It was one o’clock in the morning when a carriage drove up to the door
of the Larches, and Mrs. Asplin alighted, all pale, tear-stained, and
tremulous. She had been nodding over the fire in her bedroom when the
young people had returned with the news of the tragic ending to the
night’s festivity, and no persuasion or argument could induce her to
wait until the next day before flying to Peggy’s side.
“No, no!” she cried. “You must not hinder me. If I can’t drive, I will
walk! I would go to the child to-night if I had to crawl on my hands
and knees! I promised her mother to look after her. How could I stay
at home and think of her lying there? Oh, children, children, pray for
Peggy! Pray that she may be spared, and that her poor parents may be
spared this awful—awful news!”
Then she kissed her own girls, clasped them to her in a passionate
embrace, and drove off to the Larches in the carriage which had brought
the young people home.
Lady Darcy came out to meet her, and gripped her hand in eager welcome.
“You have come! I knew you would. I am so thankful to see you. The
doctor has come, and will stay all night. He has sent for a nurse——”
“And—my Peggy?”
Lady Darcy’s lips quivered.
“Very, very ill—much worse than Rosalind! Her poor little arms! I was
so wicked, I thought it was her fault, and I had no pity, and now it
seems that she has saved my darling’s life. They can’t tell us about
it yet, but it was she who wrapped the curtain round Rosalind, and
burned herself in pressing out the flames. Rosalind kept crying ‘Peggy!
Peggy!’ and we thought she meant that it was Peggy’s fault. We had
heard so much of her mischievous tricks. My husband found her lying
on the floor. She was unconscious; but she came round when they were
dressing her arms. I think she will know you——”
“Take me to her, please!” Mrs. Asplin said quickly. She had to wait
several moments before she could control her voice sufficiently to add,
“And Rosalind, how is she?”
“There is no danger. Her neck is scarred, and her hair singed and
burned. She is suffering from the shock, but the doctor says it is not
serious. Peggy——”
She paused, and the other walked on resolutely, not daring to ask for
the termination of that sentence. She crept into the little room, bent
over the bed, and looked down on Peggy’s face through a mist of tears.
It was drawn and haggard with pain, and the eyes met hers without a ray
of light in their hollow depths. That she recognised was evident, but
the pain which she was suffering was too intense to leave room for any
other feeling. She lay motionless, with her bandaged arms stretched
before her, and her face looked so small and white against the pillow
that Mrs. Asplin trembled to think how little strength was there to
fight against the terrible shock and strain. Only once in all that long
night did Peggy show any consciousness of her surroundings, but then
her eyes lit up with a gleam of remembrance, her lips moved, and Mrs.
Asplin bent down to catch the faintly-whispered words—
“The twenty-sixth—next Monday! Don’t tell Arthur!”
“‘The twenty-sixth’! What is that, darling? Ah, I remember—Arthur’s
examination! You mean if he knew you were ill, it would upset him for
his work?”
An infinitesimal movement of the head answered “Yes,” and she gave the
promise in trembling tones—
“No, my precious, we won’t tell him. He could not help, and it would
only distress you to feel that he was upset. Don’t trouble about it,
darling. It will be all right.”
Then Peggy shut her eyes and wandered away into a strange world, in
which accustomed things disappeared, and time was not, and nothing
remained but pain, and weariness, and mystery. Those of us who have
come near to death have visited this world too, and know the blackness
of it, and the weary waking.
Peggy lay in her little white bed and heard voices speaking in her
ear, and saw strange shapes flit to and fro. Quite suddenly as it
appeared, a face would be bending over her own, and as she watched it
with languid curiosity wondering what manner of thing it could be, it
would melt away and vanish in the distance. At other times again it
would grow larger and larger, until it assumed gigantic proportions,
and she cried out in fear of the huge, saucer-like eyes. There was a
weary puzzle in her brain, an effort to understand, but everything
seemed mixed up and incomprehensible. She would look round the room
and see the sunshine peeping in through, the chinks of the blinds,
and when she closed her eyes for a moment—just a single, fleeting
moment—lo! the gas was lit, and someone was nodding in a chair by her
side. And it was by no means always the same room. She was tired, and
wanted badly to rest, yet she was always rushing about here, there, and
everywhere, striving vainly to dress herself in clothes which fell off
as soon as they were fastened, hurrying to catch a train to reach a
certain destination; but in each instance the end was the same—she was
falling, falling, falling—always falling—from the crag of an Alpine
precipice, from the pinnacle of a tower, from the top of a flight of
stairs. The slip and the terror pursued her wherever she went; she
would shriek aloud, and feel soft hands pressed on her cheeks, soft
voices murmuring in her ear.
