leaving the house without permission.
"You are a great deal too independent!" she said to her. "Whilst you
are here you must ask permission to do things, just as you do your
aunt."
"But," Harebell said, "that's just what I don't do! Aunt Diana doesn't
trouble about me, and I don't trouble about her. She tells me not to do
some things, that's all. I keep away from her all I can."
"I thought you were going to love her."
"Oh, I have tried, Miss Forster, I really have! I've said it over to
myself hundreds of times in bed, but my inside won't do it."
Harebell was very miserable all that day. Andy and the Rector's groom
started off in search of the lost pony, and his little mistress tried
to do her lessons, but the day seemed as if it would never end. But at
six o'clock Peter came running in from the garden.
"Chris is found! Andy is at the gate, and wants Harebell—"
Harebell flew out. The next moment her arms were round her pet, and her
head resting on his silky mane. Chris bent his head round and nosed her
face gently.
"Oh, Chris darling! Where have you been?"
"A farmer met him, and stabled him with his horses for the night. He
could not make out where he hailed from. But we heard on it and went
straight off. I'll exercise Chris till your aunt comes back, Miss
Harebell. I dursn't trust him out with you after this!"
"I don't care! He's safe! He's found!"
Harebell was ecstatic in her joy. She could hardly tear herself away
from her pet, till Andy reminded her, he would be wanting his feed; and
then she reluctantly let him go, and watched him down the road with
adoring eyes.
"Oh!" she said, throwing herself impulsively into the arms of Mrs.
Garland, who came out to see what the children were doing, "I have joy
again! Isn't it wonderful how different things seem when you're happy?"
"So they do, childie!"
Mrs. Garland stroked her head.
Harebell quivered; then looked up at her with big eyes. "I wish I
had you for my mother! I want some one like you dreadfully at Gable
Lodge—Goody is kind, but she's never stroked my head like you, only
brushed it. Mothers are different to anybody else, aren't they?"
"I do believe they are," said Mrs. Garland, smiling. "You must be an
adopted daughter of mine for the time; but don't give us many more days
like yesterday. They are too tiring!"
"I won't! I won't! Peter will have to do the running away himself the
next time. I'll tell him so!"
Then a settled gravity came over her face. She took hold of Mrs.
Garland's hands, and squeezed them tightly.
"I want to write Tom Triggs a letter. You will let me, won't you? He
is ill, and Aunt Diana said I wasn't to speak to him, but she did let
Mr. Garland take me to him, and I saw a lovely picture of the Door,
yesterday, and I want to tell him about it. I'm simply thirsting to
write to him!"
"Oh, Harebell!"
Mrs. Garland's eyes laughed; then she stooped and kissed her.
"Yes, you may write now, if you like. There's a little quiet corner in
the drawing-room. Bring your letter there. I am writing too; and Peter
and Nan will be having their romp in the schoolroom."
It was a great treat to be invited into the drawing-room. Harebell was
delighted. For nearly three-quarters of an hour she was busy with her
letter. First she wrote it in pencil, then she copied it out in ink.
Mrs. Garland did not ask to see it; she gave her a stamp and told her
how to address the envelope.
Then Harebell laid it open in her lap.
"I'd like you to see it. I'm afraid it's badly spelt, but I was so
awfully earnest, I couldn't stop to think. You see he must, he must get
through that Door somehow. And I want him to get through at once."
This was Harebell's letter:
"MY DEAR TOM,—I hope you are better. I wonder all day how you are.
I saw a lovely picksher yesterday it was the Door—I wood like you to
have been there. The sheep were going in fast. It was dark outside and
in the distance was a wulf. It was light and comfertabel inside. The
Lord was holding out His Arms.
"Have you got in yet Tom? I wish Someone would push you, but if sheep
run in, I'm sure you can if you try. The clergyman said tell him it's
one step only—but he must bend his head. He said you wood never get in
if you don't bend your head, he said it was proude not to bend. Do bend
and get in dear Tom and rite and tell me you are inside.
"I am in grate truble over you becorse I saw a Bible verse about the
wicked who can't inherite the Kingdom of God, and a drunkarde was in
them, and you'll never be a drunkarde any more if you get through the
Kingdom's Door. I'll begin and find your wife as soon as I have time,
but please dear Tom get through the Door first.
"And rite to me when You are through. I'm asking God every night to
give you a push, and I hope you're nearly through.
"Your loving friend,
"HAREBELL."
"This is it: 'I am the door. If any man enter in, he shall be saved.'"
Mrs. Garland sat very grave and still, reading the letter. Then she
handed it back to Harebell.
"Seal the envelope, dear, and it shall go by the post to-night."
Then she put her arm round Harebell.
"Are you through that Door yourself, darling?"
Harebell nodded.
"Yes; God seems to tell me I'm through. But, Mrs. Garland, can people
ever run out of the Kingdom again and be lost? I want to know when I'm
naughty. Can I be naughty in the Kingdom, or have I to run outside the
Door and be it?"
"Lambs are sometimes naughty in the sheepfold," said Mr. Garland
slowly. "If Jesus is your Shepherd, Harebell dear, we have His Word
that He will keep you. But if you do run away from Him of your own
accord, turn back at once when you remember what you're doing, and He
will forgive you and receive you again."
Harebell nodded. Then she flew off to post her letter.
And the next moment, Mrs. Garland heard her adding her shrieks to the
romp in the schoolroom.
Two days after this, Harebell received rather a dirty-looking letter by
the post. She opened it with great importance, and found it was from
Tom. Only a few lines, but she came to Mrs. Garland with tears in her
eyes over it.
"DEAR MISSY,—Tom Triggs begs to say if drunkards cant inherite, they
cant, so outside Tom stays and his leg is herting him shocking, and
this place be no place for him with its slops of grool, and such like,
and he be like to die here, if he cant get out soon. Yours respeck.
"TOM TRIGGS."
"I've told him all wrong, haven't I?" sobbed Harebell. "Oh, I wish I
could go and see him. I'm sure Aunt Diana would let me if you were to
take me."
"I think you must wait till your aunt comes back. I have heard from
her this morning. She is returning home in about a week's time. Don't
fret about Tom, dear. It will do him good to lie there and think, and
he won't be able to get at the beer. Now I want you to think about your
aunt. She has asked me to explain things to you."
"I'm afraid I don't care about thinking of her," said Harebell, a
little crossly. "I like Tom much better—"
"Oh no, you don't! You are interested in Tom, and you want him to give
up drinking, but your aunt has fed and clothed you and given you a
happy home. You belong to her. Your mother was her sister; and she has
had a sad life, and has found it very difficult to have a little wild
niece upsetting her house and her quiet ways!"
Harebell's bright eyes were fixed upon Mrs. Garland's face.
"Have I upset her? Talk to me about her."
"That is just what I want to do. Only we must be quiet and undisturbed.
There is still half an hour before lessons begin. Shall we go into
the garden, as it is such a bright morning? Come with me to the
summer-house."
Harebell danced out into the bright spring sunshine. Tom was forgotten
for the time.
The summer-house was at the end of the lawn under an old medlar-tree.
Mrs. Garland sat down on the low bench inside it and drew Harebell to
her side.
"Your aunt wants me to explain things to you before she comes back. Did
you ever hear of your Uncle Herbert?"
Harebell's cheeks got crimson. For a moment she hesitated; then said
frankly:
"Yes, Andy told me about him; only he said I was not to tell, or he
would get into trouble."
"I shall not repeat anything. How much did he tell you, I wonder?"
"He told me Uncle Herbert wasn't dead, but was abroad, and that he had
gone away one day when he and Aunt Diana were very angry with each
other. I felt very sorry, and begged God to find him and send him back.
Has Aunt Diana heard where he is and gone to him?"
Harebell's face was alive with excitement and interest now.
"Yes, dear. She wants you to know about it. You are a little girl
and cannot understand about grown-up people. But we very often are
no different to naughty children, only we are bigger; it has been a
great sorrow to her, and I am sure it has been a sorrow to him. He has
returned to England very ill, and when he reached London, the doctor
told him he must have an operation or he would die. Then he wrote to
your aunt, and asked her to come to him; and she went off at once, as
you know. The operation has been successful, and your aunt is coming
home with him next week. She has had a sad life for many years, and now
I hope she will have a happy one."
"Then I expect she's melted at last?"
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, she has been a snow queen, you know! I've always felt it. I'm
very glad, Mrs. Garland. It will be so nice to have an uncle. Perhaps
he will be like Mr. Graham, or is he like Aunt Diana? Does Andy know?
