"'Cynthia Westwood'--is that your name?" said Mrs. Rumbold. "Dear me, I
always thought that it was just 'Jane' or 'Jenny!' Wouldn't it be better
to change it, and call her something more appropriate to her station?"
"Perhaps," said the injudicious Rector, "she may not like to be called
by a name that does not belong to her."
He was looking at Jenny--or Cynthia, as she had just informed them that
she was called--a transformed and greatly altered Cynthia under Mrs.
Rumbold's management--Cynthia with hair cut short, hands and face
scrupulously clean, a neat but ugly print frock, and a coarse holland
pinafore--a perfectly subdued and uninteresting Cynthia--uninteresting
save for the melancholy beauty of her great dark wistful eyes.
"What she likes has nothing to do with it," said Mrs. Rumbold, rather
sharply. "Besides, she has another name--she told me so
herself--'Cynthia Janet'--that's what she was christened, she tells me.
She can be called 'Jane Wood' at Winstead."
The Rector looked up in mild surprise.
"Why not 'Jane Westwood,' my dear? 'Westwood' is her name."
"She had much better not be known as Westwood's daughter," said Mrs.
Rumbold, with decision, quite heedless of Cynthia's presence. "It will
be against her all her life. I have told Sister Louisa about her, and
she asked me to let her be called 'Wood.' 'Jane Wood' is a nice sensible
name."
"Well, as you please. You will not mind being called 'Jane,' will you,
my dear?" said the Rector, mindful of the red flush that was creeping
into the little pale cheeks.
He was a kindly old gentleman, in spite of his slow, absent-minded ways;
and there was a very benevolent light in his eyes as he sat in his
elbow-chair, newspaper on knee, spectacles on nose, and surveyed the
child who had been brought to his study for inspection.
Mrs. Rumbold fairly lost her patience at the question.
"How can you ask her such a thing, Alfred? As if it was her business to
mind one way or another! She ought to be thankful that she is so well
taken care of without troubling about her name. 'Jane Wood' is a very
good name indeed, much better than that silly-sounding 'Cynthia'!"--and
Mrs. Rumbold swept the child before her out of the room in a state of
high indignation at the stupidity of all men.
So Cynthia Westwood--or Jenny Westwood, as the Beechfield people called
her--was transformed into Jane Wood. She did not seem to object to the
change. She was in a dazed, stunned state of mind, in which she
understood only half of what was said to her, and when the scenes and
faces around her made a very slight impression upon her memory. One or
two things stood out clearly from the rest. One was Enid Vane's sweet
childish face, as she thrust her shilling with the hole in it into the
little outcast's hand. Cynthia had carefully hidden the coin away; she
was resolved never to spend it. She took it out and looked at it
sometimes, feeling, though she could not have put her feelings into
words, that it was an actual visible sign of some one's kindness of
heart, of some one's love and pity for her. And the other thing was the
dark melancholy face of the man who had brought her to the Rectory, and
told her to be good for her father's sake.
She liked to think of his face best of all. It was one that she was sure
she would never forget. She brooded over it with silent adoration, with
a simple faith and confidence in the goodness of its owner, which would
have cut him to the heart if he had ever dreamed of it. He had been kind
to her; that was all she knew. She rewarded him by the devotion of her
whole being. It was surely a great reward for such a little act! She did
not know that it was he who was to pay for her going to school, that it
was he who had rescued her from the degradation of her outcast life.
Mrs. Rumbold kept her word to Hubert. She talked vaguely in Cynthia's
presence of "kind friends" who were doing "so much" for her; but Cynthia
associated the idea of "kind friends" with that of Mrs. Rumbold herself,
and was not grateful. The child was not old enough, and had been too
much stunned by the various experiences of her little life, to be very
curious. She did not know Mr. Lepel by name, or why he should be at
Beechfield at all. He did not often visit the Vanes, although he saw a
good deal of his aunt Leonora in London. He was quite a stranger to half
the people in the village.
Also, Cynthia's father, now in prison for the murder of Sydney Vane, had
not lived long in Beechfield, and did not know the history and
relationships of the Squire's family, as natives of Beechfield were
supposed to do. He had been two years in the village, and had rented a
tumbledown ruinous cottage by the side of a marshy pond, which no one
else would occupy. Here he had lived a lonely life, gathering rushes
from the pond and weaving baskets out of them, doing a day's work in the
fields now and then, setting snares for rabbits, trapping foxes, and
killing game--a man suspected by the authorities, shunned by the village
respectabilities, avoided by even those wilder spirits who met at the
"Blue Lion" to talk of bullocks and to drink small-beer. For he was not
of a genial disposition. He was gruff and surly in speech, given neither
to drink nor to conversation--just the sort of man, his neighbors said,
to commit a terrible crime, to revenge himself upon a magistrate who
had once sent him to gaol for poaching, and had threatened to turn him
out of his wretched cottage by the pond.
