Fifty-Two Stories For Girls 15 – Anonymous · Library Across
Literature · Short Stories
Fifty-Two Stories For Girls 15Part 1 · Uncle Jacob'S Gift (part 2)
18
Literature · Short Stories
Fifty-Two Stories For Girls 15
Part 1 · Uncle Jacob'S Gift (part 2)
AnonymousEnglish
Now Smith's sister screamed at our accidents; she was afraid to join us in any of our adventures. She was as old as myself, and only a year younger than Smith, but as timid as a chicken--or so we thought her, for so she seemed. We tried at first to encourage her, to bring her out a little; but it was no good--we just had to leave her to herself.
"She hasn't pluck enough to come with us," Smith used to say as we set off on our rambles--"let her stop at home and play with the fowls."
You must understand that we didn't dislike her--we simply despised her. I think contempt is worse than dislike--at all events, it is harder to bear. Week after week passed away, till at length the end of September approached. In a few days we were to go home again.
Now high as all the hills were, there was one that towered above the others. From the very first, Smith and I had been warned not to attempt to scale this monarch of the mountains, whose crown was sometimes visible, sometimes hidden in the clouds. Being warned not to do it, we naturally wanted to do it. We had made, in fact, several tries, but had always been frustrated. Once or twice Mr. Griffiths--the farmer at whose house we were staying--caught us starting, and turned us back.
"Up towards the top of that mountain," he said, on the last occasion, "is a place so difficult of access, except by one way, that it is called the 'Eagles' Home.' Lives have been lost there. The hill is dangerous--the clefts are steep and deep. Leave it alone. There are plenty of other hills to climb that are not so dangerous."
That reference to the Eagles' Home was more than we could stand. We could make out the very spot he meant. Fancy being up there with the eagles near the sky--fancy birds-nesting in the clouds!
"Yarrow," said Smith firmly, "we must do it."
"Or perish in the attempt," I agreed recklessly, quoting from a book I'd read.
What we meant was, of course, that before our visit ended we must climb that hill, at all events as high as the Eagles' Home.
Our approaching return to London left us with no time to lose. We had only four clear days before us.
"We'll make the ascent immediately after dinner to-morrow," said Smith.
"Right you are," replied I.
The next day arrived. Dinner was always over soon after one at the farmhouse, and by two o'clock, having slipped quietly and secretly off, we were beginning our climb up the hillside. For more than an hour we made slow but easy progress, taking a rest every now and then for a minute or two. We must have got up a considerable distance, but neither the mountain-top nor the Eagles' Home seemed much nearer. On and up we trudged, walking faster and determined to take no more rests. We noticed how much colder it was, and cast uneasy glances at the dipping sun.
We met a shepherd going down, and stopped him to ask some questions. He told us that there was an easy way and a hard way to reach the Eagles' Home. The easy way was to follow the path worn up the hill to the left. That would take us above the spot. Still following the path as it curved round to the right, we should find a comparatively easy way down to the "home of the eagles," unless we lost the road, and tumbled down one of the many steep declivities.
"Which was the hard way?" we asked.
With a smile, he pointed straight up the mountain-side. It wasn't far that way, he said--only that way would take us farther than we wanted to go. We looked up the frowning pathless mountain--and knew what he meant. We must take the safer and longer way.
"Not that we're afraid of the other," said Smith.
"Of course not," I replied.
In vain the shepherd tried to dissuade us from going any further in the failing light: in vain he told us of the dangers we should run. We thanked him, put him off with some excuse about going "a little" further, and turned resolutely on up the "path" he had pointed us to. It was by no means the sort of path we were accustomed to.
On and on and on--I don't know how far we went. But the farther we went the more silent we became. Each knew the other knew that he was getting more and more uneasy at every step. Each knew the other wasn't going to be the first to admit that he was funky.
It grew so awfully cold. It became so awfully dark.
"The moon will be up by-and-by," Smith said.
"Yes," said I; "we shall be all right then. What's this?"
It was too dark to see it, but we felt it in our faces. We put our hands on our sleeves and felt it there.
Snow!
We both gave in then, and funked it without disguise. We turned to go down, to get home. We tried at first to disbelieve it, but it wasn't long before we both gave up the pretence.
"We're lost!" we cried together.
That was just our position. In the cold, dark night, in the midst of a rapidly-rising storm and fast-falling snow, we were lost on the wild Welsh mountains.
We stumbled about. For a long time--I don't know how long, but it was a long time--we stumbled about. That is the only expression I can use, for soon we didn't know whether we were moving up or down, left or right. We were so numbed, so bewildered. It was so cold up there, though October had not yet set in, that we had a vague idea that if we didn't keep on moving we should be frozen still, meeting the fate of many other mountaineers.
You must bear in mind that we had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and only our summer clothes on. Neither of us had a watch, so we could only judge what the time was. Smith's hope that the moon would soon rise hadn't been realised, for everything above was as dark and black as everything was beneath.
At last a frightful thing happened. Our feet slipped at the same moment, and the next moment we were both falling through space. My previous slip down a precipice was nothing compared with that awful fall in the darkness. Only one thing saved us. Before we struck the ground, we managed to break the full force of our fall by grasping the roots and branches of some low-growing shrubs and bushes which we felt without seeing. We slipped then less rapidly from hold to hold, until, with a thud, we struck the earth. It seemed more like the earth striking us.
Smith gave a loud scream of pain--then all was silent.
Smith fainted. I cried. Smith recovered and cried. I left off crying, and took his turn at fainting. There's nothing like telling the truth. We both prayed. I won't tell you about that, because praying is a thing to do, not to talk about.
