SCARSDALE WEIR.
I was up betimes next morning, long before Sister Agnes could possibly
be ready to take me to the forest. So I took my sewing into the
garden, and found a pleasant sunny nook, where I sat and worked till
breakfast time. The meal was scarcely over when Sister Agnes sent for
me. It made my heart leap with pleasure to see how her beautiful
melancholy face lighted up at my approach. Why should she feel such an
interest in one whom she had never seen till a few hours ago? The
question was one I could not answer; I could only recognise the fact,
and be thankful.
The morning was delicious; sunny, without being oppressive; while in
the shade there was a faint touch of austerity like the first breath
of coming winter. A walk of two miles brought us to the skirts of the
forest, and in five minutes after quitting the high road we might have
been a hundred miles away from any habitation, so utterly lost and
buried from the outer world did we seem to be. Already the forest
paths were half hidden by fallen leaves, which rustled pleasantly
under our feet. By-and-by we came to a pretty opening in the wood,
where some charitable soul had erected a rude rustic seat, that was
more than half covered with the initials of idle wayfarers. Here
Sister Agnes sat down to rest. She had brought a volume of poems with
her, and while she read I wandered about, never going very far away,
feasting on the purple blackberries, finding here and there a
late-ripened cluster of nuts, trying to find out a nest or two among
the thinned foliage, and enjoying myself in a quiet way, much to my
heart's content.
I don't think Sister Agnes read much that morning. Her gaze was
oftener away from her book than on it. After a time she came and
joined me in gathering nuts and blackberries. She seemed brighter and
happier than I had hitherto seen her, entering into all my little
projects with as much eagerness as though she were herself a child.
How soon I had learned to love her! Why had I lived all those dreary
years at Park Hill without knowing her? But I could never again feel
quite so lonely, never quite such an outcast from that common
household love which all the girls I had known seemed to accept as a
matter of course. Even if I should unhappily be separated from Sister
Agnes, I could not cease to love her; and although I had seen her for
the first time barely forty-eight hours ago, my child's instinct told
me that she possessed that steadfastness, sweet and strong, which
allows no name that has once been written on its heart to be erased
therefrom for ever.
My thoughts were running in some such groove, but they were all as
tangled and confused as the luxuriant undergrowth around me. It must
have been out of this confusion that the impulse arose which caused me
to address a question to Sister Agnes that startled her as much as if
a shell had exploded at her feet.
"Dear Sister Agnes," I said, "you seem to know my history, and all
about me. Did you know my papa and mamma?"
She dropped the leaf that held her fruit, and turned on me a haggard
frightened face, that made my own grow pale. "What makes you think
that I know your history?" she stammered out.
"You who are so intimate with Lady Pollexfen must know why I was
brought to Dupley Walls: you must know something about me. If you know
anything about my father and mother, oh! do please tell me; please
do!"
"I am tired, Janet. Let us sit down," she said, wearily. So, hand in
hand, we went back to the rustic seat and sat down.
She sat for a minute or two without speaking, gazing straight before
her into some far-away forest vista, but seeing only with that inner
eye which: searches through the dusty chambers of heart and brain
whenever some record of the past has to be brought forth to answer the
questions of to-day.
"I do know your history, dear child," she said at length, "and both
your parents were friends of mine."
"Were! Then neither of them is alive?"
"Alas! no. They have been dead many years. Your father was drowned in
one of the Italian lakes. Your mother died a year afterwards."
All the sweet vague hopes that I had cherished in secret, ever since I
could remember anything, of some day finding at least one of my
parents alive, died out utterly as Sister Agnes said these words. My
heart seemed to faint within me. I flung myself into her arms, and
burst into tears.
Very tenderly and lovingly, with sweet caresses and words of comfort,
did Sister Agnes strive to win me back to cheerfulness. Her efforts
were not unsuccessful, and after a time I grew calmer, and recovered
my self-possession; and as soon as so much was accomplished we set out
on our return to Dupley Walls. As we rose to go, I said, "Since you
have told me so much, Sister Agnes, will you not also tell me why I
have been brought to Dupley Walls, and why Lady Pollexfen has anything
to do with me?"
