All in a Mist
The Blue Grotto entertainment was very successfully emulated by the
occupants of the Gold, Green, Rose, and Brown bedrooms, and quite a
sufficient sum of money was raised in the various collections to pay
half the expense of the little wicker carriage for the invalid child.
The school took a special walk one day to Five Stone Bridge, to see her
take an airing in her new chariot, and though they agreed that it did
not look nearly so picturesque as the wooden box, it was undoubtedly far
more comfortable, and more suitable for one suffering from her
complaint. She smiled shyly at the long line of girls, whispered a
bashful "Thank you" for the chocolates they gave her, and appeared
scared to the verge of tears when they spoke to her.
"I don't blame her, poor kid!" said Gowan, as the school marched on,
slightly disappointed. "I shouldn't like to be made a show of myself,
and be stared at by everybody. She looked as if she wished us far
enough. Never mind! She'll eat the chocs. and enjoy herself now we've
gone. She's rather a sweet little morsel, isn't she, after all?"
Christmas was drawing near, and the school turned from schemes of
general philanthropy to the more pressing business of making presents
for immediate relatives and friends. Various pieces of sewing, which had
languished all the term, were taken out and worked at feverishly; there
was quite an epidemic of needlecraft, and a wet day was almost welcomed
as affording an opportunity for getting on with the gifts. Everybody
seemed suddenly in need of embroidery silks, transfers, beads, wools,
crochet needles, and other such articles, and a special deputation
waited on Miss Walters asking permission to go a shopping expedition to
Glazebrook to purchase these indispensables. Miss Walters, who always
had an eye to school discipline, made the matter a question of marks,
and granted the privilege only to those whose exercise books showed a
certain standard of proficiency. Hester, Ida, Noreen, Joyce, Bertha,
Carmel, and Doris were the only ones who reached the required totals, so
under charge of Miss Herbert they were sent off one afternoon to the
town, armed with a long list of commissions from the luckless ones who
remained behind.
Chilcombe Hall was four and a half miles from Glazebrook, and there was
no motor omnibus service. It was arranged, therefore, for the party to
walk on the outward journey, and to return with all their parcels in a
couple of taxicabs. They started after an extremely early lunch, in
order to do the important business of matching embroidery silks by
daylight. It had been quite a fine sunny morning, but clouded over at
noon, and although no rain fell the sky was gray and cheerless.
The girls did not much mind the condition of the weather so long as they
could see to make their purchases. They spent a considerable time in the
principal fancy-work shop of the town, and tried the patience of the
assistants by demanding articles that were quite unobtainable. A visit
to a stationer's and a confectioner's almost completed their list of
requirements, and only a few extras remained to be bought. Some of the
party were standing in the entrance of a big general store, waiting
while Miss Herbert executed commissions for Miss Walters, when Joyce was
suddenly greeted by a friend, a lady who was just about to step into her
motor.
"Why, Joyce!" she exclaimed. "Have you been shopping here? So have
I--look at my pile of parcels! Have you finished? Are you going straight
back to school? I shall pass Chilcombe on my way home, and can take you
in the car if you like, and some of your schoolfellows too. There's
room for four if you don't mind squeezing!"
It seemed much too good an offer to be refused. Joyce suggested, indeed,
that she ought to consult Miss Herbert, who was in an upper department
of the shop, but Mrs. Baldwin declared she could not wait.
"I don't see that Miss Herbert can mind. We're quite ready to go, and it
will save one taxi," urged Bertha.
So it was hastily decided for Joyce, Bertha, Doris, and Carmel to go in
the car, and Noreen ran upstairs to tell Miss Herbert of the
arrangement. The latter, with Hester and Ida, was choosing lamp-shades
and fancy candlesticks. It was only when Noreen had gone that Carmel
remembered suddenly that she had never bought the packet of chocolates
which she had promised to bring back for Dulcie. She stopped with her
foot on the step of the car, and excused herself.
"There's something I still have to do!" she explained. "I must come back
in the taxi with the others after all! I'm so sorry!"