We didn't move about any more. That fall proved that moving about was too dangerous. Poor old Smith couldn't move. He couldn't even stand up. He tried to once and sank down again with a yell. He had sprained his ankle.
Please imagine for a moment that this adventure is being played on the stage, and let the curtain fall. Now imagine the curtain raised again.
In the meantime, the storm has died down. The winds are not howling now, the snow is not falling. The heavens above us are not so black we can see parts of the mountain that drops from our feet into the deep invisible valley below. We can see enough to make out where we are. We are in the Eagles' Home. Our ambition has been realised--but in what a way! We reached the spot neither by the pathway nor up the rugged steep--we rolled from the top; we came through the air with the snowflakes.
Pretty snowflakes! Smith is hopelessly crippled, and I--the other snowflake--am simply a living collection of bumps and bruises. We must spend the rest of the bleak night strung up on this dizzy height. We must wait till the morning--if we can live through the night.
What's that, down there--far away down there?
A light! a number of lights. They're moving--moving up. They've reached the spot where we met the shepherd who told us of the two ways.
They've stopped. Hark! What's that?
A shout--a hail--loud and long continued, as though a lot of people are calling together.
Hurrah! We're saved. The farmer has turned out a rescue party to find and save us. Hurrah!
Gathering all my strength--all I have left--I answer the hail. Smith joins me as well as he can. Once, twice, thrice we shout. We catch the distant cry that tells us we have been heard.
For a minute the lights are stationary. Then--their bearers sending up another great hail as though to tell us they know where we are and are coming--we see the lanterns flashing forward up the track which leads above our heads, and then round to the Eagles' Home. Mr. Griffiths, who knows the hills as well as he knows his own farm lands, has told them where we are from the direction of our frantic voices.
So cheer up, Smith--they're coming.
But they'll be such a long time coming--and we're so cold and numbed. Smith is fainting again. So am I, I'm afraid--you must remember I am knocked about. It will be such a long time before the coming help reaches us.
Will it? Then what's that solitary light stealing up the jagged steep below us? Who is it coming to us by the "hard" way, straight up the precipitous mountain-side? It must be Griffiths--he's crawling up the rough boulders--he's clinging hold of roots and branches, swinging himself over the clefts. The shepherd said it couldn't be done--but Griffiths is doing it. How torn his hands must be!
I can't be quite fainting, because I can see that Griffiths' lantern is coming nearer and nearer.
Listen! I can hear his voice--only it sounds such a weak voice. That is because I am getting so weak now myself, though I manage to call back, that Griffiths may know just where we are....
Griffiths has reached us. Griffiths is attending to poor old Smith. Now he's got his arm round me. Griffiths is pouring a cordial down my throat that brings life back into me. I can feel my heart beating again. I'm better now. I'll shake Griffiths by the hand. I dare say I shall by-and-by. But this is the hand of SMITH'S SISTER!
The strain of this theatrical style, and of the present tense, is more than I can stand any longer, so I hope it is quite clear to you what had happened. Just a few words to sum up.
When the rescue party formed by Mr. Griffiths--as soon as it was obvious that Smith and I had lost ourselves--set out, Smith's sister set out with them. Griffiths ordered her back. She went back, collared a lantern and a flask all to herself (in view of the party separating--what a thoughtful girl!), followed and rejoined them. When they stopped and halloaed to find whereabouts we were, he ordered her back again, but not until she had heard the hasty consultation which resulted in the party sticking to the safer way to us. She heard about the "two ways," and she dared the one that everybody else was afraid of. The ascent up the mountain's face was suggested, but only Smith's sister had the pluck to make it. This was the girl we had scorned and laughed at. This was the girl whom we had told to stop at home and play with the chickens!
About an hour after she reached us with the "first help" that may have saved our lives, we saw the lights of Griffith's party on the crest above us. We exchanged shouts, and they let down a rope at once, and hauled us up. Long before this, Smith's sister had bound up his injured ankle neatly and lightly with her own handkerchief and our handkerchiefs.
You should have seen the farmer's face--and, indeed, the faces of all the others too--when they realised how she had reached us.
It is all very well for her to say that she didn't know what she was doing--that she couldn't have done in the light what she did in the dark. All I am concerned with is the fact that she did do what I have told you she did.
Referring to the proposition I laid down soon after I started--about there being real grit in girls after all--you will understand what I meant when I wind up my yarn with the familiar quotation, Q. E. D.
THE COLONEL'S BOY.
BY H. HERVEY.
Marjorie had never got on well with her brother's guardian. He was a bachelor, stern and autocratic, and with no admiration for woman's ways, and she instinctively felt that he did not understand her.
His love for Miles Weyburne, the son of a brother officer who had fallen in a skirmish with an Indian frontier tribe thirteen years ago, was a thing recognised and beyond question.
Even at the age of ten the boy's likeness to his father had been remarkable. He had the same dark, earnest eyes, the same frank, winning manner, the same eager enthusiasm; he was soon to develop, to the secret pride of his guardian, the same keen interest in his profession, with a soundness of judgment and a fearless self-reliance peculiarly his own.
He had gained his star after scarcely a year's service, and had then got an exchange into his guardian's regiment.
Colonel Alleson held the command of a midland regimental district. He had the reputation of being somewhat of a martinet, and was not altogether popular with his men.
