A Prodigal
As the next term seemed likely to bring its own crop of troubles,
Gwen, with a kind of grim philosophy, determined to enjoy herself
while she could, and make the most of the holidays. She helped
vigorously at the schools, where tea parties for children and
grownups, concerts and other entertainments were in full swing, and
she even wrung a few words of appreciation from Beatrice for her
active services in the way of slicing up cake, cutting ham sandwiches,
and pouring out innumerable cups of tea. Gwen liked the village
festivities, she knew everybody in the place, and found it all fun,
from listening to the comic songs of the local grocer, to playing
Oranges and Lemons with the babies in the Infant School.
"We've three real parties too," she said on December 30th, "as well as
going to the Chambers' this afternoon."
"I hardly think Mrs. Chambers will expect you," declared Beatrice,
looking out of the window at the dark sky. "It's beginning to snow
already, and I believe we shall have a heavy fall."
"Then it must keep off till to-morrow, for we've got to get to North
Ditton somehow!" announced Gwen.
Dick's mother had asked the younger Gascoynes to tea, and amongst
their various invitations it was to this that Gwen looked forward the
most. She wanted to see Dick's home, and the collection of birds' eggs
and butterflies which he had promised to show her, and his magic
lantern, and his microscope, and all the Natural History books of
which he had so often spoken. She watched the weather impatiently, and
when the snow fell faster and faster, and Beatrice decided
emphatically that the visit was impossible, she broke into open
mutiny.
"It's too bad! We shouldn't take any harm. What an old mollycoddle you
are, Beatrice!"
"I've a little more sense in my head than you have! With this wind the
roads will be deep in drifts. It's quite unfit to go out, especially
for you with that nasty cough. I should have you laid up with
bronchitis."
"My cold's better," affirmed Gwen, trying not to sound hoarse; "snow
doesn't hurt people. Father's gone out in it!"
"Father was obliged to go--it's quite a different thing for him. I'm
sorry you're disappointed, but really, Gwen, don't be so childish!
Look at Lesbia, she isn't making such a dreadful fuss!"
"Lesbia never worries about anything, so it's no virtue at all!"
snarled Gwen, knowing perfectly well that she was unfair, for Lesbia
undoubtedly added self-control to her naturally sweet disposition.
"You always hold up Lesbia! You've no right to say we must stop at
home, just because you're the eldest!"
Beatrice sighed. Sometimes she thought this turbulent cuckoo of a
younger sister was the cross of her life.
"It's no use talking in this way, Gwen! Somebody must be in authority,
and you'll have to do as you're told."
"I shan't! I don't care! You're only six years older than I am!"
And Gwen flounced out of the room in a rage. She ran upstairs, her
eyes smarting with hot tears of temper. She was disgusted with the
others for not taking the matter more to heart. How could Lesbia sit
reading so calmly, or the boys amuse themselves with their absurd
engine?
"They don't care like I do! I wish I could go without them!" she said
aloud.
The idea was an excellent one. What fun it would be to go alone, and
have Dick all to herself--no tiresome youngsters to claim his
attention, finger his books, and perhaps break his birds' eggs; not
even Lesbia to ask stupid questions about things any ordinary person
ought to know. She could easily tell Mrs. Chambers that her sister had
thought it too stormy for the little ones to venture, and probably Dr.
Chambers would drive her back in the gig.
"After all, Father never told me not to go!" she thought, "and
Beatrice is getting a perfect tyrant; I can't be expected to obey her
as if I were an infant. A girl in the Fifth is quite old enough to
decide things for herself, especially when she's as tall as I am!"
Gwen changed her dress, put on her best hair ribbon, her brooch, and
her locket, then peeped cautiously down the stairs. Although she felt
full of self-assertion, she had no wish to risk a further encounter
with Beatrice. All seemed quiet, so, donning hat and coat, she crept
to the cupboard where mackintoshes and galoshes were kept, and armed
herself to defy the weather. It was quite an easy matter to slip out
by the back door, and in less than ten seconds she was hurrying
through the village, chuckling at her own daring and cleverness. Thick
flakes were whirling everywhere: when she looked upwards they showed
as little dark patches against the neutral-tinted sky, but when they
passed the line of vision, each soft lump of crystals gleamed purest
white as it joined the ever-deepening mass below. Every gate and stump
and rubbish heap was a thing of beauty, glorified by the ethereal
covering of the snow; the dead clumps of ragwort by the road side, the
withered branches of oak, the shrivelled trails of bramble all seemed
transformed by the feathery particles into a species of fairyland.