Mrs. Baldwin had an appointment at home, and was impatient to start, so
the door was slammed on Joyce, Bertha, and Doris, and they drove away
all smiles, and waving a good-by through the window. There was a sweets
department close at hand in the Stores, and Carmel bought a present of
chocolate for Dulcie and of butterscotch for Lilias, then went upstairs
to the lamp-shade counter to rejoin Miss Herbert and the other girls. To
her surprise she found they had gone. She searched for them all round
the upper story of the shop, but did not see them anywhere. She had kept
a watchful eye on the stairs when buying the sweets, and was quite sure
that they had not passed down while she was there. She returned to the
lamp-shade counter and questioned the assistant, who told her that she
had noticed the lady and the three girls in school hats walk down
another staircase which led to a side door of the stores. In much alarm,
Carmel hurried that way into the street, but not a trace of them was to
be seen. She walked as far as the railway station, hoping to catch them
there engaging a taxi, but not a solitary conveyance of any description
was on the stand. She was indeed in a fix. She saw clearly that, of
course, they all supposed she had gone with Mrs. Baldwin in the car, and
by this time they were probably on the road to Chilcombe without her. It
was nobody's fault but her own.
The feeling that she had only herself to blame did not make the
situation any less unpleasant. She was four and a half miles away from
school, and unless she could secure a taxi, she would be obliged to walk
back. She inquired from a porter, but he shook his head, and said it
was unlikely there would be any cabs at the station till the express
came in at six o'clock.
Carmel thanked him, and turned away with her eyes full of tears. Owing
to her Sicilian education she was not accustomed to going about by
herself. England was still more or less of a strange country to her, and
she did not know the ways of the land. Lilias, in her place, would have
gone to the principal hotel, explained who she was, and asked the
manager to find some sort of carriage to convey her back to school. Such
a course never occurred to Carmel, however; instead, she tied her
numerous parcels together, blinked back her tears, set her teeth, and
started forth to walk.
Fortunately, there was no mistaking the high road, and it was still
comparatively early. If she put her best foot foremost she might
reasonably expect to reach Chilcombe before dark. She had soon left the
houses of Glazebrook behind, and was passing between hedges and fields.
For the first mile and a half all went well; she was a little tired, but
rather pleased with her own pluck. According to Sicilian customs, which
are almost eastern in their guardianship of signorinas, it was an
unheard-of thing for a young lady in her position to take a country walk
without an escort. The remembrance of the beggars and footpads that
lurked about Sicilian roads gave her uneasy twinges, and though she had
been told of the comparative safety of British highways, her heart beat
considerably when she passed anybody, and she scurried along in a
flutter lest some ill-intentioned person should stop and speak to her.
The farther she went from the town the fewer people were on the road,
and for quite half a mile she had met nobody at all. She had been going
steadily down a steep hill, and at the bottom she stepped suddenly into
a great belt of fog that lay like a white wall in front of her. It was
as if she had passed into a country of dreams. She could scarcely see
the hedges, and all round was a dense mass of mist, clammy and cold and
difficult to breathe. It was silent, too, for no sound seemed to travel
through it, not a bird twittered, and no animal stirred in the fields.
Carmel felt as utterly alone as if she were on the surface of the moon.
All the familiar objects of the landscape were blotted out. It was still
light, but this white thick mist was worse than darkness. She stamped
along for the sake of hearing her own footsteps. She wished she had a
dog with her. She kept to the left-hand side of the road, and followed
the hedge, hoping that the fog was only in the valley, and that she
would soon pass out of it. On and on it stretched, however, till she
must have been walking through it for quite twenty minutes. Then she
began to grow uneasy. There was a border of grass under the hedge bank
wider than she remembered noticing on the road, and the suspicion
assailed her that all unknowingly she must have turned down a side lane
and have lost her way.