"That is a question, dear Janet, which I cannot answer," she said. "I
am bound to Lady Pollexfen by a solemn promise not to reveal to you
the nature of the secret bond which has brought you under her roof.
That she has your welfare at heart you may well believe, and that it
is to your interest to please her in every possible way is equally
certain. More than this I dare not say, except that there are certain
pages of your history, some of them of a very painful character, which
it would not be advisable that you should read till you shall be many
years older than you are now. Meanwhile, rest assured that in Lady
Pollexfen, however eccentric she may seem to be, you have a firm and
powerful friend; while in me, who has neither influence nor power, you
have one who simply loves you, and prays night and day for your
welfare."
"And you will never cease to love me, will you?" I said, just as we
stepped out of the forest into the high road.
She took both my hands in hers and looked me straight in the face.
"Never, while I live, Janet Holme, can I cease to love you," she said.
Then we kissed and went on our way towards Dupley Walls.
"You are to dine with her ladyship to-day, Miss Janet," said Dance the
same afternoon. "We must look out your best bib and tucker."
Dance seemed to think that a mighty honour was about to be conferred
upon me, but for my own part I would have given much to forego the
distinction. However, there was no help for it, so I submitted quietly
to having my hair dressed and to being inducted into my best frock. I
was dreadfully abashed when the footman threw open the dining-room
door and announced in a loud voice, "Miss Janet Holme."
Dinner had just been served, and her ladyship was waiting. I advanced
up the room and made my curtsey. Lady Pollexfen looked at me grimly,
without relaxing a muscle, and then extended a lean forefinger, which
I pressed respectfully. The butler indicated a chair, and I sat down.
Next moment Sister Agnes glided in through a side door, and took her
place at the table, but considerably apart both from Lady Pollexfen
and me. I felt infinitely relieved by her presence.
Her ladyship looked as elaborately youthful, with her pink cheeks, her
black wig, and her large white teeth, as on the evening of my arrival
at Dupley Walls. But her hands shook a little, making the diamonds on
her fingers scintillate in the candlelight as she carried her food to
her mouth, and this was a sign of age which not all the art in the
world could obviate. The table was laid out with a quantity of
old-fashioned plate; indeed, the plate was out of all proportion to
the dinner, which consisted of nothing more elaborate than some mutton
broth, a roast pullet, and a custard. But there was a good deal of
show, and we were waited on assiduously by a respectable but
fatuous-looking butler. There was no wine brought out, but some old
ale was poured into her ladyship's glass from a silver flagon. Sister
Agnes had a small cover laid apart from ours. Her dinner consisted of
herbs, fruit, bread, and water. It pained me to see that the look of
intense melancholy which had lightened so wonderfully during our
forest walk, had again overshadowed her face like a veil. She gave me
one long, earnest look as she took her seat at the table, but after
that she seemed scarcely to be aware of my presence.
We had sat in grim silence for full five minutes, when Lady Pollexfen
spoke.
"Can you speak French, child?" she said, turning abruptly to me.
"I can read it a little, but I cannot speak it," I replied.
"Nor understand what is said when it is spoken in your presence?"
"No, your ladyship."
"So much the better," she answered with a grating laugh. "Children
have long ears, and there is no freedom of conversation when they are
present." With that she addressed some remarks in French to Sister
Agnes, who replied to her in the same language. I knew nothing about
my ears being long, but her ladyship's words had made them tingle as
if they had been boxed. For one thing I was thankful--that no further
remarks were addressed to me during dinner. The conversation in French
became animated, and I had leisure to think of other things.
Dinner was quickly over, and at a signal from her ladyship the folding
doors were thrown open, and we defiled into the Green Saloon, I
bringing up the rear meekly. On the table were fruit and flowers, and
one small bottle of some light wine. The butler filled her ladyship's
glass, and then withdrew.
"You can take a pear, little girl," said Lady Pollexfen. Accordingly I
took a pear, but when I had got it I was too timid to eat it, and
could do nothing but hold it between my hot palms. Had I been at Park
Hill Seminary, I would soon have made my teeth meet in the fruit, but
I was not quite certain as to the proper mode of eating pears in
society.
Lady Pollexfen placed her glass in her eye, and examined me
critically.