He'll be so pleased. He says a house without a master is as bad as a
garden without a gardener! It is simply lovely! You know when Andy told
me about it, I prayed hard to God about him, and asked Him to bring him
back. Then I forgot all about it. That's the worst of me, I never keep
on—but there's always fresh things happening. I'm telling God about Tom
now, and that's very special—and I can't think of everybody, every day."
"I think you ought to thank God for answering your prayers about your
uncle. We so often forget to say 'Thank you' for what He sends us."
Harebell looked very grave.
"I expect Aunt Diana won't want me, now she will have Uncle Herbert.
She never did want me, you know. You said so!"
Mrs. Garland was about to speak, but she was suddenly called to the
house by the Rector, and the little talk was over.
Harebell again found it difficult to give her attention to her lessons.
"It's so exciting having a new uncle!" she said to Miss Forster. "I
keep wondering all the time about him!"
That afternoon Miss Forster took them out for a walk, and Mrs. Garland
asked them to take some soup to a bed-ridden old woman.
To Harebell's great delight, the woman proved to be the one living
in the cottage by the old oak-tree. She eagerly asked if she might
take the soup in, and Miss Forster agreed, sending Nan in with her,
whilst she and Peter waited outside. The young woman opened the door
and smiled at Harebell, as she recognised her at once. She Was very
grateful for the soup.
Then a sudden impulse took possession of Harebell. She asked Nan to
take the soup upstairs to the old woman.
"I want to talk to Miss Crake," she said importantly.
Nan meekly stumped up the wooden stairs to the old woman's bedroom.
Fanny Crake looked a little surprised when Harebell sidled up
mysteriously to her.
"I do want to talk to you! I want you to be Tom Triggs' wife, will you?
He wants one badly, and he'll give up his beer, and come and live in
this cottage with you, if you say 'yes.' He's so ill—poor Tom! He broke
his leg—and he's in hospital. He told me he mended your gate, so I hope
you'll marry him. I'm very fond of Tom, but Aunt Diana won't let me
talk to him any more, so it will be difficult, but if you go and see
him in hospital, you can settle it up with him. Will you?"
Fanny began to laugh.
"What a funny little lady you are! We don't do things in that sort of
way, and Tom is not a good match for any respectable girl! He's much
too fond of his glass."
"But he hasn't anybody else to be fond of—poor Tom! I do feel so sorry
for him! Everybody says he's so wicked, but I don't believe he is. Of
course, I haven't seen many really wicked people, so I don't know what
they're like. There was a black man in India who killed his little baby
girl. Now Tom hasn't killed anybody. He saved a little boy and got hurt
himself. And I'm asking God to take him inside the Door, and if you
would only say you would marry him, he would cheer up and be happy and
good. I've promised him to find him a wife somewhere. And you've got
such a nice cottage, that you seem just the one he wants."
"No," said Fanny, smiling and shaking her head; "if a man wants to
marry, 'tis his business to get a cottage, and a living, and then the
girl may consider the matter, but 'tis not for her to give her husband,
her mother's cottage, and make a home for him! 'Tis all the wrong way
round—that is!"
Harebell looked very disappointed.
"I did hope you would say 'yes.' But if he gets work and a cottage and
never drinks any beer, you couldn't simply say 'no' to him. You must be
his wife! And I shall help him to get a cottage if he can. We thought
of this one, because he was going to have it ever so long ago, but the
woman was very unkind to him, so he couldn't marry; and then he said
the devil got hold of him. But now God is going to get hold of him. I
think He will."
She paused for breath. Nan came downstairs; Miss Forster called to
them from outside; and Harebell reluctantly had to go away. Seeing her
downcast face, Fanny good-naturedly said:
"Never mind, little miss! If Tom Triggs knocks off the drink and gets
in good work, he'll find a wife if he wants one. He's a good workman,
Tom is, he's done our gate fine! 'Tis a thousand pities he's let
himself down so! You keep on at him to make himself respectful again!
He has a good home, and a good mother and sister, and ought to be fair
ashamed of himself to live the life he's doing!"
Harebell joined Miss Forster and said to her emphatically:
"I've had a great big disappointment. And it seems to me that I'm not a
bit of good at all—at least, not for getting wives for people!"
Miss Forster laughingly tried to win her confidence; but Harebell shook
her head, and refused to say any more. The next day she asked if she
might go and see Miss Triggs. Mrs. Garland hesitated at first; then
gave permission. Peter and Nan grumbled.
"You're no good at all," said Peter. "We thought you'd be splendid for
games—you don't care for cricket and hockey. You're always full of your
own plans, and visiting stupid people in the village. You think of
rotten things to do, and like going off and doing them alone."
"And dressmakers and drunkards are so low," said Nan, with turned up
nose. "You like them better than us."
Harebell looked thoughtfully at her accusers.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "it's because I always like interesting
things to happen. Your games don't interest me. It's nothing but
hitting balls, and nothing happens if you do win the game; you only
begin all over again. Now a lot could happen when I see Tom and his
sister—exciting things—and I want to make them come. And if I go to see
people, they tell me all kinds of things I want to know, and you don't.
You only laugh at me."
"Oh, you're just a little grown-up!" said Nan impatiently. "You might
just as well put on long dresses, and turn up your hair, and go about
the village as mother does. That's what you like doing!"
"It's all because you think so much of yourself," said Peter. "You're
too cocky for us! You like to pretend you're clever, and are too old
for games!"
"I love games! And you're very rude! But you and Nan always play
together and don't want me, and when I join you, you laugh at me for
being so stupid. I don't understand England, and I don't like it half
as much as India, and I shall be glad when I go back to Aunt Diana's!"
Harebell flung herself out of the room, feeling hot and indignant. And
yet in a measure, she knew what Peter and Nan had said of her was true.
She did not enjoy playing with them, her head at this juncture was full
of Tom and of his affairs, and she could think of nothing else.
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW UNCLE
HAREBELL found Miss Triggs working at her sewing-machine in the back
kitchen. Mrs. Triggs was in her armchair, and she was knitting a
stocking. Harebell shook hands gravely with both of them.
"I thought I'd like to see you," she said to Miss Triggs, "because you
can tell me how Tom is!"
"So I can!" said Miss Triggs cheerfully. "I've been telling mother
about him. I went to see him yesterday, and he's doing fine. His leg is
healing wonderful, and he's happier like in himself. He let me read a
bit to him yesterday."
"What did you read him?"
"Just a story from the old Book; the bit that tells of a poor sick
wounded man, and how some one showed love to him, and nursed him, and
took care of him."
"I don't remember. Do you mean out of the Bible?"
"Yes, the Good Samaritan."
"Tell me about it. I don't believe I've heard it. I don't know all the
Bible, you know."
Miss Triggs stopped her sewing-machine.
"I'll baste a bit of this dress, for I can talk better when the machine
is not going."
She told in simple words the story of the traveller who was robbed and
nearly murdered on a lonely road, and how, though several people would
not stop to help him, one good man came and bound up his wounds, and
put him on his ass, and took him to the nearest inn, where he said
he was to be rested and fed and taken care of, and he would pay his
expenses. Harebell listened entranced. And then Miss Triggs said softly:
"I told Tom it was just a picture of him, and the Lord is bending over
him, and wanting to cure him, if he'll only let Him do it."
"Doesn't he want his leg mended?"
"Ay, that he does, but 'tis his sick soul the Lord wants to handle.
I told him he trusted the doctor about his leg, and so why couldn't
he just give over his soul to the Lord to be made sweet and whole. He
seemed rare softened, he did!"
"And I suppose if he gave it, he'd never drink again!"
"The Lord would keep him," said Miss Triggs, almost in a whisper.
"It would be lovely!" said Harebell earnestly. "I wish I could go and
see Tom! Aunt Diana won't let me; and now she's away. Will you take him
a message from me? It's a very solemn one."
"Yes, he did ask me if I'd seen you. I hadn't, so could tell him
nothing."
"Well, please tell him that Fanny Crake says that the drinking must
stop first, and then the work must begot, and then the wife comes next.
I don't know about the cottage; that will come last, I s'pose. Will you
be sure to tell him Fanny said it. He'll understand, for I think she'd
do very well, only she won't think about it now. It's rather nasty of
her, because it would cheer him up so, wouldn't it? I'm sure we ought
to try to make him happy—poor Tom! He says nobody cares for him!"
Mrs. Triggs had not paid much attention to the conversation, but she
now turned her head sharply round.
"Is that my Tom you be speakin' of? His mother cares for him more'n all
the world! He was such a handsome baby—took arter his father—who were a
fine, upstandin' man, but with a taste for the beer. Tom be made arter
the same pattern. An' I says if God and Natur' made him so, why blame
the poor lad? An' he never have given his mother an unkind word!"