And his little girl too--the villagers were indignant at the way in
which Cynthia was brought up. She was seldom seen in the village school,
never at church or in Mrs. Rumbold's Sunday-classes. She was rough,
wild, ignorant. Careful village mothers would not let their children
play with her, and district-visitors went out of their way to avoid
her--for she had been known to fling stones at boys who had come too
near, and she laughed in the faces of people who tried to lecture her.
Jenny Westwood was thus very little in the way of hearing Beechfield
gossip, or she would have known all about Mr. Lepel and his sister, who
acted as Miss Enid's governess, and concerning whose moonlit walks with
Miss Enid's "papa" there had already been a good deal of conversation.
She knew nothing of all this. There was a big house a mile from the
village, and in this big house lived a wicked cruel man who had sent her
father to prison--so much she knew. And her father was now in prison for
killing that wicked man. Why should one not kill the person who injures
one? It did not seem so very terrible to Cynthia. Before her father had
brought her to Beechfield, she remembered, they had travelled a good
deal from place to place; and while they were "on the tramp," as her
father expressed it, she had seen much of the rougher side of life. She
had seen blows given and returned--fighting, violence, bloodshed. She
had a vague idea that, if her father had killed Mr. Vane, it was perhaps
not the first time that he had taken the life of a fellow-man.
Mrs. Rumbold certainly showed much kindliness and charity in taking this
forlorn little girl into her spotless well-regulated household, even for
a week, until matters were settled with the authorities of the workhouse
which she had quitted and the orphanage to which she was going. The
Rectory servants were indignant at having the society of "a murderer's
child" forced upon them. If she had stayed much longer, they would have
given notice in a body. But fortunately Mrs. Rumbold was able to arrange
matters with the Winstead Sisters very speedily, and the day following
the funeral of Mrs. Sydney Vane--laid to rest beside her husband only
three months after his untimely death--saw Cynthia's little box packed,
and herself, arrayed in neat but very unbecoming garments, conveyed by
Mrs. Rumbold to the charitable precincts of St. Elizabeth's Orphanage at
Winstead, where she was introduced to the black-robed, white-capped
Sisters and a crowd of blue-cloaked children like herself as Jane Wood,
orphan, from the village of Beechfield, in Hants.
However, Mrs. Rumbold told the whole of Cynthia's story to the Sister in
charge of the Orphanage, a sweet-faced motherly woman, who looked as if
children were dear to her. The one reservation made by the Rector's wife
referred to the person or persons who were to pay the child's expenses.
Their names, she said emphatically, were never to be mentioned. The good
Sister smiled, and thought to herself that the very reservation told its
own story. Of course it was the Vanes who were thus providing for
Cynthia Westwood's continued absence from their village. It was natural
perhaps.
She noticed that the child showed no sign of sorrow at parting from Mrs.
Rumbold. She looked white, tired, almost stupefied. Sister Louisa took
hold of the little hands, and found them cold and trembling.
When the Rector's wife was gone, the good woman--"the mother of the
children," as she was sometimes called--drew the little girl to her knee
and kissed her tenderly. It needed very little real affection to call
forth a response in Cynthia's yearning heart. She burst into tears and
buried her face in the mother's ample bosom, won from that moment to all
the claims of love and duty, and a religion of which she as yet had
scarcely heard the name.
As time went on, Mrs. Rumbold received letters from Sister Louisa
relative to Jane Wood's progress. Jane Wood was, on the whole, a very
satisfactory pupil. She was a girl of strong will and strong passions,
often in disgrace, and yet a universal favorite. She possessed more than
usual ability, and soon caught up with the girls of her own age who had
at first been far in advance of her in class; then she surpassed them,
and began to attract attention; and at the end of two years Mrs. Rumbold
received a letter which perplexed her so sorely, that she sent it at
once to Mr. Hubert Lepel, who was still living a bachelor-life in
London.
The letter, from Sister Louisa, was to the effect that Jane Wood, the
girl from Beechfield, had developed a great talent for music, and seemed
very superior to the station of domestic service for which she had been
designed. The Sister received twenty or thirty boarders--daughters of
gentlemen for the most part, for whom ordinary terms were paid--in
addition to the orphans; these girls of a superior class were educated
by the Sisters, and often remained at St. Elizabeth's until they were
eighteen or nineteen. If the amount paid for Jane Wood could be
increased to forty pounds a year, the Sisters proposed to educate her as
a governess; with her talent for music and other accomplishments, they
were quite sure that the girl would turn out a credit to her kind
patrons and patronesses, as well as to St. Elizabeth's.
Mr. Lepel sent back an answer by return of post. Jane Wood--he knew her
by no other Christian name--was to have every advantage the good sisters
could give her. If she had talents, they were to be cultivated. When she
was old enough to be placed out in the world to earn her own living, his
allowance would of course cease; till then, and while she wanted help,
her friends would provide for her.
"So Westwood's child is to be made a lady of!" said Mrs. Rumbold, laying
down the letter with a sense of virtuous indignation. "Well, I hope that
Mr. Lepel won't repent it. I wonder what Miss Vane thinks of it?"
