"Next Monday Morning"
There was a trunk standing in the hall, and a large, much-travelled
portmanteau, and there were labels on them that said: "Miss Helen
Woolcot, The Misses Burton, Mount Victoria."
In the nursery breakfast was proceeding spasmodically. Meg's
blue eyes were all red and swollen with crying, and she was still
sniffing audibly as she poured out the coffee. Pip had his hands
in his pockets and stood on the hearthrug, looking gloomily at a
certain plate, and refusing breakfast altogether; the General was
crashing his own mug and plate joyously together; and Bunty
was eating bread and butter in stolid silence.
Judy, white-faced and dry-eyed, was sitting at the table, and Nell
and Baby were clinging to either arm. All the three days between
that black Thursday and this doleful morning she had been obstinately
uncaring. Her spirits had never seemed higher, her eyes brighter,
her tongue sharper, than during that interval of days; and she had
pretended to everyone, and her father, that she especially thought
boarding school must be great fun, and that she should enjoy it
immensely.
But this morning she had collapsed altogether. All the time before,
her hot childish heart had been telling her that her father could
not really be so cruel, that he did not really mean to send her
away among strangers, away from dear, muddled old Misrule and all
her sisters and brothers; he was only saying it to frighten her,
she kept saying to herself, and she would show him she was not
a chickenhearted baby.
But on Sunday night, when she saw a trunk carried downstairs
and filled with her things and labelled with her name, a cold
hand seemed to close about her heart. Still, she said to herself,
he was doing all this to make it seem more real.
But now it was morning, and she could disbelieve it no longer.
Esther had come to her bedside and kissed her sorrowfully, her
beautiful face troubled and tender. She had begged as she had
never done before for a remission of poor Judy's sentence, but
the Captain was adamant. It was she and she only who was always
ringleader in everything; the others would behave when she was not
there to incite them to mischief and go she should. Besides, he
said, it would be the making of her. It was an excellent school
he had chosen for her; the ladies who kept it were kind, but very
firm, and Judy was being ruined for want of a firm hand. Which,
indeed, was in a measure true.
Judy sat bolt upright in bed at the sight of Esther's sorrowful
face.
"It's no good, dear; there's no way out of it," she said gently.
"But you'll go like a brave girl, won't you, Ju-Ju? You always
were the sort to die game, as Pip says."
Judy gulped down a great lump in her throat, and her poor little
face grew white and drawn.
"It's all right, Essie. There, you go on down to breakfast,"
she said, in a voice that, only shook a little; "and please
leave the General, Esther; I'll bring him down with me."
Esther deposited her little fat son on the pillow, and with one
loving backward glance went out of the door.
And Judy pulled the little lad down into her arms, and covered the
bedclothes right over both their heads, and held him in a fierce,
almost desperate clasp for a minute or two, and buried her face
in his soft, dimpled neck, and kissed it till her lips ached.
He fought manfully against these troublesome proceedings, and at
last objected, with an angry scream, to being suffocated. So she
flung back the clothes and got out of bed, leaving him to burrow
about among the pillows, and pull feathers out of a hole in one
of them.
She dressed in a quick nervous fashion, did her hair with more
care than usual, and then picked up the General and took him along
the passage into the nursery. All the others were here, and, with
Esther, were evidently discussing her. The three girls looked
tearful and protesting; Pip had just been brought to book for
speaking disrespectfully of his father, and was looking sullen;
and Bunty, not knowing what else to do at such a crisis, had fallen
to catching flies, and was viciously taking off their wings.
It was a wretched meal: The bell sounded for the downstairs
breakfast, and Esther had to go. Everyone offered Judy everything
on the table, and spoke gently and politely to her. She seemed
to be apart from them, a person not to be lightly treated in the
dignity of this great trouble. Her dress, too, was quite new--a
neat blue serge fresh from the dressmaker's hands; her boots
were blacked and bright, her stockings guiltless of ventilatory
chasms. All this helped to make her a Judy quite different from
the harum-scarum one of a few days back, who used to come to
breakfast looking as if her clothes had been pitchforked upon her.
Baby addressed herself to her porridge for one minute, but the
next her feelings overcame her, and, with a little wail, she rushed
round the table to Judy, and hung on her arm sobbing. This
destroyed the balance of the whole company. Nell got the other arm
and swayed to and fro in an excess of misery. Meg's tears rained
down into her teacup; Pip dug his heel in the hearthrug, and
wondered what was the matter with his eyes; and even Bunty's
appetite for bread and butter diminished.
Judy sat there silent; she had pushed back her unused plate, and
sat regarding it with an expression of utter despair on her
young face. She looked like a miniature tragedy queen going to
immediate execution.
Presently Bunty got off his chair, covered up his coffee with his
saucer to keep the flies out, and solemnly left the room. In a
minute he returned with a pickle bottle, containing an enormous
green frog.
"You can have it to keep for your very own, Judy," he said, in a
tone of almost reckless sadness. "It'll, keep you amused, perhaps,
at school." Self-sacrifice could go no further, for this frog was
the darling of Bunty's heart.
This stimulated the others; everyone fetched some offering to lay
at Judy's shrine for a keepsake. Meg brought a bracelet, plaited
out of the hair of a defunct pet pony. Pip gave his three-bladed
pocketknife. Nell a pot of musk that she had watered and cherished
for a year, Baby had a broken-nosed doll, that was the Benjamin of
her large family.
"Put them in the trunk, Meg--there's room on top, I think," Judy
said in a choking voice, and deeply touched by these gifts. "Oh!
and, Bunty, dear! put a cork over the f--f--frog, will you? it
might get lost, poor thing! in that b--b--big box."
"All right," said Bunty, "You'll take c--c--care of it, w--won't
you, Judy? Oh dear, oh--h--h!--boo-hoo!"
Then Esther came in, still troubled-looking. "The dogcart is
round," she said. "Are you ready, Ju, dearest? Dear little Judy!
be brave, little old woman."
But Judy was white as death, and utterly limp. She suffered
Esther to put her hat on, to help her into her new jacket, to put
her gloves into her hand. She submitted to being kissed by the
whole family, to be half carried downstairs by Esther, to be
kissed again by the girls, then by the two good-natured domestics,
who, in spite of her peccadilloes, had a warm place in their hearts
for her.
Esther and Pip lifted her into the dogcart; and she sat in a
little, huddled-up way, looking down at the group on the veranda
with eyes that were absolutely tragic in their utter despair. Her
father came out, buttoning his overcoat, and saw the look.
"What foolishness is this?" he said irascibly--"Esther-great
heavens! are you making a goose of yourself, too?"--there were
great tears glistening in his wife's beautiful eyes. "Upon my
soul, one would think I was going to take the child to be hanged,
or at least was going to leave her in a penitentiary."
A great dry sob broke from Judy's white lips.
"If you'll let me stay, Father, I'll never do another thing to vex
you; and you can thrash me instead, ever so hard."
It was her last effort, her final hope, and she bit her poor
quivering lip till it bled while she waited for his answer.
"Let her stay--oh! do letter stay, we'll be good always," came
in a chorus from the veranda. And, "Let her stay, John, PLEASE!"
Esther called in a tone as entreating as any of the children.
But the Captain sprang into the dogcart and seized the reins from
Pat in a burst of anger.
"I think you're all demented!" he cried. "She's going to a
thoroughly good home, I've paid a quarter in advance already,
and I can assure you good people I'm not going to waste it."
He gave the horse a smart touch with the whip, and in a minute
the dogcart had flashed out of the gate, and the small, unhappy
face was lost to sight.