Marjorie generally spent her holidays with her aunt in the town, and the Colonel occasionally went to see her; but he was nervous and constrained, with little to say for himself, and Marjorie always did her best to show to a disadvantage when he was there. "He's such a crabby old thing," she would say, when Miles grew enthusiastic over the grave, taciturn officer,--"besides, he hates girls, you know he does, and I'm not going to knuckle under to him." Her brother had explained that the Colonel's ideas were old-fashioned, so she sometimes talked slang on purpose to shock him. She listened to his abrupt, awkward sentences with a half listless, half criticising air. She was a typical school-girl at the most characteristic age,--quick to resent, impatient of control, straightforward almost to rudeness. The Colonel might be a father to her brother--he never could be to her. She often thought about her father and mentally contrasted the two: she thought, too, though less often, of the mother who had died the very day that that father had fallen in action, when she herself was little more than a year old.
Miles had been spending his leave with his aunt, and the day before his return to Ireland to rejoin the battalion, he biked over to the barracks in company with his sister to say good-bye to his guardian.
"I suppose this is another of the Colonel's fads," Marjorie remarked, glancing at the notice board as she got off her bicycle outside the gates. "What an old fuss he is, Miles."
"Has he been giving you a lesson in manners?"
"Not he." She tossed back her wavy, golden-brown hair as she spoke. "I should like to see him try it on."
Miles gave a short little laugh.
"He got into an awful rage the other day because somebody came through here on a bicycle. How are you to read the notice all that way off?"
Miles was not listening to her. Hearing the sound of wheels, he had turned round and caught sight of the Colonel's dog-cart. Marjorie glanced mischievously at him, and just as the Colonel entered the gateway, she deliberately mounted her bicycle and rode through before his eyes. There was just room for her to pass. The Colonel reined in, and looked sternly round. "Stop!" he said. Marjorie obeyed. Wheeling her bicycle forward, she said in her politest manner:
"I beg your pardon. Did you want me?"
"This is quite contrary to regulations."
"Yes, I know," she answered, looking straight at him. "I read the notice, but I don't see the sense of it."
There were one or two soldiers standing near, and they exchanged glances and smiled. Miles coloured up with shame and vexation. The Colonel gave the reins to his groom and got down without another word. He held out his hand to Miles as the dog-cart passed on.
"I want to speak to you," he said shortly, and he walked on in front of them.
"I hope I shall see you again, Miles," he began, as they ascended the steps leading to his quarters. "I have only a few minutes to spare now. Come up this evening, will you?"
"Yes, Colonel."
Marjorie moved towards the door. The colour mounted to her cheeks as the Colonel stepped forward to open it for her. Miles, feeling that he ought to say something, waited behind a minute.
"I'm sorry about--about this," he said. "I don't understand it."
"I do, perfectly--well, good-bye, my boy."
His grave, stern face softened wonderfully as he grasped Miles' hand.
"What an old crosspatch he is," began Marjorie as her brother came up with her. "I daren't for the life of me ride through there again. Did you see, Miles, he was quite white with rage when I cheeked him? Those Tommies thought it awful sport."
"What a little ass you are," said Miles crossly, "to make all that row before the men."
Marjorie looked away. "It served him jolly well right," she said, pedalling faster.
They rode home the rest of the way in silence.
Miles was away with his battalion at the front, and Marjorie was spending a fortnight of the Christmas holidays with a school friend at Eastbourne. The two girls were hurrying down the esplanade together one bright, frosty morning in January when Marjorie suddenly found herself face to face with the Colonel. His eyes were bent down, and he passed without recognising her. With a few hurried words to her chum, she ran after him.
"How do you do, Colonel? I didn't know you were here."
He started as she addressed him. "I only came yesterday," he said; "I have got a few days' leave."
"Did you hear from Miles last mail? I did."
"Yes. He has been very regular so far."
"You must miss him awfully. Are you going this way?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll come a little way with you, if I may; I wanted to say something."
Putting her hands into her jacket pockets, she looked very gravely at him.
"I am sorry I was rude that day I came into the Barracks," she said hurriedly. "I have been thinking about it. It was horrid of me, when the soldiers were there. Will you forgive me?"
"Certainly," he said nervously, putting his hands behind him, and walking faster.
"You see, I want to be friends with you," she added frankly, "because of Miles. He thinks such a lot of you--the dear boy; good-bye."
Her dark eyes, generally so mocking and mischievous, had grown suddenly earnest, and his heart warmed towards her, as he held out his hand.
"Good-bye, Marjorie," he said, "you are very much alike, you and Miles."
"Are we?" she said simply, flushing a little. "I didn't know. I am glad."
She walked back to her chum with a beating heart. "He's not so bad," she said to herself. "I wish he liked girls."
Spion Kop had been abandoned, and the British Army was in orderly retreat, when Miles found himself cut off with the remnant of his company, by the enemy. The death of his captain had left him in command, and realising his responsibility, he made up his mind to act promptly. "We are cut off, men," he explained briefly to his soldiers; "will you hoist the white flag, or trust to me to bring you through?"
"No surrender, and we stand by you, sir," answered the serjeant major gruffly. "Is it agreed, boys?"
There was a general assent.
It was a gallant deed, that desperate dash to rejoin the division, though accomplished at a terrible cost. Miles, leading the forlorn hope, was soon to pay the price of his daring. They were all but through when he fell, shot by a chance bullet.
An hour later his battered troops came up with the British forces. Three or four stragglers dropped into camp as the serjeant major was making his report.
"Ah!" said the colonel, expressively--"you got through?"
"Yes, sir, beastly hard work, too."
"Who brought you?"
"Lieutenant Weyburne, sir."
"I thought so. He's the kind of fellow for that sort of thing. Is he in?"