As Gwen left the village, and took the path that led across the moor,
she seemed to walk into a cloud of whiteness that enclosed her and
shut her out from all before or behind. She stood still for a moment,
and drew in her breath with a sense of intense exhilaration. She was
all by herself in the midst of this new-found world of snow, and the
very solitude had a fascination. It is good sometimes for the spirit
to be alone; strange vague thoughts, half memories, half imaginings,
fill the brain like a full high tide; strong impressions, unfelt and
unknowable in the distraction of human company, force themselves
silently yet persistently upon us; the corporal and the tangible lose
their hard outlines and begin to merge into the in visible--in such
moments the soul grows. It is perhaps one of the disadvantages of a
large family that the members are apt to lack what one might call
spiritual elbow room, the constant close companionship, the fridging
and rubbing of the continual, daily, hourly intercourse, though an
excellent discipline for the temper, leaves scant opportunity for the
development of the individuality. Gwen could not have explained this
in the least, but as she stood in the still quiet of the falling snow,
she felt as if all the little fretting cares and worries and squabbles
and anxieties dropped away into a subordinate place, and she were
viewing life with another range of vision, where the proportions of
things were quite changed.
She walked on, almost as if she were in a dream, without even the
sound of a footstep to break the intense silence. She was now on the
open wold, where there were neither hedges nor walls, but only a few
stones to mark the road from the sedgy, heathery expanse of moor that
stretched on either side. Gwen knew the way so thoroughly that she
thought she could have followed it blindfold. Every rock and boulder
and bush were familiar, and as a rule were so many points along the
daily path to school. Now, however, all the well-known landmarks
seemed to have a strange similarity, and to be merging into one great
white waste, in which tree stump was indistinguishable from stone or
gorse clump. The light was fading rapidly, for the clouds went on
gathering, and the flakes came down ever thicker and faster. So far
Gwen had gone on with the utmost confidence, but now she stopped and
entertained a doubt. She did not recognize the boulder on her right,
and the juniper bush on her left was surely strange.
"I verily believe I've come wrong somehow," she muttered. "There's
nothing for it but to turn back."
She could see her own footsteps in the snow behind, and for some
hundreds of yards she traced them; then they began to get fainter and
fainter, and presently they were hidden entirely by the new-fallen
flakes. The road was completely obliterated, there was nothing round
her but shapeless indefinite whiteness. Then it dawned upon Gwen's
soul that she was lost, lost hopelessly on the bare wold, where she
might wander for miles without seeing the gleam of a farmhouse window
or hearing even the bark of a shepherd's dog. The solitude that before
had seemed so inspiring, suddenly became oppressive loneliness. What
was she to do? Tramp on and on, perhaps in a circle, till she could go
no farther? Already it was heavy walking, and under the rocks and
bushes the drifts were deepening. Yet it would never do to sit down in
the snow. Tired as she was, she must keep moving, and while the
faintest gleam of daylight lasted she must try and find some
guide-post to civilization.
"I wish I'd brought Jingles. I never thought of him," she sighed,
longing regretfully for the shaggy Irish terrier that acted watchdog
at the Parsonage. "I wonder how soon they'll miss me at home? Not till
tea-time, I expect, and then they'll probably think I'm at the
Chambers'. Beatrice would guess where I'd gone. How furiously angry
she'll be!"
For the first time a little awkward uncomfortable inward suggestion
began to croak that elder sisters are occasionally right, and may
even be wiser in their generation than tall girls who have entered the
Fifth. Gwen's cough, which had been hacking all day, came on much
worse, and began to hurt her chest: she wished she had brought her
_thick_ muffler. It was a subject of perennial dispute between herself
and Beatrice, and she often discarded it simply because the latter
told her to put it on. She hated to appear mollycoddlish, and
sometimes indeed did very silly things out of sheer foolhardiness. At
present she was bitterly cold. The snow had sifted inside her
galoshes, and made her feet wet, and the chilly wind was creeping down
her neck and up her sleeves, and whirling frozen flakes at her face.
No cheery tea in the Chambers' drawing-room, and no delightful chat
with Dick afterwards about photography and magic lanterns.
"The fact of the matter is that I've been an idiot!" she confessed to
herself. "Anybody with an ounce of sense would have known it was too
snowy to cross the wold. I ought to have gone round by the high road.
I seemed to turn across here just out of habit."
Gwen could not tell how long she stumbled about. It felt like
interminable hours as she wearily dragged herself along, watching the
sky grow darker, and the landscape more and more blurred, till she
could scarcely distinguish which was snow and which was sky. At last
her aching limbs absolutely refused to carry her any farther, and she
crouched under the shelter of a big juniper bush that overhung a piece
of rock. Here at least she was out of the biting, freezing wind. The
comparative warmth made her feel sleepy. She roused herself with an
effort. To sleep in the snow, she knew, was fatal, so she fell to
rubbing her hands and feet to try and restore the circulation. All at
once she started up and shouted aloud.