One vision stood out plainly from those nightmare dreams—the vision
of a face which suddenly appeared in the midst of the big grey cloud
which enveloped her on every side—a beautiful face which was strangely
like, and yet unlike, something she had seen long, long ago in a world
which she had well nigh forgotten. It was pale and thin, and the golden
hair fell in a short curly crop on the blue garment which was swathed
over the shoulders. It was like one of the heads of celestial choirboys
which she had seen on Christmas cards and in books of engravings, yet
something about the eyes and mouth seemed familiar. She stared at it
curiously, and then suddenly a strange, weak little voice faltered out
a well-known name.
“Rosalind!” it cried, and a quick exclamation of joy sounded from the
side of the bed. Who had spoken? The first voice had been strangely
like her own, but at an immeasurable distance. She shut her eyes to
think about it, and the fair-haired vision disappeared and was seen no
more.
There was a big, bearded man also who came in from time to time, and
Peggy grew to dread his appearance, for with it came terrible stabbing
pain, as if her whole body were on the rack. He was one of the Spanish
Inquisitors, of whom she had read, and she was an English prisoner whom
he was torturing! Well, he might do his worst! She would die before
she would turn traitor and betray her flag and country. The Savilles
were a fighting race, and would a thousand times rather face death than
dishonour.
One day when she felt rather stronger than usual, she told him so
to his face, and he laughed—she was quite sure he laughed, the
hard-hearted wretch! And someone else said, “Poor little love!” which
was surely an extraordinary expression for a Spanish Inquisitor.
That was one of the annoying things in this new life—people were so
exceedingly stupid in their conversation!
Now and again she herself had something which she was especially
anxious to say, and when she set it forth with infinite difficulty and
pains, the only answer which she received was a soothing “Yes, dear,
yes!” “No, dear, no!” or a still more maddening “Yes, darling, I quite
understand!”—which she knew perfectly well to be an untruth. Really
these good people seemed to think that she was demented, and did not
know what she was saying. As a matter of fact it was exactly the other
way about; but she was too tired to argue. And then one day came a
sleep when she neither dreamt, nor slipped, nor fell, but opened her
eyes refreshed and cheerful, and beheld Mrs. Asplin sitting by a table
drinking tea and eating what appeared to be a particularly tempting
slice of cake.
“I want some cake!” she said clearly, and Mrs. Asplin jumped as if a
cannon had been fired off at her ear, and rushed breathlessly to the
bedside, stuttering and stammering in amazement—
“Wh—wh—wh—what?”
“Cake!” repeated Peggy shrilly. “I want some! And tea! I want my tea!”
Surely it was a very natural request! What else could you expect from a
girl who had been asleep and wakened up feeling hungry? What on earth
was there in those commonplace words to make a grown-up woman cry like
a baby, and why need everyone in the house rush in and stare at her as
if she were a figure in a waxwork? Lord Darcy, Lady Darcy, Rosalind,
the old French maid—they were all there—and, as sure as her name was
Peggy Saville, they were all four, handkerchief in hand, mopping their
eyes like so many marionettes!
Nobody gave her the cake for which she had asked. Peggy considered it
exceedingly rude and ill-bred; but while she was thinking of it she
grew tired again, and rolling round into a soft little bundle among the
blankets, fell afresh into sweet refreshing slumbers.
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration]
GOOD CHEER FOR WOMEN WORKERS.
A SHORT SKETCH OF “KENT HOUSE,” THE Y. W. C. A. HOME FOR STUDENTS AND
OTHERS AT 91, GREAT PORTLAND STREET, LONDON.
BY THE HON. SUPERINTENDENT.
Their number is so great now that the most old-fashioned and
conservative of us are bound to recognise women workers as a separate
factor in our national life.