"He was shot, sir."
"Shot, poor boy. What will Alleson say?"
It was Wednesday morning, and the entire strength of the Depot had turned out on parade. The Colonel, tall and dignified in the faultless neatness of undress uniform, was standing in his characteristic attitude, with his hands behind him and his head thrown slightly back. His blue eyes looked out, grave and watchful, from under the peak of his fatigue cap, and the tense interlocking of his gloved fingers was the only sign of his mental unrest.
Yet the vision of Miles was before him--Miles bold, earnest, high-spirited, Miles in the full joy of life and strength, with the light of affection in his eyes; Miles again with his boyish face white and drawn and his active young form still in death.
He had loved the boy, his boy as he always called him, more even than he had realised, and life seemed very blank without the hope of seeing him again.
It was two days since his name had appeared in the lists of killed and wounded, and that afternoon the Colonel went down to see Marjorie, who had returned from Eastbourne a few days before. She looked unusually pale when she came into the room, and though she ran forward eagerly enough to greet him, her eyes were tearful and her lips quivering, as she put her hand into his.
"I thought of writing to you"--began the Colonel nervously, "but----"
"I'm glad you came," said Marjorie, "very glad. I shouldn't mind so much if we knew just how he died," she added sorrowfully.
"We know how he would face death, Marjorie!"
She put her arms on the table, and hid her face with a stifled sob.
"He was your boy, and you'll miss him so," she went on. "There's no one like him, no one half so dear or half so brave. If I were only a boy I might try to be like him and make you happy--but I can't, it's no use."
She was looking up at him with those dark eyes of hers, just as his boy had looked at him when he said good-bye three months ago, and he could not trust himself to speak.
"I suppose you get used to things," she said with a sigh.
The Colonel put his hand on her head. "Poor child," he said in a husky voice, "don't think about me."
"Miles loved you," she answered softly, going up close to him. "I'm his sister. Let me love you, too."
He drew her to him in a tender fatherly manner, that brought instant comfort to her aching, wilful little heart.
"Your father was my friend, Marjorie," he said,--"the staunchest friend man ever had. I have often wondered why we failed to understand each other."
"You don't like girls," said Marjorie, "that's why."
The Colonel smiled grimly.
"I didn't," he said. "Perhaps I have changed my mind."
Lord Roberts had entered Pretoria, and the Colonel sat in his quarters looking through the list of released prisoners. All at once he gave a start, glanced hastily around, and then looked back again. About half way down the list of officers, he read:
"Lieut. M. Weyburne (reported killed at Spion Kop)."
Miles was alive: there had been some mistake. The bugle sounded. It was a quarter past nine. He walked out on to the parade-ground with his usual firm step, smiling as he went. Miles was alive. He could have dashed down the barrack-square like a bugler-boy in the lightness of his heart.
People who met him that day hastened to congratulate him. He said very little, but looked years younger.
Three weeks later there came a letter from Miles, explaining how he had been left upon the ground for dead, and on coming to himself, had fallen unarmed into the hands of the Boers. He had never fully recovered from his wounds, and by the doctor's orders had been invalided home, so that his guardian might expect him about ten days after receiving his letter.
It was a happy home-coming. The Colonel went down to Southampton to meet him, and when he reached his aunt's house he found a letter from Marjorie awaiting him. "The Colonel's a dear," she wrote; "I understand now why you think such a lot of him."
Miles turned with a smile to his guardian.
"You and Marjorie are friends at last, Colonel," he said.
"Yes, my boy," he returned gravely; "we know each other better now."
'TWIXT LIFE AND DEATH.
A MANX STORY.
BY CLUCAS JOUGHIN.
PART I.
Deborah Shimmin was neither tall nor fair, and yet Nature had been kind to her in many ways. She had wonderful eyes--large, dark, and full of mute eloquence--and if her mouth was too large, her nose too irregular, and her cheeks too much tanned by rude health, and by exposure to the sun as the village gossips said, I, Henry Kinnish, poetic dreamer, and amateur sculptor, thought she had a symmetry of form and a grace of movement which wrought her whole being into harmony and made her a perfect example of beauty with a plain face; and every one knew that Andrew, the young village blacksmith and rural postman, loved her with all the might of his big, brawny soul.
These two ideas of Deborah's beauty and Andrew's love for her, were revealed to me one day when, with Deborah's master, his lumbering sons and comely daughters, and my chum Fred Harcourt, an artist from "across the water," we were cutting some early grass in May, just before the full bloom of the gorse had begun to fade from the hillsides and from the tops of the hedges where it had made borders of gold for the green of the fields all the spring.
A soft west wind, which blew in from the sea, made waves along the uncut grass to windward of the mowers, and played around the skirts of Deborah, making them flutter about her, while the exertion of the haymaking occasionally let loose her long, strong black hair.
But the face of Deborah was sad; for the village policeman had laid a charge against her before his chief to make her account for her possession of a large number of seagulls' eggs, to take which the law of the Island had made a punishable offence, by an act of Tynwald passed to protect the sea fowl from extinction.
The eggs, all fresh, and newly taken from the nests, had been found on Deborah's dressing-table; but Deborah indignantly denied all knowledge of the means by which they had got there. There was a mystery about it to every one, for fresh clutches were seen there every morning, and the innocent Deborah made no attempt to conceal them. Where, then, could they come from but from some nests of the colony of seagulls which lived in the haughs that dropped down into the sea from Rhaby Hills? But no woman, young or old, could climb the craigs where the gulls had their nests. It was a feat of daring only performed by reckless boys and young men who were reared on the littoral, and who were strong and spirited craigsmen by inheritance and by familiarity with the dangerous sport of egg-collecting among the giddy heights of precipices on which, if they took but one false step, they might be hurled to certain destruction below.