But Miss Vane had never even heard the name of Jane Wood.
Hubert Lepel was gradually achieving literary success. But the road to
success is often stony and beset with thorns and briars. His name was
becoming known as that of a writer of popular fiction; he had a play in
hand of which people prognosticated great things. For all these reasons
he was much too busy to give any special attention to the affairs of the
child at St. Elizabeth's School. He agreed to Sister Louisa's
proposition, and sent money for the girl's education--that was all that
he could do. And so another year went by, and then another, and he heard
nothing more about Jane Wood.
But at the close of a London season, when town was emptying fast and the
air was becoming exhausted, and everybody who had a chance of going into
the country was sighing to be off, it occurred to Hubert Lepel to
wonder how the child that he had befriended was progressing. It took
little time for him to make up his mind that he would go down to
Winstead and see the school, which was quite a show-place and had been a
great deal talked about. A card and a line from a clerical friend would
introduce him, and his literary work gave him an excuse for wishing to
inspect the institution. It would be supposed that he meant to write an
article upon it. He did not intend to say why he had come.
The building occupied by the Sisters of St. Elizabeth was certainly
beautiful and picturesque. Hubert remembered with a half smile the
enthusiastic praise that Mrs. Rumbold had bestowed upon it. The chapel,
an exquisite little gem of Gothic architecture, stood in the centre,
flanked by two long gray wings appropriated to the school-girls and
their teachers, the Orphanage and the Sisterhood. St. Elizabeth's was
becoming quite a noted school for girls, especially among persons of
High Anglican proclivities; and in surveying the lovely buildings, the
exquisitely-kept grounds, the smooth lawns and shrubberies which met his
eyes. Hubert could not but acknowledge that the outer appearance of the
place was all that could be desired. The school buildings were swathed
in purple clematis and roses; there was a pleasant hum of voices, even
of laughter, from some of the deep mullioned windows; and he saw a host
of children sporting on the lawn in the distance. The scene was bright,
peaceful, and joyous. Hubert Lepel felt a momentary thrill of relief; he
had done well for Westwood's child--he need not reproach himself on that
score.
A portress with a rosy smiling face admitted him into a visitors' room,
a small but cosy place, with vases of flowers on the table, sacred
pictures and a black-and-white crucifix on the yellow-washed walls. Here
a Sister clad in conventual garb came to inquire his business. The
stillness of the house, the unfamiliar aspect of the women's dresses,
reminded Hubert of some French and Flemish Romanist convents which he
had visited abroad. He was charmed with the likeness. It was something,
he said to himself, to find such serenity, such sweet placidity of life,
possible in the very midst of nineteenth-century England, with all her
turmoil and bustle and distraction. He did not discuss with himself the
question as to whether the life led by the inmates of these retreats
was wholesome or agreeable; it was simply on the aesthetic side that its
aspect pleased him. He could fancy himself for a moment in the depths of
a foreign land or far back in remote mediaeval times.
Could he see the buildings, the church, the school, the orphanage? Oh,
certainly! Sister Agnes, who had come to him, would be pleased to show
him everything.
She was very pleasant in manner, and he had no difficulty in obtaining
from her any amount of information about the institution. It seemed that
he had by chance come on a festival day, and every one was making
holiday. The children were all out in the fields or the garden; he could
see their schoolrooms and dormitories and refectory. They were all
rather bare, exquisitely clean and airy, full of the most recent
improvements as regarded educational appliances.
"This is the Orphanage building," Sister Agnes explained. "We do not
generally show the class-rooms belonging to the other school; but, as
all the ladies are out, you may see them if you like."
So Hubert peeped into the rooms, occupied by the girl-boarders, who were
on a very different footing from the orphans, and whose surroundings,
though simple, were almost elegant in their simplicity. The furniture
was of good artistic design, the windows were emblazoned in jewel-like
colors, the proportions of the rooms were stately as those of an Oxford
college hall. Hubert smiled a little at the picture of Westwood's ragged
daughter amidst all this magnificence.
Last of all he was shown the chapel, the most beautiful building of the
place, and on this day in particular largely decorated with the choicest
flowers.
As they were coming out, a bell began to ring, and presently they met a
procession of school-girls, all dressed alike in white frocks and broad
hats, on their way to some afternoon service of prayer and praise.
Hubert scanned their faces heedfully as they passed by, but he could not
find one amongst them that reminded him of the thin little countenance,
the gipsy eyes of the convict Westwood's child.
He could not resist the temptation to ask a question.
"Have you not here," he said, "a girl called Jane Wood?"
Sister Agnes gazed at him in astonishment, and the tears suddenly rushed
into her eyes.
"Do you know anything of Jane Wood?" she cried excitedly. "Oh, you ask
for her at a very critical time! She has been with us four years, and we
loved her as our own child; but she ran away from us two days ago, and
we have not seen her since!"