"I like Tom very much," Harebell answered her eagerly. "And when Aunt
Diana comes back I'll beg her with tears to let me go and see him, and
I'll find him a wife as quick as ever I can!"
"A wife?" screamed the old woman. "You let my Tom be! What do he want a
wife for? He have a good home, and there isn't a girl in this village
who'd do him aught but harm. Idle worthless hussies they be! Go on with
you! A wife, indeed!"
Harebell looked frightened. She said good-bye and slipped away. Miss
Triggs said in a whisper to her:
"Never you mind mother, dear. She don't mean to be rude, but she don't
take kindly to a wife for Tom, and I can't say he ought to have one,
unless his heart gets changed, and his life too!"
Harebell went back to the Rectory slowly and thoughtfully, but when
she found Peter and Nan had put up a swing in the orchard, and were
enjoying themselves upon it, she joined them gleefully. They forgot
their squabble, and she was a happy light-hearted child again.
The return of her aunt was the next event. Mrs. Garland kept her till
after the arrival, and when Harebell went home the next day, the whole
house seemed to have altered its ways.
There was a man's coat and hat in the hall. A strange man-servant
was sitting in the pantry talking to Andy. A little cheerful bustle
pervaded the house. There was a smell of tobacco in the morning-room.
Two or three newspapers and pipes lay on the table.
Mrs. Keith came out of the drawing-room to greet Harebell. The child
was so startled at the difference in her aunt's face that all fear of
her vanished. Putting up her slim little arms, she clasped her round
the neck.
"Your ice has gone!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so very glad!"
And Mrs. Keith did not stare, or frown, or reprove her coldly for such
words. She looked tired, but very happy, and there was a light and
softness in her eyes that had never been there before. "Would you like
to see your uncle? You must be very quiet, as he is quite an invalid at
present. But I have told him about you. Come this way."
Harebell trod on tip-toe, with eager eyes and a beating heart. On
a couch near the open window was a grey-haired man propped up with
pillows. His hands looked white and thin; his face was lined with
pain; he had a hooked nose, and thick bushy eyebrows, but when he saw
Harebell, both his lips and eyes smiled.
"The little niece! Come and welcome a poor old sick soldier, who isn't
worth the trouble he gives."
"I'm so very glad you're here," said Harebell standing before him with
clasped hands. "Me and God have talked you over often, and God seemed
to tell me He would send you back soon."
If Colonel Keith was surprised at such a welcome, he did not show it.
He looked at his wife, and his eyes grew soft and tender. Then he spoke
to Harebell.
"Life deals hardly with those who quarrel with her. Don't you let your
passions ever get mastery of your love, little woman."
"I don't understand a bit what you mean."
"And there is no need that you should," said her aunt a little sharply.
Colonel Keith put his hand on his wife's arm, as she stood by his
couch. Her voice softened at once.
"Come and sit down and talk to your Uncle Herbert; I must go away for a
little. I have letters to write."
So Harebell took a chair by the couch, and when her aunt had left the
room, her tongue began to move, and she poured into her uncle's ear
a flood of talk. She told him of her home in India, of Chris, of the
Rectory children, of Tom Triggs and his sister and his mother, of Fanny
Crake and her mother, and the little cottage. But she did not talk much
of her aunt, and Colonel Keith noticed the omission. Harebell found him
as good a listener as Mr. Graham. She ended up by saying impulsively:
"I do like you so much, Uncle Herbert! You quite understand what I
mean. I haven't to keep explaining; Andy thinks me quite easy and
understandable, he says, but Goody is always saying I amaze her. I've
always said I like men better than I do women."
"But you can't and must not like me better than your aunt!"
expostulated Colonel Keith. "You don't know what trouble I brought upon
her by my hot temper and wicked pride! She has suffered, and yet now
has no reproach upon her lips. I'm a bad lot, and she's a saint!"
Harebell did not answer for a minute; then she said solemnly:
"I'll try and like you both the same."
Certainly she found life much gayer now. Her aunt and uncle were much
together, and she was left more than ever to her own devices; but when
she was with them at meals, her busy tongue was no longer repressed.
Her uncle encouraged her to talk, and liked to hear all about her
lessons and play. Her aunt's voice was getting softer, her smiles were
more frequent. And as for Andy, his old face was radiant with happiness.
"Ah! The good old times have come back," he said to Harebell. "The days
of mourning are over for this old house."
The little girl nodded.
"I haven't to hush about the house any more, I can almost make as much
noise as they do at the Rectory."
It was not very long before she begged permission from her aunt to go
and see Tom Triggs again. Mrs. Keith did not actually refuse her; but
she said she must wait. And then one day at the Rectory, Nan informed
her that Tom was very nearly well, and was going away from the village
altogether. Harebell was much surprised, and rather uneasy.
"Why is he going away? How can he leave his mother? Oh, I must see him,
and ask him all about it."
It happened to be a Saturday, and every Saturday, Harebell dined at the
Rectory and spent her half-holiday there.
"We'll go and see him this afternoon," suggested Nan. "Peter wants to
see him, don't you, Peter? Tom is making him a box with lock and key
to keep his birds' eggs in. He's out of hospital, and living with his
mother."
"That will be lovely!" exclaimed Harebell. It was only when she was
actually starting with them, that she remembered her aunt had not given
her permission to do it. With a little hesitation, she told Nan and
Peter that perhaps she had better not go.
"Go home and ask your aunt," said Peter; but Nan vehemently opposed
this suggestion.
"We have no time. It's such a long way off; and if we go to the
village, we can go on to the woods and have some fun."
Harebell hesitated.
"I'll go," cried Peter, "on my bicycle. I'll go, and catch you up
before you get to the village."
Peter had only lately owned a bicycle, so he liked to use it on every
occasion.
Harebell brightened up.
"That will be jolly! And I don't believe Aunt Diana will say 'no' to
you."
He rode off at full speed, and the little girls walked in the direction
of the village. They had barely reached it before he overtook them.
"Can I go?" Harebell asked him eagerly.
"Yes," he said.
She skipped for joy. Tom's future held a big place in her thoughts, and
she was delighted to see him again.
"Oh, do come on," she besought the others when the village sweet shop
brought them to a standstill.
"I want some bull's eyes," said Peter.
He wheeled his cycle up to the shop, leant it against the wall, and
then disappeared inside. Nan followed him.
Harebell stamped with impatience: then determined not to wait for them,
and walked on quickly to Mrs. Triggs' cottage.
She had one more check.
Colonel Keith was coming out of the post office and met her. He was
rapidly getting stronger, and now got about in a low pony trap, which
for the present, he hired.
"Hulloa!" he said. "Where are you going?"
"I'm with Peter and Nan. We're going to see Tom Triggs. He's going
away."
"Oh, that's your friend, is it? And your aunt knows?"
Colonel Keith knew all about the forbidden visits; for Harebell had
besought him to help her, and he had been doing his best in that way.
"Oh yes," Harebell said with assurance; "she has given me leave to-day."
"And is it to be a wife, or work, or a cottage?" Harebell laughed, and
ran on. She was breathless when she stood at the cottage door.
Tom himself came to open it, and smiled all over his face when he saw
who it was.
"Why, I thought you and me was friends no longer!" he said.
Harebell seized hold of his hand.
"Oh, Tom, dear Tom, don't go away! Do stay and have a little cottage
here. I don't want you to go."
He led her into the little parlour.
"Hessie be out to-day, and mother and me be mindin' each other."
"And how's your leg?"
Tom swung it slowly to and fro.
"Near as good as ever 'twas! You see, missy, I be what you call going
on the tack. And I have an offer of work in a town firm. 'Tis a
contrac' for some big house, ten mile or so away. 'Twill be a change
and a beginning! But I ain't goin' so very far arter all!"
Harebell smiled.
"Did you get any message about Fanny? That's what she said—the drinking
to be given up first, and then the work and then the wife?"
Tom's eyes twinkled.
"That there Fanny be too forward. Her must wait till her is axed!"
"Oh, but I asked her; I besoughted her; I begged her with all my heart,
to marry you just as you were, and very quickly too! She was a great
disappointment to me; I did hope she would have married you directly
you came out of hospital!"
Tom threw his head back, and laughed aloud. There was a clearer look in
his eyes, and he held his head higher than he had ever done before.
"I shan't sit down and cry, if her don't want me," he said. "I can't
keep a wife just at present. The girls be too expensive in these days."
Harebell was silent. This seemed quite a new Tom; a man who could scorn
a wife was beyond her comprehension.
"And you're never going to a nasty public-house again?"
"Ay, well, there be no tellin'; but I ain't visitin' the 'Black Swan'
just now."
"Tom," said Harebell looking up at him with solemn eyes, "are you
through?"
His eyes met hers rather gravely.
"Through? How d'ye mean?"
