"HOOTS!" said the gardener, "there's nae sense in't. The suppression o'
the truth's bad as a lee. Indeed, I doot mair hae been damned for t'ane
than t'ither."
"Law! Mr. Murchison, you do use language, I'm sure!" tittered the
parlourmaid.
"I say nae mair than the truth," he answered, cutting bloom after bloom
quickly yet tenderly. "To bring hame a new mistress to the hoose and
never to tell your bairn a word aboot the matter till all's made
fast--it's a thing he'll hae to answer for to his Maker, I'm thinking.
Here's the flowers, wumman; carry them canny. I'll send the lad up wi'
the lave o' the flowers an' a bit green stuff in a wee meenit. And mind
you your flaunting streamers agin the pots."
The parlourmaid gathered her skirts closely, and delicately tip-toed to
the door of the hothouse. Here she took the basket of bright beauty
from his hand and walked away across the green blaze of the lawn.
Mr. Murchison grunted relief. He was not fond of parlourmaids, no matter
how pretty and streamered.
He left the hot, sweet air of the big hothouse and threaded his way
among the glittering glasshouses to the potting-shed. At its door a
sound caught his ear.
"Hoots!" he said again, but this time with a gentle, anxious intonation.
"Eh! ma lammie," said he, stepping quickly forward, "what deevilment hae
ye been after the noo, and wha is't's been catching ye at it?"
The "lammie" crept out from under the potting-shelf; a pair of small
arms went round Murchison's legs, and a little face, round and red and
very dirty, was lifted towards his. He raised the child in his arms and
set her on the shelf, so that she could lean her flushed face on his
shirt-front.
"Toots, toots!" said he, "noo tell me--"
"It isn't true, is it?" said the child.
"Hoots!" said Murchison for the third time, but he said it under his
breath. Aloud he said--
"Tell old Murchison a' aboot it, Miss Charling, dearie."
"It was when I wanted some more of the strawberries," she began, with
another sob, "and the new cook said not, and I was a greedy little pig:
and I said I'd rather be a greedy little pig than a spiteful old cat!"
The tears broke out afresh.
"And you eight past! Ye should hae mair sense at siccan age than to ca'
names." The head gardener spoke reprovingly, but he stroked her rough
hair.
"I didn't--not one single name--not even when she said I was enough to
make a cat laugh, even an old one--and she wondered any good servant
ever stayed a week in the place."
"And what was ye sayin'?"
"I said, 'Guid ye may be, but ye're no bonny'--I've heard you say that,
Murchison, so I know it wasn't wrong, and then she said I was a minx,
and other things, and I wanted keeping in order, and it was a very good
thing I had a new mamma coming home to-day, to keep me under a bit, and
a lot more--and--and things about my own, own mother, and that father
wouldn't love me any more. But it's not true, is it? Oh! it isn't true?
She only just said it?"
"Ma lammie," said he gravely, kissing the top of the head nestled
against him, "it's true that yer guid feyther, wha' never crossed ye
except for yer ain sake syne the day ye were born, is bringing hame a
guid wife the day, but ye mun be a wumman and no cry oot afore ye're
hurted. I'll be bound it's a kind, genteel lady he's got, that'll love
ye, and mak' much o' ye, and teach ye to sew fine--aye, an' play at the
piano as like's no."
The child's mouth tightened resentfully, but Murchison did not see it.
"Noo, ye'll jest be a douce lassie," he went on, "and say me fair that
ye'll never gie an unkind word tae yer feyther's new lady. Noo, promise
me that, an' fine I ken ye'll keep tae it."
"No, I won't say anything unkind to her," she answered, and Murchison
hugged himself on a victory, for a promise was sacred to Charling. He
did not notice the child's voice as she gave it.
When the tears were quite dried he gave her a white geranium to plant in
her own garden, and went back to his work.
Charling took the geranium with pretty thanks and kisses, but she felt
it a burden, none the less. For her mind was quite made up. When she had
promised never to say anything unkind to her "father's new lady," she
meant to keep the promise--by never speaking to her or seeing her at
all. She meant to run away. How could she bear to be "kept under" by
this strange lady, who would come and sit in her own mother's place, and
wear her own mother's clothes, and no doubt presently burn her own
mother's picture, and make Charling wash the dishes and sweep the
kitchen like poor dear Cinderella in the story? True, Cinderella's
misfortunes ended in marriage with a prince, but then Charling did not
want to be married, and she had but little faith in princes, and,
besides, she had no fairy godmother. Her godmother was dead, her own,
own mother was dead, and only father was left; and now he had done this
thing, and he would not want his Charling any more.