When the mowers had made all but the last swath, and there were only a few more rucks of the early hay to be made in the field, Cubbin, the rural constable, came in from the highroad with Andrew, the smith. The hot and sweated mowers did not stop the swing of their scythes, but they talked loudly amongst themselves in imprecations against the new law which made it a criminal offence for a lad to take a few gull's eggs, which they, and their fathers before them, had gone sporting after in the good old times when men did what they thought right.
The bronzed face of Deborah Shimmin paled, her lips set into a resolve of courage when she saw Andrew in the hands of the police; and I learnt for the first time that Andrew was looked upon as the robber and Deborah as the receiver of the stolen eggs. I saw more than this, I saw, by one look, that the heart of Deborah and the heart of the tall, lithe lad, who now stood before me, were as one heart in love and in determination to stand by each other in the coming trial.
The big hands of the young smith were thrust into his pockets, and a smile played over his honest face; but Deborah looked at the constable with a hard, defiant look, and then bent over her work again as if waiting to hear him say something dreadful which she was resolved to throw back into his face, though her hand trembled as she held the fork, which moved now faster and stronger than before.
But Cubbin was a man of the gospel of peace though he was an officer of the law, and he only looked sadly on the face of Deborah as he asked her whether it would not be better for her to say where she got her supply of eggs from than allow him to get a summons against Andrew.
"I have told you before that Andrew never gave me the eggs!" cried the girl, her face flushed with the crimson setting of the sun, "and I don't know where they came from. I can't say anything different, and I wish you would not trouble me, Mr. Cubbin!"
Fred and I called Cubbin, the constable, to one side, and asked him to allow us a day or two to solve the mystery of the eggs--a little arrangement which may seem strange to dwellers in towns, but which was quite practicable at this time in this far-off place, and which he soon agreed to allow.
I had been out shooting corncrakes that day, and Fred Harcourt had come with me for a day in the meadows, as his brush and palette had wearied him of late, and he longed to stretch his limbs and to see my spaniels work in the weedy hedges and in the meadows, where the grass had stood the test of the dry spring. We had taken off our coats to help our neighbour with his sunburnt grass, and our guns were laid across them. The spaniels had fallen asleep--using the coats as beds. While conversing with Cubbin we had walked quietly to get our coats, and I saw that one of the sleeping dogs was still hunting in his dreams. There was nothing uncommon about this, for dogs will hunt in their sleep; but some inner voice said to me that Deborah Shimmin, being a highly strung, nervous girl, might hunt in her sleep also, and that such things as somnambulists walking the roofs of high houses had been heard of, and I remembered a lad in my own boyhood's days who was awakened early one morning by the riverside with his rod in his hand and his basket slung over his nightshirt. But I did not communicate my theory of the solution of the mystery of the eggs to Cubbin, the constable.
When the policeman left the field I entered into a kindly talk with Deborah Shimmin, and was not long in learning what the girl herself had probably never thought of, that on the public reading of the Act for the protection of sea-fowl, on the Tynwald day of the previous year, she had been impressed by the thought that Andrew would now be forbidden to employ his agility and his courage in a form of sport she often tried to dissuade him from.
I knew before this that she had recently lost her mother, and had suffered a bereavement through a favourite brother being lost at sea one stormy night at the back-end herring fishing off Howth Head.
"Poor Deborah," I said to Fred, "she is all nerves, and the hand of life's troubles is holding her; surely she must be innocent of encouraging her lover in risking his life--the only precious life left to her now!"
"And the jolly Andrew," said Fred, "certainly looked the most amusing picture of innocence, as Cubbin trotted him along the grass! But your theory of the somnambulant business is a bit fanciful, all the same."
PART II.
At ten o'clock that night Fred Harcourt and I were bivouaced within sight of the only door of the house where Deborah Shimmin worked as a domestic help in the family of her uncle. The night was not dark, it seldom is dark in these northern islands so late in May, but there was a light of the moon at its first quarter, and a glint of some stars shone down upon us as we hearkened to the stillness of the air and to a frequent movement of a tired horse in the stable.
Our bivouac was a clump of trammon trees (elders) at the corner of the orchard which adjoined the farm buildings. Between us and the dwelling house there was a disused pigsty. At about a quarter to eleven o'clock a man, with a red setter dog at his heels and a fowling piece on his arm, came sneaking up, and crept into the sty.
Then there was another long spell of silence, not broken, but rather intensified, by the words which I whispered to Fred Harcourt that the fellow who crept into the sty was Kit Kermode, and that he could be after no good.
At midnight a cock crew at the far end of the village, and a dog barked. Then there was silence again, save that every now and again a sedge warbler, far away by the stream near Shenvarla, sang a faintly audible song. Our position on the slope of the foot-hill at Gordon House was between the village and the hills which girt the sea coast. This made my theory of the sleep-walking to the cliffs more plausible. But while we lay low in the clump of trammon trees the appearance of Kit Kermode, with his cat-like walk and his eyes that could wink slander faster than any old woman's tongue could wag it, gave me a theory, or at least a speculation, in another direction.
In soft whispers to Fred Harcourt, who was new to the village, I told him how the rascal Kermode hated Andrew the blacksmith. "He hates him," I said, "I do verily believe, for his good honest face, his manly outspoken tongue, his courage, and his power of arm, but most of all he hates him since Andrew, years ago as an innocent and unthinking lad, ran after him in the village street and handed him a reminder of some money which he owed his master."