There has been a gradual, though very evident, upheaval in our social
system during the last few years; new occupations are opening to women
on every side, and girls flock to London and other large centres to fit
themselves for these. They are the women of the future, keen, eager for
the fray, with fresh interests, hopes and ambitions—a motley crowd
gathered from every section of middle-class society.
It is both a happiness and an education to come into close personal
touch with fresh young lives whose work will so greatly affect the
well-being of England in the near future. For in each life there lie
elements of the eternal and the divine, capacities for good or evil. It
is a time for building. Character, tastes, habits, faith, may either be
unformed or in a transition state. When the floods rise and storm winds
blow, strong foundations laid at the outset of a girl’s independent
career will help her to resist and stand firm.
We are a large community of women at Kent House, most of us young
and untried, though among the older ones we are glad to number a few
lecturers, teachers, and writers, besides nurses from one or other of
the great nursing associations of London. Friends in need these last,
especially in the winter-time, when chills and other small ailments
attack our ranks like foes to be fought and conquered.
“Such a lot of women living together, and so little bickering and
snarling!” a visitor exclaimed the other day. But I think most of us
are too busy to be cantankerous, and our common womanhood, lived out
in homelike surroundings, links us too closely together for petty
word-wars.
Happy, well-filled student life forms the principal element of the
household, though I was amused one day to find that even students may
be unlearned in the etymology of words. One of our candidates for
admission emulated the immortal M. Jourdain, who talked prose without
knowing it, by remarking doubtfully, “I am not a student. I only go to
Bedford College for classes.”
Most of the girls sleep in cubicles separated by thin wood partitions,
the rooms being reserved for the older ladies, except two or three
double rooms apportioned to girls who chum together.
Conversation is carried on freely “over the cubicle wall,” and
listeners may sometimes overhear scraps illustrating the good
comradeship and _bonhomie_ of student life.
“Oh, Molly,” cries one girl to her mate next door, “when you leave the
Slade and set up a studio, and Harold and I are earning enough to marry
on, won’t we have many a jaw about jolly old Kent House left behind!”
Kent House prices are framed to meet slender resources. For twelve
shillings weekly a girl can provide herself with a snug little cubicle
and good breakfast and supper. The dining-hall _menu_ is of a varied
order, always tea, coffee, and cocoa without stint, a roast joint, and
two or three made dishes, fish or soup, bread and butter, and jam or
marmalade.
Dinner and afternoon tea are not included in the fixed board tariff,
but paid for at table, restaurant fashion—uniform charge 9d. and 4d.,
respectively.
Anyone who orders “five o’clock tea” is served with a pot freshly made
for each person, bread and butter, muffins, or tea-cake. We are glad to
welcome non-residents to both these meals.
“But how can you make the concern pay at such prices?” asks some
cynical political economist.
I answer, illogically of course, as I am a woman, “We _do_ make it pay.”
Conversation at meals is by no means confined to the English tongue,
for visitors of all nationalities throw themselves on the hospitality
of Kent House. English “as she is spoke” by French and Germans makes
many a quaint piece of word-painting.
A Dutch lady, describing her struggles with the letter “h,” raised a
merry laugh at one of the supper-tables.
“I go to the Wood Saint John,” she remarked, “and I say to the
gend’arme, ‘Which bus, if you please, sare, take I?’ He say to me quite
short ‘Hatless’; but I find it not. Then I ask one other. He say to
me, ‘You would mean Atlas—no?’ But I say, ‘No, I do not think—it
is Hatless.’ He smile and he tell me, ‘The English peoples they goes
without umbrellas, but without hats—oh, no, nevare!’”
It has been a work of great difficulty to establish and keep going a
Home in the very centre of London on liberal housekeeping lines which
yet should be self-supporting. Perhaps it has been even more difficult
to keep in close personal relationship with girls and women who need
society, friends, sympathy, amusement, yet whose freedom must in no
sense be interfered with.
Without a _sursum corda_ I believe both would be impossible. With it we
have surmounted many difficulties and lived through many dark days. And
as morning after morning we gather together as a household to give the
first freshness of our thoughts to God, there may be many denominations
amongst us, but there is one Christ, and there is a sacred unity
underlying every variety of dogma or ritual—the unity of His spirit in
His bond of peace.
OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES;
OR,
VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE OF BYGONE TIMES.