"Through the Door? You know I almost think you are. And I believe
that's the first thing of all to be done. I wonder if you did it first."
"I wonder," said Tom, in a low grave voice, looking over Harebell's
head as he spoke.
"I wish you'd tell me. Because we'd be on the same side, then. I ask
God every day to keep me on the right side, the inside you know, and
not to let me run out."
"Hi! Tom! Where's my box?"
Peter's shrill voice coming up the garden-path interrupted them. There
was no more opportunity for serious talk. Tom took the children to the
backyard where he was working, and for half an hour they stayed there
chattering and watching him complete Peter's egg-box. Then they left
him, and went on to the woods, where they had a very happy time.
Coming home, Harebell said:
"Haven't we had a jolly afternoon? And isn't Tom Triggs nice? Quite
different to when he was drinking!"
Peter edged up to her.
"I want to tell you a secret. Go on, Nan; it isn't for you."
Nan laughed.
"I'm not a bit curious. You never have interesting secrets, Peter."
She obligingly crossed the road. Peter sank his voice to a whisper.
"You needn't think your aunt gave you leave to go and see Tom, for she
didn't. You'd better keep quiet about it, and not let her know you
went."
"Oh, Peter, what do you mean?"
"Don't shout, you stupid! I did go to ask her; but she was out, so I
couldn't!"
"But you told a lie! You said she had given me leave."
"I didn't!" said Peter, a little sullenly. "You asked me if you could
go, and I said, 'Yes.' I didn't say anything about your aunt!"
Harebell stopped still in the road. He dragged her on by the arm.
"There's nothing to make a fuss about! I didn't tell a lie. You needn't
say a word about going to Tom. Tell her you went to the woods, if she
asks you."
"But I met Uncle Herbert, and told him I was going to Tom, and I told
him aunt had given me leave to go!"
"You were a little fool."
Then he changed his tone.
"Look here, Harebell, don't you get me into a row. Don't split, will
you? You aren't a sneak, and it would be awfully mean to tell tales.
You see, your aunt and uncle are coming to dinner to-night at our
house, and they'd make a row over it. I only wanted you to have a good
time. I needn't have interfered at all, and it wasn't a lie, and of
course they'd think it was, they'd never understand. I'll never forgive
you if you split!"
"Oh, I won't say a word about you! You needn't be afraid."
Harebell's voice was scornful.
Peter got rather red in the face.
"Such a fuss about nothing!" he muttered. "I don't expect your aunt
will care where you've been. You can tell her you had to come with us;
you couldn't help yourself."
Harebell did not speak. Then she said slowly:
"I have told lies myself in India, but not since I've been in England.
I couldn't have done it, as you did!"
"I didn't tell a lie."
Peter left her and joined Nan. They were rather a constrained trio for
the rest of their walk. Nan remarked—
"You and Peter don't seem to have enjoyed the secret."
And Harebell said quickly:
"I shouldn't think so!"
When they reached the Rectory, Harebell said good-bye. She kissed Nan,
but turned her back on Peter.
"Remember!" he called after her threateningly.
"You needn't be afraid!" she retorted.
But she entered her aunt's house with a sinking heart.
CHAPTER IX
IN DISGRACE
HAREBELL had her tea in the schoolroom alone, as she very often did.
Andy waited upon her.
"There be visitors in the drawin'-room," he said. "'Tis like old times,
gentlemen a-comin' here! For years we've had nothing but ladies, and a
few on them. Sir Robert Ferguson and his lady have been to tea, and the
Colonel be quite spry. What have you been a-doin' to-day? Somethin' to
get a scoldin' for! Mistress says to me, 'Tell Miss Harebell to go to
her bedroom after she has finished her tea, and stay there till I come
to her.'
"Then she knows," said poor Harebell with a deep sigh. "Did she look
very angry, Andy?"
"Very cold and quiet," said Andy. "What have you been doin'?"
But Harebell for a wonder would not tell him.
"Mayn't I go and see Chris?" she asked.
"Best not. I've given you the message exack'ly as it were given me!"
Harebell's tea almost choked her. She left it unfinished and went
upstairs.
"It's no good," she said to herself as she sat down disconsolately in
her little chair by the window, "to say I'm not frightened of Aunt
Diana, because I am; and she'll say I've disobeyed her, and so I did.
And I never, on my word and honour, meant to be naughty to-day. God
knows about me; that is one comfort. He knows I didn't mean to be
naughty. And as for Peter, he's the wickedest, meanest boy I ever knew,
and I don't think I shall ever be friends with him again!"
When she heard her aunt's step at last, she stood up with a beating
heart.
To her aunt, as she came into the room, Harebell looked the picture of
guilt.
Mrs. Keith's face was very hard and stern. "I have come," she said,
"to have some explanation from you of your conduct this afternoon. You
not only directly disobeyed me, and went off to see that drunken man,
but you told your uncle a lie, and said that you had my permission to
do so. Do you remember what I told you when you first came here about
lies?"
"Yes," said Harebell miserably. "I remember quite well, but I haven't
told a lie, I really haven't."
"Don't try to cover up one lie with another; that is only making
matters worse."
Harebell was silent. What could she say?
"Have you anything to say for yourself?"
"I don't know," faltered Harebell; "it was—was a mistake. I—I thought
you'd given me leave."
"How can you have the face to say such a thing to me? You know I did
not."
"I didn't tell a lie," Harebell murmured.
Her aunt looked at her with an expression of disgust. "I suppose I
was foolish to think that you were a truthful child. My eyes are open
now. If you had only frankly confessed, I might have regarded it
more leniently. However, I keep my word, I shall send you to school
after the summer holidays. Never will I have a child in my house who
deceives, or tries to deceive me."
Harebell began to cry.
"Oh," she sobbed in the depths of her despair, "if you were God, you'd
understand!"
"Don't add hypocrisy to lies," said her aunt sharply. "You are not to
come downstairs to-night. Go to bed, and remember that I might have
forgiven your disobedience—but I will never forgive lying!"
She left the room.
Harebell flung herself on the floor.
"I shall never, never be happy again! I'm not a liar, I'm not even
disobedient; it's all a muddling mistake, and it's Peter, and not me,
who ought to be punished!"
She began to feel justly angry with Peter.
"He'll go on living and people will think him a good boy, and I shall
be thought a liar for ever and ever! And school is a prison, and—oh, I
never thought of it! I shall have to leave my darling Chris! My heart
will be broken. I wish I could die!"
She lay there sobbing her heart out, and Goody, entering the room
later, was much astonished and alarmed.
Harebell raised a white tear-stained face to her.
"I ought to be in bed," she said slowly. "Aunt Diana said I was to go.
She thinks I've told a lie, and I haven't, Goody, and I'm to be sent to
school in disgrace."
"Dearie me! What an upset! You must get hold of the Colonel. He'll put
things right."
A gleam of hope stole into Harebell's eyes; then it died away.
"He thinks I told him a lie. He won't help me. I'm what you call
doomed, Goody."
She began to undress. She would give no explanation to Goody, for fear
of inculpating Peter.
She heard a carriage come to take her uncle and aunt to dinner at the
Rectory.
She wondered if her aunt would tell them all there of her wickedness;
and if so, how Peter would feel when he heard it. She began to hope
that perhaps his conscience would compel him to confess and to clear
her. But she remembered that Nan said once that Peter never owned
himself to be in the wrong.
Goody went away at last, and she was left alone in bed.
It was hours before she slept, and when she did, she dreamt that a
school-mistress with flaming red curls and bony hands was pushing her
down some steep steps into a dark cellar!
When the morning came, she wondered at first what awful thing had
happened to her. The birds were singing. It was a lovely sunshiny
morning in June, and when she remembered the trouble in which she was,
she felt that some help would come to her.
"Aunt Diana won't really send me away. Peter will be sorry and tell."
Yet as she dressed, fear overcame hope. She ran softly downstairs and
made her way to the stable. Chris neighed in delight when he heard her
step, and rubbed her all over with his nose. Of course he was told all,
and Harebell clasped him passionately round the neck.
"If they send me away from you, I shall die," she assured him.
Then the prayer bell rang, and she slowly went into the house. Her
uncle did not come down to breakfast, but had it in his room. He was
still quite an invalid. Mrs. Keith hardly spoke to her, but as she was
leaving the breakfast-table, she said:
"Are you ready to confess the lie you told? Are you sorry?"
Harebell looked at her aunt nervously.
"I feel," she said, "if I said I had told a lie, that would be a lie."
"You will be in disgrace till you do confess," said her aunt shortly.
Harebell went to the Rectory with a heavy heart.