"But what can that have to do with Deborah Shimmin's gulls' eggs?" asked Fred, whose mind never seemed to see anything but pictures of divers colours and inspiring outlines in the happy dreamland he lived in, all unconscious of the world's cruelty, and hate, and love of evil.
I had just finished telling him that a man like Kermode might bribe a boy to get him gulls' eggs, and sneak up to Deborah's window and quietly reach in and place the eggs on her dressing-table, as a means of getting Deborah and Andrew into trouble. I had just finished giving this outline of the thought in my mind, I say, when the door of the farmhouse opened and Deborah Shimmin, clad only in her nightdress, stepped lightly forth and started up the hillside.
The next moment the man, his gun in the hollow of his arm and the red setter dog at his heels, crawled forth from the pigsty, looked round as if to make certain he was not watched, and followed the white figure of the girl as she glided up the zig-zag path in the direction of the haughs which formed the wild sea coast.
It did not take Fred and me very long to take off our boots and noiselessly follow, guided by the figure in white, rather than by the man who went before us, for the dim light of the moon and the northern night made his dark dress difficult to see in the shadows of the hedges and trees.
I knew that Deborah would take the usual path to the rocks, and bade Fred follow close behind me while I took a shorter route. In ten minutes we were again under cover when the girl passed close by us, her long hair knotted roughly into a mass of rolls about her large and well-formed head. Her eyes were open, and fixed in a glassy stare straight ahead. She seemed to move along, rather than walk, and had no appearance of either hesitation or haste; and Kermode, with his dog and his gun, stealthily followed in her wake not twenty yards behind.
While we were crossing the field bordering the Gordon haughs, keeping under the shadow of a gorse-clad hedge, Deborah disappeared over the cliff, and the man, watched by Fred and myself, crept up to the edge of the cliffs down which the poor girl had descended.
Before another minute had elapsed, Kermode had stretched himself out his full length on a craig which overlooked the precipitous rocks down which Deborah had disappeared. We then secured the cover of a mound not thirty feet away from him.
The dog gave a low whine when he saw the head of his master craned out to watch the movements of the white figure descending the rocks, and then all was quiet as before.
Fred's suspense and anxiety for the safety of the girl was apparent in his hard breathing; but my own were inconsiderable, for I knew that if undisturbed by any noise unusual to the night, or any interference by the fellow who now held the future happiness of Andrew, the smith, in his hands she would safely climb up the haugh and make her way home to bed, all unconscious of the awful position she had placed herself in.
Wicked as I knew the man to be, I did not now imagine that he had any other intention in watching around the house than to try to discover Andrew paying a nocturnal visit, with some gulls' eggs for his sweetheart. This would have been a mean enough act, but it seems a small thing beside the cruel and murderous deed he would have committed but for the providential presence and prompt action of Fred Harcourt and myself.
Fred and I lay low, with our chins resting on our hands, not daring even to whisper. The dog whined a little now and again, and we heard the subdued cries of seagulls as they flew off, alarmed in the darkness, over the sea. Still Deborah did not make her appearance on the top of the cliff. It seemed a long time that we lay and watched thus, but it could not have been so long as it seemed.
Then Kermode, without raising himself from watching the climbing girl, reached back for the gun which he had placed on the ground by his side. He raised it to the level of his face, resting his left elbow on the ground, and I heard the click of the hammer as he cocked it. Then I saw his thumb and finger go into his waistcoat pocket.
"Good God!" I said in a loud whisper, as I sprang to my feet, for I knew in one awful moment that the villain was feeling for a cap to discharge a shot in the air above the head of Deborah, who would wake up at the shock, and fall to the base of the craig in her terrible fright. So intent was Kermode in his fell design of frightening the girl to her destruction that he did not hear me, or notice the growl of his dog, or feel the vibration of our tread as we both bore down upon him. We should have been too late if it had not been for the life-long habit of the wretch to secure himself from danger or suspicion. With his finger on the trigger, all ready to pull, he paused one moment to raise himself and look about. That moment saved the life of Deborah Shimmin, for the would-be murderer was the next instant under the knee of Fred Harcourt and his throat in his grip, while my hand was over the nipples of the gun. While we were all on the ground together, and the setter dog had a hold of Harcourt's leg, the tall form of Cubbin, the policeman, bent over us. I had lowered the hammers of the gun and thrown it to one side to grasp the dog, for Harcourt would not let go his hold of Kermode's throat lest he should shout and wake the girl.
"Gag Kermode," I said to Cubbin, as I hit the dog just above the snout with a stone, killing him by one blow.
Then Deborah Shimmin, holding something in a fold of her nightdress with one hand, and climbing with the other, came up over the edge of the cliff a few yards away from us.
She looked very beautiful as she stepped up on the sloping sward above the haugh, with the pale moonlight just lighting her airy dress, and her face all sad and careworn.
Leaving Kermode to the care of the constable, Fred and I noiselessly followed the girl home, and saw her step over the obstacles in her path as by instinct, turning her face neither to the right nor left.
We decided to awaken her before she reached the door of the farmhouse, so that, according to the popular notion, she might never again become somnambulent.
With this view I stepped before her as she approached the door, but was astonished to find that she paused as if my presence blocked the way before she yet saw me or touched me. But there was no misunderstanding the blank stare in her wonderful eyes.
I gently put out my hand and took hers, as she put it out before her to feel the influence of a presence she could not see.
She did not scream or faint. She awoke with a start, and let the eggs fall on the ground.