So Charling went indoors and washed her face and hands and smoothed her
hair, which never would be smoothed, put a few treasures in her
pocket--all her money, some coloured chalks, a stone with crystal
inside that showed where it was broken, and went quietly out at the
lodge gate, carrying the white geranium in her arms, because when you
are running away you cannot possibly leave behind you the last gift of
somebody who loves you. But the geranium in its pot was very heavy--and
it seemed to get heavier and heavier as she walked along the dry, dusty
road, so that presently Charling turned through the swing gate into the
field-way, for the sake of the shadow of the hedge; and the field-way
led past the church, and when she reached the low, mossy wall of the
churchyard, she set the pot on it and rested. Then she said--
"I think I will leave it with mother to take care of." So she took the
pot in her hands again and carried it to her mother's grave. Of course,
they had told Charling that her mother was an angel now and was not in
the churchyard at all, but in heaven; only heaven was a very long way
off, and Charling preferred to think that mother was only asleep under
the green counterpane with the daisies on it. There had been a green
coverlet to the bed in mother's room, only it had white lilac on it,
and not daisies. So Charling set down the pot, and she knelt down beside
it, and wrote on it with a piece of blue chalk from her pocket: "_From
Charling to mother to take care of._" Then she cried a little bit more,
because she was so sorry for herself; and then she smelt the thyme and
wondered why the bees liked it better than white geraniums; and then she
felt that she was very like a little girl in a book, and so she forgot
to cry, and told herself that she was the third sister going out to seek
her fortune.
After that it was easy to go on, especially when she had put the crystal
stone, which hung heavy and bumpy in the pocket, beside the geranium
pot. Then she kissed the tombstone where it said, "Helen, beloved wife
of----" and went away among the green graves in the sunshine.
Mother had died when she was only five, so that she could not remember
her very well; but all these three years she had loved and thought of a
kind, beautiful Something that was never tired and never cross, and
always ready to kiss and love and forgive little girls, however naughty
they were, and she called this something "mother" in her heart, and it
was for this something that she left her kisses on the gravestone. And
the gravestone was warm to her lips as she kissed it.
* * * * *
It was on a wide, furze-covered down, across which a white road wound
like a twisted ribbon, that Charling's courage began to fail her. The
white road looked so very long; there were no houses anywhere, and no
trees, only far away across the down she saw the round tops of some big
elms. "They look like cabbages," she said to herself.
She had walked quite a long way, and she was very tired. Her dinner of
sweets and stale cakes from the greeny-glass bottles in the window of a
village shop had not been so nice as she expected; the woman at the shop
had been cross because Charling had no pennies, only the five-shilling
piece father had given her when he went away, and the woman had no
change. And she had scolded so that Charling had grown frightened and
had run away, leaving the big, round piece of silver on the dirty little
counter. This was about the time when she was missed at home, and the
servants began to search for her, running to and fro like ants whose
nest is turned up by the spade.
A big furze bush cast a ragged square yard of alluring shade on the
common. Charling flung herself down on the turf in the shadow. "I wonder
what they are doing at home?" she said to herself after a while. "I
don't suppose they've even missed me. They think of nothing but making
the place all flowery for _her_ to see. Nobody wants me--"
At home they were dragging the ornamental water in the park; old
Murchison directing the operation with tears running slow and unregarded
down his face.
Charling lay and looked at the white road. Somebody must go along it
presently. Roads were made for people to go along. Then when any people
came by she would speak to them, and they would help her and tell her
what to do. "I wonder what a girl ought to do when she runs away from
home?" said Charling to herself. "Boys go to sea, of course; but I don't
suppose a pirate would care about engaging a cabin-girl--" She fell
a-musing, however, on the probable woes of possible cabin-girls, and
their chances of becoming admirals, as cabin-boys always did in the
stories; and so deep were her musings that she positively jumped when a
boy, passing along the road, began suddenly to whistle. It was the air
of a comic song, in a minor key, and its inflections were those of a
funeral march. It went to Charling's heart. Now she knew, as she had
never known before, how lonely and miserable she was.