In the distance she had heard a short, sharp yelp, and she reasoned
that where there was a dog, a man might possibly be following. Again
and again she called, till, to her intense relief, a "Hallo!" came in
answer, and she made out a snowy form moving in her direction. The dog
found her first; it bounded at her, whining and sniffing at her
skirts, then rushed away barking loudly to inform its master of her
whereabouts.
"Can you tell me where I am? I've got lost!" cried Gwen, wading
through a drift in her eagerness to meet her rescuer.
"Why, you're close to our house--Rawlins' farm. Who is it? I can't see
in the dark. Miss Gascoyne? Why, whatever are you doing here all
alone?"
He might well ask, Gwen thought, but she ignored the question. She
knew the man, for he was a parishioner, and two of his boys sang in
the choir at church.
"Can you tell me how to get home?" she said, with chattering teeth and
watering eyes.
"Better come and have a sup o' tea first; you look clemmed wi' the
cold," he returned. "We'll tak' you back after wi' the lantern. It's
nobbut a step to the farm."
He whistled to the dog and moved on, and Gwen stumbled after him,
wondering how she had missed seeing the house when it was so near. She
scarcely knew whether to pose in the light of a heroine or a culprit
as she walked into Mrs. Rawlins' kitchen, but decided to give as
guarded an account of the matter as she could. There would be
explanations in plenty when she returned to the Parsonage. She was
very glad to sit and thaw by the fire and drink hot tea, despite the
difficulty of fencing with Mrs. Rawlins' questions, that good dame
being consumed with curiosity, and not restrained by any feelings of
delicacy from catechizing her guest.
"Yes. No, I wasn't coming back from school, it's the holidays--yes,
I'm generally with one of my sisters--no, I wasn't delivering Parish
Magazines, we sent yours by Charlie--yes, I expect my father will be
missing me. Thanks very much for the tea; I think I must be going
now," said Gwen, gulping her second cup and making a move.
"Here's the lantern, Jim," said Mrs. Rawlins to her husband, "and take
Miss Gascoyne round by the road; 'tain't fit to venture over the moor.
It's scarce a night for a Christian to be out--and her with that
churchyard cough, too! Goodness, gracious, how it's blowing!"
Gwen reached home so spent and exhausted with her long tramp through
the snow, that she had only wits enough left wearily to thank Mr.
Rawlins for his escort, and to stumble in at the front door. Winnie
ran forward with a cry of relief, and shouted to Beatrice the welcome
news of the arrival.
"Don't ask me anything! Oh, I just want to go to bed; I'm done!"
wailed Gwen, subsiding on to the nearest chair.
Beatrice took the hint, and refrained from any reproaches till she
had tucked up the prodigal in warmed blankets, with a hot bottle at
her feet, and seen her consume a basin full of steaming bread and
milk. Then she observed:
"I suppose you know Father and half the village are out hunting for
you with lanterns? They raised the Boy Scouts and broke up the Band of
Hope meeting. They telephoned to the Police Station at North Ditton
too. I expect you're rather proud of yourself!"
And Gwen turned her face to the wall and sobbed and coughed till she
nearly choked.
Next afternoon a very miserable-looking object, with watering eyes and
a swollen cheek sat wrapped in a shawl by the fire in Father's study.
Gwen had made her peace with Beatrice and had been forgiven, but she
was still "eating the husks" of her escapade in the shape of a
thoroughly bad cold and a touch of toothache. She refused to stay in
bed, yet the noise of the family sitting-room made her head throb, so
finally Father had taken pity upon her, and allowed her to bring her
troubles into his sanctum. He had said very little about the events of
the day before, but Gwen knew exactly what he must be thinking. She
mopped her eyes with her handkerchief, and tried to believe it was her
toothache that was making her cry. After a long time she said huskily,
à propos of nothing in particular:
"Things always go so hardly with me, somehow, Dad! I don't know how it
is. I generally seem unlucky, both at school and at home. I suppose
it's partly me, but if things were easier, I'd be better. I should,
really."
[Illustration: "THINGS GO SO HARDLY WITH ME SOMEHOW, DAD."]
Father did not reply: he was busy addressing the motto-cards that he
was sending to his parishioners for the New Year. He handed one to her
silently.
And Gwen read:
"O do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do
not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers
equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no
miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall
wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come
to you by the Grace of God."
--_Phillips Brooks._
Gwen sat staring hard into the fire.
"I'll hang this up in my bedroom, Dad," she said presently.
"Do; you'll find it worth thinking about," replied Father, as he
blotted the thirty-fourth envelope.