At first she could not understand where she was, and just thought she was dreaming; but by degrees it came to her that she was standing before me in the pale moonlight when she thought she ought to be in bed.
Then I softly told her where she had been in her sleep, keeping back all knowledge of Kermode's attempted revenge on Andrew, and how we had decided to awake her. Then, with a little pleasant laugh, we both told her that the mystery of the seagulls' eggs was solved, and that neither Andrew nor she would be troubled again.
She fell to sobbing a little, and for the first time seemed to shiver with the cold; then she lifted the latch and we bade her good night.
Nothing was done to Kermode, for the fellow swore he had no intention of discharging the gun, and we could not prove he had, though the case was clear enough in our eyes, and the deed would have been done had we not, in God's providence, been there to prevent it.
Cubbin, the constable, it transpired afterwards, had overheard me giving my theory of the sleep-walking to Fred in the hayfield, and he, too, had been in hiding at the farm, and had watched and followed us all.
So there was a wonderful story for him to tell of how Deborah had made good her defence against the charge he had laid against Andrew and her. And the beautiful Deborah with the plain face became the bride of the jolly Andrew, who was neither an artist nor an amateur sculptor, but only a village blacksmith who had an eye for beauty of form and character.
ROSE'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT.
A TRUE STORY.
BY MARIE E. C. DELBRASSINE.
"Where is Rose?"
"Busy, as usual, with her mice and beetles, I suppose, father," answered Ethel; "we have not seen her all this afternoon."
"She will probably be with you at teatime," said Dr. Sinclair, "after which I should like you to ask her to come to me for a little while in the surgery."
"Very well, father, I won't forget."
Dr. Sinclair retreated again to his surgery, which was arranged also as his library, knowing that his willing helper would not fail to join him there.
"I cannot think," said Maud, Ethel's sister, "what that girl finds to interest her in all those horrid creatures--beetles and toads, and even snakes, when she can get one; the other day I saw her handling a slowworm as if it were a charming domestic pet. It was enough to make one feel cold all over."
"Well, there is no accounting for taste; Rose never seems to care if she is asked to a party or not," continued Ethel, "and she does not mind helping father with his work, which I always find so tiresome, for he is so dreadfully particular about it. Perhaps biologists are different from other folks; I sometimes think there is something uncannny and queer about them."
"I'm sure Rose is neither uncanny nor queer, she's just a brick," said Jack, a schoolboy of fourteen, who was enjoying a Saturday half-holiday at home with a new book, it being too wet to play cricket. "She is always willing to do anything to help a fellow."
"Which means," said Ethel, "that you always expect girls to be your slaves, when you are at home."
At this moment the door opened and Rose herself appeared.
"Well, Rose," said Maud, "have you pinned out a beetle, or taught your pet ants to perform tricks?"
"Not this afternoon," said Rose; "I have had a delightful time with my microscope, studying spiders and drawing slides for the magic lantern to be used at my next little lecture to the G.F.S. girls."
"That sounds dry and uninteresting," yawned Maud. "Ah, here comes tea. By the way, father would like you to go to his study afterwards. Poor Rose, I expect he has some more tiresome work for you."
"Oh, don't call it tiresome, Maud dear; I quite enjoy it."
"It's a good thing you do. I hate being shut up there; it's such a bore."
A quarter of an hour later a middle-aged man, whose snow-white hair made him appear at first sight much older than he was in reality, might have been seen busy over a manuscript, whilst a fair girl sat beside him, reading out to him the notes he had made, and which he was working into the book he was writing. The two seemed to work in perfect harmony.
Rose's father had been the rector of a remote country parish in Cornwall. Most of his friends said that he was lost in such a neighbourhood, and that it was a shame to have sent so able a man to such a parish; but Mr. Sinclair never complained himself; he may sometimes have thought it strange that other men were chosen before him to occupy positions which he felt conscious he might well have filled, but as his lot was cast in that Cornish nook, he had thrown himself heart and soul into whatever work he found to do. The affection he won from the rough fisherfolk, who regarded him as the father of the parish, whose joys and sorrows, cares and anxieties, were all well known to him, was as much to him as any brilliant worldly success. His means were small, too small for his generous heart. He wished to give as good an education as possible to his two children, Henry and Rose, and devoted much time and trouble to that end. For several years he taught the boy and girl together himself, Rose learning much the same lessons as her brother; this laid the foundation of the accuracy which characterised her in any task she undertook--a quality often lacking in feminine work.
Mr. Sinclair had been a good student of natural history, and had written books and magazine articles which had been well thought of. Rose tried to follow her father's pursuit; she would spend hours in reading about birds and butterflies, and in making little researches herself. One of her greatest pleasures had been to help her father, either by taking notes for him or by writing at his dictation. She hoped herself some day to add to her pecuniary resources by writing for biological papers or even by giving lectures.
But the happy home life in the Cornish rectory was to end all too quickly. Rose lost both her parents within a short time of each other; her brother was at Oxford, working hard; and Rose was left alone, and had to leave the home which was so dear to her.
It was then that her uncle, Dr. Sinclair, without a moment's hesitation, offered her a home in his house. He did not listen to warning voices, cautioning him against burdening himself with the charge of another girl, for his own means were not large, and his family made many demands upon his purse. He was a physician whose career might have been a brilliant one had his practice been in London; but a fanciful and invalid wife had rendered this impossible, as she declared she could only exist in the pure air of the country.