She could hardly say "Good Morning" to Peter. Nan asked her at once
what was the matter, and Harebell looked Peter straight in the face as
she said:
"I'm in disgrace. Aunt Diana says I've told a lie, when I haven't. I'm
going to be sent away to school, and I shall never come back again!"
"Oh yes, you will," said Peter fast and eagerly, whilst his cheeks got
hot and red. "School is awfully jolly; and you always come home in the
holidays. I wish I could get sent to school. No such luck for me."
"School is enchanting," said Nan. "A girl in the next village goes to
a boarding-school, and she loves it. I don't pity you, if you go to
school, Harebell."
"And how can I part with Chris?"
"You'll have him in the holidays," said Peter; "and p'raps dad will
keep him for you when you're away, and we'll exercise him for you!"
This was too much for Harebell. She turned upon Peter in a blazing fury.
"I hate you! I'd like Chris to kick you off and tread on you, if you
ever dare to ride him. He knows all about you. I've told him. And I've
told God, too, and I'll never play with you again, and I won't speak to
you, and if you leave any of your birds' eggs about, I will smash them
in bits!"
"My dear child!"
Mrs. Garland had come into the room unnoticed.
Harebell's fury was stayed. She hung her head.
Nan was looking quite frightened; Peter red and uncomfortable.
"What has Peter done to provoke such an outburst?" Mrs. Garland said.
Harebell flung herself into her arms.
"I can't say, but I never tell lies, do I? Do I? Aunt Diana says I do."
"And does Peter say you do?"
Mrs. Garland looked at her small son very keenly.
"No—no!" he stammered. "I never said she did. It isn't my fault!"
"She's going to be sent to school, and she doesn't like it," said Nan.
"Her aunt is angry with her."
Mrs. Garland tried to discover what had happened, but neither Peter nor
Harebell would tell her, and Nan was as much in the dark as she was.
Miss Forster interrupted them, and lessons began. Harebell naturally
did hers very badly, but Miss Forster saw she was much upset and made
allowances. When twelve o'clock came, they went into the garden to
play. Harebell left the others, and wandered round the paths in the
shrubbery, feeling very miserable.
"I'm not a bit like a child who is inside the Door," she told herself.
"I've been in a temper with Peter, and I'm sure I oughtn't to be. Jesus
Christ wasn't angry when He was ill-treated, and I know He doesn't
want me to be. But it's very hard not to call Peter names. He is the
meanest—sneakiest—oh, I mustn't! But how can I love him when it's all
his fault, and not mine at all!"
It was a hard struggle with Harebell. Her sense of justice was great,
and her punishment she knew was not deserved. But before she left the
Rectory she went up to Peter.
"I'm sorry I said I would like to smash your eggs. I won't. I'll try
and forgive you. But you're making me awfully miserable, and you know
you are."
Peter walked away from her.
"You're making a fuss about nothing," he said; "you chose to think I
meant what I didn't mean. It was only a mistake."
He was feeling miserable too, but he would not allow it, and tried to
make excuses for himself.
"Such a fuss!" he repeated to himself. "It isn't worth thinking about.
I'm sure Mrs. Keith won't really send her to school. She'll forget all
about it in a few days."
When Harebell went home she found her uncle pacing the garden paths. He
called her to him cheerily, and wished her "Good morning" as usual.
Harebell looked up at him wistfully. She longed to confide in him.
"Well," he said, "how have the lessons gone?"
"Very badly," said Harebell, shaking her head. "I've an extra lesson
to learn for not attending; but my soul was in such a state, that I
couldn't work at sums, so they got jumbled up."
Her uncle sat down on the garden seat and drew her to him.
"Tell me about it, little woman."
Harebell worked her fingers in and out of his coat buttonhole nervously.
"Do you think I told you a lie yesterday? I didn't. It was a mistake,
not a lie, and Aunt Diana won't believe me."
"How was it?"
Harebell was silent.
"I can't explain myself—but I'm telling true. And if—"
Here she got excited and waved her hands about.
"If Aunt Diana was to burn me, or flog me, or drown me, I couldn't say
anything but that I didn't tell a lie!"
"Try and explain," said her uncle gently. "Your aunt has such a horror
of deceit and lying that perhaps she did not give you time to speak."
"I can't tell her. She won't believe me. But oh, Uncle Herbert, I can't
live without Chris. If she sends me away from him, I shall die. I shall
never live to come back. Please don't let her send me away to school."
"I hope that will not be necessary."
Mrs. Keith came up to them.
"Harebell, go into the house. Until you confess your fault you are in
disgrace."
Harebell turned disconsolately away. Colonel Keith said something to
her aunt, which she could not hear, but she heard her aunt's clear cold
voice reply:
"It is her mother over again! I warned her when she came to me. There
is no mistake. She disobeyed, told a lie, and sticks to it. I will not
undertake the charge of her any more. I shall send her to a strict
school, for I will not be responsible for her training."
With despair in her heart, Harebell crept indoors.
The following days were very unhappy ones. She grew very quiet, moped
about the house, lost her appetite, did not sleep at nights, and
got a peaked white look upon her face. But as time passed, she grew
accustomed to her aunt's cold displeasure, and as no more was said,
began to hope that perhaps she would not carry out her threat.
The summer holidays came. The Rectory children went away to the seaside
with their parents.
For over a month, Harebell had not been allowed to ride out on Chris;
but now, owing to her uncle's intercession, she was permitted to begin
her rides again.
Mrs. Keith hardly ever took any notice of her, but at last one day she
called her to her.
"I have made all arrangements about school, and you will go next
Monday. Goody will take you. The school is at Eastbourne."
Harebell looked at her aunt with frightened miserable eyes.
Then her aunt said in a gentler tone:
"You have still four days before you. If you will frankly confess, and
express real sorrow for the lie you told, I may be induced to forgive
you. Your uncle has made me promise that I will."
Harebell's lips quivered, but she said nothing. She knew there was no
hope now. Peter was away, and was not coming home till after Monday.
Unhappy as she was, the thought never crossed her mind that she might
break her promise to Peter.
The four days gradually slipped away.
She watched Goody pack her clothes; Miss Triggs had come round to make
her some new frocks, but she, as well as Andy and Goody, considered
that going to school was nothing so very bad after all. The only
comfort that came to her was hearing from Miss Triggs that Tom was
getting on splendidly; he had signed the pledge and was keeping it.
"He's a first-class workman, Tom is, when he's sober, and we've heard
his master thinks no end of him."
Harebell was nearly desperate when Sunday came, and when she laid her
head on her pillow in the evening a tempting plan came into her head.
This was to get up very early on Monday morning, saddle Chris, and ride
off with him out of reach of all the people who were taking part in
sending her to school.
"I shall go along and get my food in farmhouses where they make nice
hot bread and have cream with their porridge. I have five shillings of
my own, and that will last a long time. I will get lost where no one
can find me. And then Peter will be sorry and confess what he did, and
aunt will be sorry too!"
The more she thought about this the more easy and delightful it seemed
to be.
"Aunt Diana wants to get rid of me, and, if I go away, she'll be glad!"
Then, after a good deal more thinking, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
A LITTLE RUNAWAY
IT was a lovely summer morning. Harebell woke up a little before five
o'clock. With a set determined face she got up and dressed herself,
stepping about her room as quietly as possible. She tied up a nightgown
and brush and comb and toothbrush in a bundle. Then she began to think
that she might want more clothes than that. She took a few things out
of her drawers, and put them into a red cotton bag which she tied round
her waist.
Then on tip-toe, she stole downstairs, and softly unbolted the
back-door. It was easy then to find her way to the stable. Andy had
taught her how to saddle Chris, and in about half an hour's time she
had got free of the house, and was cantering along the country lanes.
Then she remembered that she had not said her prayers. Her conscience
began to trouble her. Was this like a child of the Kingdom? Harebell
refused to let herself think. In a whisper, she gabbled over her
prayers; for she felt that she wanted God to take care of her, though
she did not mean to mention her plan in her prayers to Him.
The fresh air and the birds' singing did not seem as enjoyable to
her, as she expected they would be. She passed through the village as
quickly as she could, and took the road that the signpost said led to
London.
"Everybody goes to London," she said. "But I will stop before I get
there. I'll find a nice pretty farm, with apples in the garden, and
they'll give me some breakfast."
But as time passed she began to feel hungry, and no pretty farm came in
sight. The country was singularly desolate. She came upon two or three
small cottages by the wayside, and an inn; but none of these seemed to
her attractive enough for breakfast. At last she turned up a leafy lane.
"I must try and lose myself thoroughly, Chris," she said; "so that
nobody can possibly find me and take me back. I feel quite frightened
now, when I think of Aunt Diana finding me gone. How very angry she'll
be!"