She went forward now with doubting footsteps. Where was the path leading
her? If she could only find some cottage, she could inquire. But there
was no human habitation, nothing but the endless hedges and an
occasional gate into a field. What was that in front of her? She
stopped, and drew back with a cry of fear. Across her track gleamed
water. She had almost stepped into it. Whether it was stream, pond, or
river the thick mist did not reveal, but it certainly barred her
footpath. She shivered, and turning round, walked back in the direction
from which she had come, hoping to regain the high road.
Then a wonderful atmospheric effect was displayed. A breeze sprang up
and blew aside some of the fog, and the rising moon shone down on a land
of white shadows. It was impossible to tell what was real and what was
unreal. On the other side of the lane stretched what appeared to be a
vast lake, but might only be mist on the meadows; cloud-like masses
shaped themselves into spectral forms and rolled away into the dim and
nebulous distance, where they settled into weird domes and towers and
walls, a veritable elf king's castle. It was so uncanny and silent and
strange that Carmel was far more frightened than she had felt before.
Old fairy tales of her childhood crowded into her mind, memories of
phantoms and ghosts and goblins, the legends of Undine and the water
sprites, the ballad of the Erl-King in the haunted forest. She had
learnt the poem once, and she found herself repeating the words:
"'Why trembles my darling? Why shrinks he with fear?'
'Oh Father, my Father! the Erl-King is near!
The Erl-King with his crown and his beard long and white!'
'Oh! your eyes are deceived by the vapours of night!'
* * * * *
"'I love thee, I dote on thy face so divine!
I must and will have thee, and force makes thee mine!'
'My Father! My Father! Oh hold me now fast!
He pulls me, he hurts, and will have me at last!'"
And as if that were not bad enough, the ballad of Lenore recurred
to her:
"How swift the flood, the mead, the wood,
Aright, aleft are gone!
The bridges thunder as they pass,
But earthly sound is none.
"Tramp, tramp, across the land they speed,
Splash, splash, across the sea;
'Hurrah! the dead can ride apace,
Dost fear to ride with me?'"
By this time Carmel, alone among the magic mist and moonlight, had
reached a state of fear bordering on panic. She longed for anything
human, and would have embraced a cow if she had met one. Through the fog
in front of her suddenly loomed something dark, and the sound of horse's
hoofs rang on the road. A wild vision of Lenore's spectral bridegroom
presented itself to her overwrought imagination, and she shrieked in
genuine terror, and shrank trembling against the hedge. The rider of the
horse dismounted, and slipping his wrist through the bridle, came
towards her.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you hurt? Why, great Scott! It's
never Carmel!"
"Everard! Everard!" gasped Carmel, clinging desperately to his arm. "Oh!
Thank Heaven it's you! I'm lost!"
Everard comforted her for a while without asking any questions; then,
when she had recovered calmness, he naturally wished to know why his
pretty cousin was wandering in the country lanes by herself on a
winter's evening. Man-like, he blamed the school instead of Carmel.
"They ought to have taken better care of you!" he murmured. "Why didn't
the mistress hold a roll-call, and count you all?"
"It wasn't her fault. It was my own mistake!"
"Well, whoever's fault it was, the fact remains the same. You'd better
get on Rajah, and I'll take you back to Chilcombe."
"Oh! that would be lovely. I'm so tired."
Perched on Rajah's back, with Everard walking by her side, life seemed a
very different affair from what it had been five minutes before. Carmel
enjoyed the ride, and was almost sorry when they reached the great iron
gates of the Hall.
"Won't you come in and see Lilias and Dulcie?" she asked, as Everard
helped her to dismount at the door.
"I haven't time to-night. I must get home in a hurry. I've an
appointment with Mr. Bowden, and he'll be waiting for me."
"And I've kept you from it! Oh, I'm so sorry, Everard!"
"I'm not. Look here, if you're ever in any trouble again anywhere, you
come to me, and I'll take care of you. Don't forget that, will you?"
"I'll remember!" said Carmel, waving her hand to him as she watched him
ride away down the drive. Then she turned into the house to set at rest
the panic of anxiety which had arisen over her non-appearance with the
other members of the shopping party.