So he had reluctantly abandoned his cherished hope of working as a London doctor, and had settled near a small country town in Gloucestershire, where he soon obtained most of the practice round; but his scope was narrow. He nevertheless managed to keep in touch with his profession, a profession in which he had entered heart and soul, making various scientific researches in his laboratory, and sending the fruit of them in clearly-written articles to medical papers. Now for this work, either in writing short articles from his notes, or from his dictation, a patient helper was of great assistance to him. His own daughters, as already seen, disliked the work, and showed their father no sympathy in it, whereas to Rose it was real enjoyment, filling, in a measure, the void she felt in no longer helping her father. Between uncle and niece a tacit sympathy had grown up. He encouraged her in her natural history pursuits, and helped her to start the lectures she gave to the G.F.S. girls in the neighbourhood. The suggestion had seemed little likely to interest them, but Rose had been so clear and explicit that the girls soon became eager for them.
Time went on in this way, when something happened which was again to change Rose's circumstances. Truly it is that often trifles light as air have an unknown weight of importance in them. One morning the letter-bag brought a circular announcing that some "University Extension Lectures" were to be given at C----, their nearest town, by a professor from Oxford, the subject chosen being "Spiders," with notes from the microscope.
When Dr. Sinclair had read it, he passed it, smiling kindly, to Rose.
"This is not for me," he said, "but I think I know some one whom it may interest."
"Oh, uncle! how delightful," said Rose, when she had looked at it; "the very thing I should enjoy!"
So it came to pass that Rose attended the lectures, entering very fully into them, and taking careful notes.
At the close of the course, the lecturer said he would like any of the students who felt sufficiently interested in the subject to write a paper, and send it in to him, giving a summary of the lectures, and asking any questions they might care to ask, at the end.
Rose and several others responded to the invitation, and wrote their papers.
For some time Rose heard no more about it, but one morning she was surprised to receive the following note:--
"DEAR MADAM,--I have felt much satisfaction in reading your paper, which I return, with a few notes and answers to your questions. It shows me with what intelligent interest you have followed my lectures.
"It may interest you to know that an examination for a scholarship at St. Margaret's Hall, the new college for women, is shortly to be held at Oxford; and if you care to pursue a subject for which you show much understanding, I would suggest your trying for it. I don't promise you success, but I think it is worth the venture. A friend of mine, a lady living in Oxford, receives lady students recommended by me, and would, I am sure, make you comfortable on very moderate terms. Yours truly,
"B. FIELDING."
Rose read the letter two or three times and then passed it to her uncle. Had she the means to go there--if, oh, if she could only get the scholarship, how delightful it would be!
"Come to my study," said Dr. Sinclair.
And as soon as the door was shut he said kindly,--
"I don't like you to lose this opportunity, dear child, so write and tell Mr. Fielding you will go up to Oxford, if he will introduce you to the lady he mentions."
"Oh, but, uncle," she said, "what Mr. Fielding may call moderate terms may really mean a great deal more than should be paid for me."
"Never mind, little Rose," said Dr. Sinclair, "I meant to give my kind little helper a birthday present, and this shall be it."
"Dear uncle, how kind of you. But remember, that whatever help, as you term it, I may have given you, has always been a pleasure to me."
"And so, dear, is anything that I may do for you to me."
Thus it was settled, and a few days later, Dr. Sinclair himself started for his own beloved Oxford with his niece. Jack and Maud went to the station to see them off.
"Keep up your courage, Rose," said Jack, "you're pretty sure to pass, for if any girl in England knows about creepy, crawley things, you do!"
When Rose returned some days later, she looked rather overstrained and pale, and, to the surprise of Ethel and Maud, never looked at her microscope, or at any of her treasures in the way of beetles and tadpoles, but spent her time in complete idleness, except when she helped them to do up some of their evening clothes for some forthcoming dances; and they were surprised to see how deftly a biologist could sew.
One Saturday, as the three girls were sitting working together, Jack, who was spending his half-holiday at home again, said, "Why, here comes the telegraph boy!"
"Run and see who it is for," said Ethel, who had lately shown much more sympathetic interest in Rose, and who began to realise that if Rose obtained what she was so keenly set on, she, as well as others, might miss the cousin who had been so kind and so unselfish an inmate of their home. "Run and see, Jack; and if it is for any of us, bring it here."
Rose looked very white, but did not look up from her work.
"Addressed to Miss Rose Sinclair," said Jack, who soon returned.
Rose took the telegram with trembling fingers, and then tore it open.
It announced the following:--
"Rose Sinclair passed first. Awarded scholarship St. Margaret's for three years."
"Oh, Ethel!" said Rose, "it is too good to be true."
"I knew you would pass," said Jack, "I always said you would, didn't I, now?"
"Well," said Ethel, "we ought to be very glad for your sake."
"Yes," said Maud, "I congratulate you, Rose--but, I am very, very sorry you are going away."
"Are you, dear?" said Rose; "I also shall feel lonely without all of you, in this my second home. But let us go and tell uncle, for I consider this his special birthday gift to me."
"So it is," said Dr. Sinclair, who appeared at that moment.
"Then your old uncle is much gratified in sending his niece to Oxford; but he will miss his little girl very much."
Rose distinguished herself even far above Jack's expectation. After she had concluded her college course, she devoted her time and knowledge to giving lectures, for which she received remuneration, also to writing articles for magazines, and subsequent events led to her settling in Oxford. Whenever Dr. Sinclair wants an especially enjoyable holiday, he goes to spend a few days with Rose, and the two compare notes on their work. When he expresses his pleasure at her success, Rose loves to remind him that she owes it greatly to his kindness that she was placed in the way of obtaining it, through the birthday gift, which was to be so helpful to her.