Childlike, she was living entirely in the present. Her future never
troubled her. The lane wound about in a wonderful way, then suddenly
ended. A white gate appeared and a high wall on either side of it.
"This must be a house," said Harebell to herself.
She found the gate open and rode up a neglected drive; nettles and rank
grass flourished on either side of a mossy road. Overgrown shrubs and
thick trees lined the way.
Her heart began to beat excitedly.
"It's like the palace grounds of the Sleeping Beauty. I wish I could
have a real adventure."
The drive seemed an interminable distance to her, but at last, to her
great delight, she saw a big grey house in the distance. It looked
still and deserted.
When she came up to the big flight of steps leading up to the front
door she persuaded herself that it was, indeed, the Sleeping Palace.
Slipping off Chris, she let him turn aside to munch at the long grass
on the lawn, and then mounted the steps with eager expectancy. Would
the door open at her touch? Would she go in and find the remains of
feasting in the great hall, and the servants all asleep at their posts?
Alas! the door was fast shut and barred, the windows were shuttered,
and through a small peephole in a broken shutter, she saw that the
inside of the house was empty and unfurnished.
Slowly and reluctantly she turned away; then, seeing a side path near
the house, she ran along it, wondering if the back of the house would
prove more cheerful than the front. She found a side door, and to her
joy, as she turned the handle and pushed, it yielded to her touch. The
next moment, she was inside a long wide passage. It was light, and
looking up, she saw there was a big glass dome high up in the centre.
Rather fearfully she made her way along, till she reached the centre
hall. A great staircase wound up to a gallery round it. She was just
mounting the stairs, when she suddenly heard a man's laugh.
Now she was frightened. Into her brain rushed stories of ogres, giants,
burglars, and criminals. Panic seized her; she fled back along the
passage, missed her way, got into another part of the house, and could
not find an open door anywhere. Then she screamed. It seemed like some
hideous nightmare. She beat and kicked against a door with her hands
and feet. The horrible thought came to her that she had been purposely
locked in, and that some wicked man would come and kill her.
Suddenly, from behind, a big hand laid hold of her shoulder. She
screamed louder than ever in real terror, and then she turned to
confront Tom Triggs, and to hear him say with a little gasp of
bewilderment:
"Why, I'm blest if it ain't little missy!"
She clung to him in a tempest of sobs.
"Oh, take me out! Dear Tom, save me! Where am I?"
The next moment a door was opened and she was in the fresh air, with
the sun shining and the birds singing, and Chris still calmly munching
the grass a little distance off. It took some minutes to soothe and
calm her, but Tom did it. He was in his working clothes, with his
carpenter's apron on, and looked strangely out of place in this great
empty house.
"It's the funniest thing out that you should have come straight to the
very house I'm workin' at. Me and my mates were havin' our breakfast
in the back yard. We are doin' repairs to the stables, and all on a
sudden we heard a scream, and it seemed to come from inside the house,
an' I come along to find out whether it be a ghost or a h'owl, and then
I catches sight of you a-beatin' your fists against a door. Now, do
you just tell me what has brought you here. Did you come to find out
whether good-for-nothing Tom were keeping off the drink?"
Harebell smiled through her tears, but she kept a tight clutch of Tom's
hand.
"I didn't think of you. I didn't know you were here. I was a dreadful
coward, but I felt I was lost a good deal more than I meant to be. And
generally when I'm frightened, I ask God to take care of me; but I
couldn't, and I felt He was a million miles away from me, and wouldn't
dream of coming near me. And then I knew it was because I must have run
outside the Door, and wasn't safe any more!"
She spoke with feverish intensity. Tom looked at her and then at Chris
in a puzzled sort of way. Then he sat her down on the broad balustrade
at the bottom of the steps.
"Take yer time, missy. Tell me just how you come to be so far away from
home this morning!"
Then Harebell poured it all out, every bit of her trouble. She felt
that she could even tell Tom about Peter's deceit, after making him
promise that he would not tell any one. And Tom listened and rubbed his
head, and then delivered his verdict.
"You must go back, missy; there's no help for it. You must get you
back!"
Harebell began to cry. She was tired and hungry. She began to wonder
how she had dared to run away in such a fashion.
"Aunt Diana will be so very, very angry."
"But she'll be in a terrible state about you now. You can't bide alone
in the world, trampin' the roads without food and money. It be a
stoopid thing to do—"
"I s'pose you haven't got a cottage yet? Couldn't you take me
somewhere? I'm afraid of Aunt Diana now. She'll never forgive me!"
"You must get you back," Tom repeated with conviction. "It be bad
you're comin' off in that fashion, but every hour you stay away, it be
badder!"
Harebell looked up at him beseechingly.
"I don't know what to do. I can't go back."
"Oh yes, you can! I'll come a bit of the way with you, and if you trot
your pony pretty fast, you'll get home not so very late for breakfast
after all. Would you like a sip of hot tea? You wait here a minute."
He disappeared, but soon came back with a hot tin of tea, and some
bread and cheese.
"'Tis mos' remarkable you comin' away in a straight line to the house
which I be workin' on! How did you do it now?"
Harebell drank the tea thirstily, then she looked at Tom gravely.
"I s'pose God brought me to you, so that you would tell me how wicked
I was, and send me back. I used to think when I first knew about you,
Tom, that you were much wickeder than I was. Now it's me that is
wicked, and you're trying to make me good. It's dreadfully wicked to
run away, isn't it? Almost as bad as telling a lie."
"It's a poor thing to do—to run away," said Tom slowly; "but I don't
know that I ain't just done it myself! You see, I knowed how my old
pals would be gettin' over me, so I come away twelve mile off to make a
fresh start where I couldn't be baited!"
"But you didn't run away from home, Tom. Your mother and sister knew
you were coming."
"Bless their hearts, that they did! And I be gettin' along fine. And
some day I hopes I'll come back and be able to look my fellow-creatures
straight in the face. For I shan't be feared then o' nobody. An' I do
allow 'tis a happy thing to feel inside the Kingdom's Door, missy.
I humbly 'ope I've crawled through, and the Lord be holdin' my feet
straight, and my mouth from even wanting the accursed stuff; and He
have got me by His hand, so I just steps behind Him, and He goes first."
Harebell smiled for the first time.
"Oh, Tom dear, I'm so very glad. I always did know you would get
through soon. When did you do it?"
"Well, I can't rightly say as to day an' hour—but I had a try in
hospital, and then agen at home—an' it seemed to me as one day I was
for goin' in, an' the next for comin' out, an' I didn't get much
forrarder, so at last I gets down on my knees and tells the Lord He
must please do it all Hisself, for I were come to the Door an' He must
do the rest. Bless His name, He seemed to stoop right down an' get hold
of me—a reg'lar safe grip—and there I be—very afeared of myself, but
very sure o' Him!"
"And do you think I've been naughty and so He's put me outside? Oh,
Tom, do you think you're inside now and I'm outside?"
Harebell's lips were quivering.
"I ain't no scholar, missy, but there be one chapter in the Bible I
reads over and over and over! 'Tis the one you mentioned first about
the Door. If we be inside the Door, I take it we be in the sheepfold;
and if we be in the sheepfold, we be the sheep; and if we be the Lord's
sheep, He has us safe, sure enough, for it says, 'Neither shall any man
pluck them out of My hand.' You be right enough—just a slip—and you're
a-goin' back now to say you're sorry—an' I'm a-comin' a bit o' the way
with ye!"
"I haven't said my prayers properly this morning," Harebell confessed
with shame. "I gabbled them through. I'll just speak to God here, if
you go away—and tell Him I'm sorry."
Tom moved away, rolled up his apron, then caught Chris, and by the time
he joined Harebell again, the cloud was off her face.
She mounted Chris, and Tom walked by her side till they reached the
high-road.
"There!" he said. "Now 'tis a straight road home, and you can't
miss it. Good-bye, little missy; and just put up a prayer for
good-for-nothing Tom, will you?"
"I will," promised Harebell, "but p'r'aps You'll never see me again.
I'm goin' to be sent to school, you know."
She conquered a rising sob.
Tom looked at her thoughtfully.
"Ay, 'twas through me, you be in this trouble! Well, p'r'aps I can help
of 'ee out."
"It will be too late. I shall be gone," said Harebell.
Tom rubbed his head.
The little girl added, "And you mustn't tell about Peter, you promised
not to; and I don't mean to tell."
"Well, you be doin' a fine thing, a-bearin' his fault."
Harebell rode away, waving her hand to her friend.
He looked after her in perplexity. "If I were a scholar now! But I'll
venture on it!"
He returned to his work with a plan in his head.
And Harebell rode on home, feeling more and more frightened and unhappy
as she drew nearer the village.
"It all seems as bad as it can be, and when I say I've seen Tom, Aunt
Diana will think I went to him on purpose, and it will make her angrier
still!"
Presently she met Andy at the entrance to the village. He threw up his
hands.
"Ay! You naughty child, we've all turned out to catch ye! To think
of your going off for a ride this very morning when you're to go to
school."
"I'm sorry, Andy. I'm coming back!"
"Comin' back! High time, too. The missis an' the master be in a
terrible way. What did you go to do it for?"
Harebell did not answer. Even Andy, her friend, was scolding her.
The house was reached. Andy took her pony, and when Harebell reached
the front door, her aunt met her in the hall.
"Come in here," she said. "Where have you been? Did you not know a cab
was coming at ten o'clock to take you to the station? It is now nearly
eleven."
She drew her into the morning-room. Colonel Keith was not there.
Harebell's heart sank within her. She looked up at her aunt. Somehow or
other, Mrs. Keith was not looking as angry as she had expected.
"I am very sorry, Aunt Diana, but I meant to run away and never come
back again; I quite meant to. And—and—I met Tom—I didn't mean to meet
him—he and me think God managed it, and—and—he made me come home again."
There was silence.
"Where did you meet him?"
"At an old, old house far away. I found it by accident and—" here
Harebell's love of romance seized her, and she forgot she was in
disgrace—"do you know it was exactly like the palace of the Sleeping
Beauty. It was still and silent, and the weeds were enormous; and I
quite hoped to see everybody asleep, and all that was left of the
feast. And then I got into the house and found it empty and dark, and
I was dreadfully frightened, and I couldn't find my way out, and I
thought I was locked in; and then I screamed and screamed, and Tom
heard me and came to me, and he's the carpenter who's mending the
stable there!"
She paused for breath.
Her aunt was silent for a moment. She seemed to be turning over things
in her mind.
Harebell put her arm out timidly and touched her aunt's arm.
"Do please forgive me, Aunt Diana. I know it was wicked of me to run
away. I knew when I did it that it was, and that made it worse, didn't
it!"
"What made you come back?" her aunt asked sharply.
"It was Tom. I wasn't even going to do it for him, but when he told me
he was inside the Door of the Kingdom and would never drink any more,
I was so glad, it made me—well, it made something different in my
heart—and I knew I must come back if you—if you whipped me to death!"
She ended her sentence with desperate emphasis.
"I have never yet raised my hand against you," her aunt said gravely.
"No, but I thought you might," Harebell replied quickly. "I thought of
such a lot of things you could do to me; but, you know, it was God and
Tom who made me come back. I had to."
"It was exceedingly naughty of you to think of running away. If you had
gone on, you might have met with accidents. We should, of course, have
followed you and brought you back before the day was over. And nothing
then would have prevented my sending you to school to-morrow. A little
girl who acts like that wants a great deal more discipline than I can
give her. But as you turned back of your own accord, I am going to
forgive you. I have received a letter from Mrs. Garland this morning.
If you had been here at breakfast-time, you would have heard about it.
Of course, the letter has explained what you ought to have explained to
me long ago—"
Harebell's eyes were open wide.
"What?" she gasped.
"It seems that Peter has been unhappy a long time, and confessed to his
mother yesterday that he was the cause of your disobeying me. Why did
not you tell me so before?"
"I—he—I promised him I wouldn't tell," faltered Harebell.
"You had no right to promise such a thing. It was not being frank with
me, and led me to think what was not true—"
"I—I told you it was a mistake I made, and not a lie," said Harebell.
"I couldn't explain properly; I really couldn't, Aunt Diana."
Tears came into her eyes. She was relieved that she was cleared of
untruthfulness, but she still seemed to be in disgrace.
Then Mrs. Keith spoke more gently:
"I want to be fair with you, Harebell. I am deeply thankful to find
that you did not tell me a lie, and to think that I can still trust
your word. And for the present, I shall not send you to the school I
intended for you. As I told you just now, if you had not come back
of your own accord, I should still have done it. But as it is, Miss
Forster will still continue to teach you. I am sorry to think that
there is so little confidence between us that all this trouble has
been the result. You ought to have told Peter at once that you could
not withhold truth from me. You did not tell me an untruth, but you
withheld the truth, and both are wrong. Do you understand me?"
"Not quite," said Harebell; "isn't it wrong to tell tales?"
"Not if it helps to deceive. Your not telling about Peter helped to
deceive me; and I acted wrongly because of it. I want you to remember
this, for people have made themselves and others very miserable because
of it. If shielding one person makes another act unjustly, it is wrong.
Now I shall say no more—you had better have some breakfast."
She stooped and kissed Harebell, then led her into the schoolroom,
where some food was awaiting her.
Harebell began to feel much happier, and when her uncle came in
presently, and told her how glad he was to hear that the mystery was
all cleared up, she heaved a deep sigh and said:
"I feel as if a heavy weight has lifted out of my chest. And now that
aunt has forgiven me, and I'm not going to school, may I tell you about
Tom?"
CHAPTER XI
TOM'S LAST EFFORT
THAT very same evening, Mrs. Keith received an ill-written letter from
Tom:
"MADAM,—This is to say as little Miss to my sertain nowledge have not
toled a lie. There be anuther party in the bisness wich if you cud
discover wud be rather near home but I am pleged to say nothing. They
that lives most with her knows and is hidinge the truth.
"Your obedient servant
"TOM TRIGGS."
Mrs. Keith showed this to her husband. As Harebell was cleared, they
did not tell her anything about it, but Tom was written to and thanked
for his intervention.
And very soon the Rectory party returned from the seaside. Peter and
Harebell had a very solemn interview. He was made by his mother to come
up and tell Mrs. Keith exactly what he had said; and then he apologised
to Harebell.
She took his shamefaced apology very gravely. But when she began
to relate to him her runaway ride, he brightened up and was most
interested.
"It's just like a story! What a pity you came back. I should have gone
to sea!"
"I couldn't have. I couldn't have taken Chris with me. It was him I
didn't like leaving."
"Girls never keep things up. They always get frightened and stop in the
middle."
"What would you have felt like if I had never come back?"
Peter reflected.
"I think I should have told people it was my fault, and then I should
have felt obliged to run away after you to find you. That would have
been good fun! I should have gone on the donkey, and you bet I should
have caught you up!" His eyes gleamed at the idea.
"I'm very glad I didn't go on. It's horrid if you feel you're quite
alone in the world. I felt when I was in that empty house, as if I had
lost my friends and my home—and the most awful thing of all—that I had
lost God, and didn't belong to Him any more."
It was Peter's turn to look grave.
"I'm glad I'm not you, without a mother. Mother is ripping. She wasn't
a bit angry when I told her, only very sorry—and—well—loving. I was
rather a cad, and, of course it was a lie I told. I'm never going to
tell another as long as I live. If I die for it, I won't!"
Peter clenched his fists determinedly.
His sin, and the burden of it, and then the confession, had made him a
different boy. Harebell felt he was a much nicer Peter afterwards, and
other people felt so too.
Lessons began again, and life went on with cheerful regularity, varied
by picnics on half-holidays, and later on by blackberrying and nutting
expeditions. Harebell grew into a strong rosy girl. Her aunt was fast
losing her cold indifferent manner towards her, and Harebell now
chatted to her as freely and unconstrainedly as to any one else. Then
the winter came: but Harebell enjoyed the cold, and welcomed the frost
and snow with delight and interest.
Christmas was a most enjoyable time, and she and the Rectory children
were inseparable during the holidays.
When the New Year came, there was a good deal of sickness in the
village, and many of the old people died. Amongst them was Mrs. Crake
and Mrs. Triggs. Tom came to his mother's funeral, and the village
hardly knew him. He had gone steadily on in the right way, and was now
a respectable sober hardworking man.
Mrs. Keith no longer objected to Harebell's interest in him, and one
day she was allowed to go to tea with Tom and his sister. She walked
off very proudly, and was soon sitting up at a well-spread table in the
little front parlour.
Miss Triggs was in deep mourning and was rather sad. Harebell was too
excited to be so. She had never much cared for old Mrs. Triggs, who
did not welcome her as a visitor, and made no secret of her dislike to
children. And now she could not pretend to mourn for her.
"Do you know, Miss Harebell, I may be going away?" said Miss Triggs
with a sigh.
"You'll have to get somebody else to make your frocks for you. I've
had an offer from an uncle of ours, who is a big draper in Swansea. He
wants me to go there and be one of the skirt hands, and Tom and me have
been talking it over, and I think I'd like to go."
"Oh, dear! This is dreadful news," said Harebell in dismay. "And who
will live in your cottage?"
"I'll give it up. I have only to give a month's notice."
"But won't Tom want it? You'll come back and live here again, won't
you, Tom? I do want you so much."
"Not yet awhile, missy. I'm feelin' a bit unsettled like. True, the
Squire talked about wantin' an estate carpenter now his head man be
off to Canada: but that be too good a billet for me. There be a small
cottage, too, for the lucky chap who gets it—"
"Oh, but what a lovely thing for you! And then you'd get a wife. Do say
you would, Tom. And Fanny isn't married to anybody else, and now she's
all alone, it would be just right, wouldn't it, Miss Triggs? She has
lost her mother as well as you."
Miss Triggs smiled, but Tom did not. He got rather red.
"Eh, dear? But you do go on about a wife; I ain't ready for one yet."
"I'll help you to get ready," said Harebell earnestly; "there seem a
lot of cottages ready for your wife. This one, and Fanny's, and the
Squire's."
"Have one of these little cakes, dear," said Miss Triggs, who wished to
change the conversation.
Harebell ate the cake and thought hard. At length she said:
"You see, Tom, you've given up the beer, and you've got work, and now
you've got cottages all round you, and the wife is the last thing and
the best of all."
"'Tis to be hoped she will be," said Tom, half to himself.
"Well," said Miss Triggs, "I wouldn't go off and leave him, Miss
Harebell, if he'd make his home with me. But he won't. 'Tisn't
disagreeableness; the fact is, he have kept on sendin' his money home
to mother, and he hasn't enough just now to start a house on his own,
and he have got proud, and won't let me pay the rent and such like."
"You have spent too much on me all these years," muttered Tom. "Now
we'll let my affairs bide for a bit, missy. Do you think you could
find room in your home for a little chair I've been making in my odd
moments? I brought it back with me when I come—"
He went into the back kitchen and brought out a beautiful little
rocking-chair, which he presented to Harebell. Then he showed her some
letters carved on the back:
F.T.T.
A.B.S.
I.T.D.
Harebell screamed with delight over the chair, but puzzled over the
letters.
Tom at length enlightened her.
"I'm not a very good scholar, and my tools be not fine enough to carve
words, but I've put the first letter, see?"
"From Tom Triggs
A black sheep
Inside the Door."
"That do describe me, by God's help."
"Oh, it's beautiful!" exclaimed Harebell. "And so clever! I am sure
Aunt Diana will let me have it, and I do adore a thing that rocks! It
will be much nicer than a rocking-horse. I used to have one of those in
India."
Tom promised to bring it up that night; and Harebell was overwhelming
in her thanks.
At last she had to leave her friends, and she trotted home. It seemed
to her that it was not chance that made her meet the Squire of the
neighbourhood riding home from a hunt, with two other gentlemen with
him. It was too good an opportunity to be lost.
Harebell had often seen the Squire in church, and had spoken to him
once when he had been calling upon her uncle. She now stepped into the
middle of the road and held up her hand authoritatively.
The Squire reined up his horse with a good-natured laugh.
"Well, little maid, are you a suffragette? Or a policeman? What do you
want?"
Harebell was nothing if not direct.
"I want you to stop to listen to me. Tom Triggs is a very good man, and
a friend of mine, and he can make beautiful rocking-chairs fit for a
queen. Please take him as your carpenter and give him a cottage."
"Upon my word! Tom Triggs! Who is he? Surely not that drunken loafer
who spends his days over his beer-pot!"
"Oh, that was long, long ago; he's quite a changed man; everybody says
so. At least, he's really the same, only much, much nicer."
"I know him," said one of the Squire's companions. "He's doing up the
house I'm buying. Tom Triggs—I know the chap. He isn't a bad workman.
My foreman of works says he's the most dependable of the whole lot out
there."
The Squire looked down upon Harebell with laughing eyes.
"Now may I ask why you and he have chummed up together? An odd
companion for you, I should say."
Harebell looked up with big earnest eyes.
"I liked him when he was wicked, because I'd never seen a wicked man
before. And then—well, you know I've been trying to get him to do
things, and he's done them all except a cottage and a wife. I could get
the wife if you would give the cottage."
The Squire laughed heartily.
"This is most entertaining. So you can get wives for people. Could you
get one for me? I haven't one, you know."
Harebell shook her head.
"I don't know you well enough. Tom is a very great friend of mine.
We talk over things, specially since we're together inside the Door.
That's the best thing of all he has done. He has got right through and
is quite safe."
"What door?"
"It's the Door of the Kingdom. He likes to call it the sheepfold, but
it means the same. It tells you all about it in the Bible."
There was a minute's pause; then the Squire said genially:
"I really must see this wonderful carpenter. Send him up to see me—not
to-day. To-morrow morning about ten. I shall be in, and I'll have a
talk with him."
He nodded to her, then rode on; and Harebell danced along the road for
joy.
"He'll get that cottage, and then Fanny must marry him!"
She told her aunt all about it when she got home. Mrs. Keith told her
she must not speak to gentlemen whom she hardly knew when they were
riding.
"It makes them think you're a most forward little girl," she said.
"I was so full of Tom, I didn't stop to think," said Harebell; "and
he's made me the most beautiful rocking-chair, Aunt Diana, and he's
going to bring it round to-night. You'll let me take it, won't you? And
may I tell him the Squire wants to see him to-morrow?"
Permission was given. When Tom arrived, he looked quite confused when
Harebell gave him the message.
"Upon my word, missy, you don't let the grass grow under your feet!
Why, you be just wonderful with your tongue."
"And you'll tell me if you get the cottage, Tom? You'll tell me
directly it's settled."
"There be not much chance of that, missy. The Squire have knowed me in
the old days."
However, Tom had his interview with the Squire, and was taken on trial
for a month, to his unbounded pride and delight. Harebell went straight
off to see Fanny Crake when she heard of it.
Unfortunately, Fanny was away from home. But Harebell was not easily
daunted. She came home and procured a piece of paper. In large
copper-plate writing she wrote on it:
"Please Fanny, Tom Triggs may have the Squire's cottage. Get ready
for his wife. From Harebell."
And then the next day she took the paper and slipped it underneath the
door.
But she heard nothing from Fanny. And Tom was too busy at work to come
near her.
Lessons and games and talks with everybody who came across her path now
occupied her time.
Mrs. Keith said to her husband one night:
"I really dread the development of that child. I don't know which is
busiest—her brain or tongue. I hope she won't grow into a chattering
woman. I found her having a long dissertation to-day on the back
doorstep with a wandering pedlar. She knows his history, and all the
names and ages of all his relations, for I heard her repeating it all
to Andy in the pantry."
"Oh, she's all right!" said Colonel Keith kindly. "She is interested in
her fellow-creatures. It is better to have one's interest circle round
them than round oneself."
And then one day Harebell got a letter, and it was a letter that filled
her small heart with joy and satisfaction. It was from Tom Triggs:
"MY DEAR MISSY,—I have not yet wrote you a letter but I do so now
hoping this will find you well as it leaves me. I write to say the
Squire, he have give me the job and I thank you down to the ground
for arsking of him to do it. I have the cottage in the wood, and all
is going on as you said it ought. Nex April I hopes to get it, and
mother's bits will stock it fine. And Fanny Crake and me are walking
out, for on looking round I felt as how I ought to oblige you, and
there seems no other to soot me, and Fanny says your heart be terrible
set on to it. So we hopes if things go on well, to be husband and wife
in April. Wishing you well.
"Your obedient servant,
"TOM TRIGGS."
"P.S. The best which has come to me is what I have not the learning
to speak on. But I am still I humbly trust, I. T. D."
She carried this letter all day about with her and slept with it under
her pillow.
Her aunt found her one evening spelling it out to herself by the light
of a candle.
"You are very fond of Tom Triggs," she said.
"He's such a good kind of friend," said Harebell in her old-fashioned
way, as she folded up her letter and tucked it under her pillow. "He
has done every single thing I wanted him to. And not many friends do
that, do they?"
"Perhaps not."
"It's just five things he has done, and the wife is the last and best
of all."
"What things?"
"Well, first he gave up drinking, and then he got some work, and then
he got his cottage, and now he has got his wife."
"That is four."
"I s'pose the other thing is the really best thing," said Harebell,
slowly and thoughtfully. "He has put it last in his letter, but I
really believe it came first of all."
"And what is that?"
"He came to the Door of the sheep and got through it into the
sheepfold."
Harebell's eyes were shining and earnest as she spoke.
Mrs. Keith stooped and kissed her.
"Yes, that is the only thing that really matters," she murmured.
And then when she left the room, Harebell added to herself:
"And in April, I mean to go to tea with them in their cottage. I said
from the very first I would do it."
She hugged her letter as she spoke, then she fell asleep.
THE END
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