"Haie! haie!" she said. "That good Chinfeather has not quite
eradicated our gaucherie, it seems. We are deficient in ease and
aplomb. What is the name of that Frenchwoman, Agnes, who 'finished'
Lady Kinbuck's girls?"
"You mean Madame Duclos."
"The same. Look out her address to-morrow, and remind me that you
write to her. If mademoiselle here remain in England, she will grow up
weedy, and will never learn to carry her shoulders properly. Besides,
the child has scarcely two words to say for herself. A little Parisian
training may prove beneficial. At her age a French girl of family
would be a little duchess in bearing and manners, even though she had
never been outside the walls of her pension. How is such an anomaly to
be accounted for? It is possible that the atmosphere may have
something to do with it."
Here was fresh food for wonder, and for such serious thought as my age
admitted of. I was to be sent to a school in France! I could not make
up my mind whether to be sorry or glad. In truth, I was neither wholly
the one nor the other; the tangled web of my feelings was something
altogether beyond my skill to unravel.
Lady Pollexfen sipped her wine absently for a while; Sister Agnes was
busy with some fine needlework; and I was striving to elaborate a
giant and his attendant dwarf out of the glowing embers and cavernous
recesses of the wood fire, while there was yet an underlying vein of
thought at work in my mind which busied itself desultorily with trying
to piece together all that I had ever heard or read of life in a
French school.
"You can run away now, little girl. You are _de trop_," said her
ladyship, turning on me in her abrupt fashion. "And you, Agnes, may as
well read to me a couple of chapters out of the _Girondins_. What a
wonderful man was that Robespierre! What a giant! Had he but lived,
how different the history of Europe would have been from what we know
it to-day."
I could almost have kissed her ladyship of my own accord, so pleased
was I to get away. I made my curtsey to her, and also to Sister Agnes,
whose only reply was a sweet sad smile, and managed to preserve my
dignity till I was out of the room. But when the door was safely
closed behind me, I ran, I flew along the passages till I reached the
housekeeper's room. Dance was not there, neither had candles yet been
lighted. The bright moonlight pouring in through the window, gave me a
new idea.
I had not yet been down to look at the river! What time could be
better than the present one for such a purpose? I had heard some of
the elder girls at Park Hill talk of the delights of boating by
moonlight. Boating in the present case was out of the question, but
there was the river itself to be seen. Taking my hat and scarf, I let
myself out by a side door, and then sped away across the park like a
hunted fawn, not forgetting to take an occasional bite at her
ladyship's pear. To-night, for a wonder, my mind seemed purged of all
those strange fears and stranger fancies engendered in it, some people
would say, by superstition, while others would hold that they were
merely the effects of a delicate nervous organization and an
overexcitable brain reacting one upon the other. Be that as it may,
for this night they had left me, and I skipped on my way as fearlessly
as though I were walking at mid-day, and, with a glorious sense of
freedom working within me, such, only in a more intense degree, as I
had often felt on our rare holidays at school.
There was a right of public footpath across one corner of the park.
Tracking this narrow white ribbon through the greensward, I came at
length to a stile which admitted me into the high road. Exactly
opposite was a second stile opening on a second footpath, which I felt
sure could lead to nowhere but the river. Nor was I mistaken. In
another five minutes I was on the banks of the Adair.
To my child's eyes the scene was one of exquisite beauty. To-day, I
should probably call it flat, and wanting in variety. The equable
full-flowing river was lighted up by a full and unclouded moon. The
undergrowth that fringed its banks was silver-foliaged; silver white
rose the mists in the meadows. Silence everywhere, save for the low
liquid murmur of the river itself, which seemed burdened with some
love secret, centuries old, which it was vainly striving to tell in
articulate words.
The burden of the beauty lay upon me and saddened me. I wandered
slowly along the bank, watching the play of moonlight on the river.
Suddenly I saw a tiny boat that was moored to an overhanging willow,
and floated out the length of its chain towards the middle of the
stream. I looked around. Not a creature of any kind was visible. Then
I thought to myself, "how pleasant it would be to sit out there in the
boat for a little while. And surely no one could be angry with me for
taking such a liberty--not even the owner of the boat if he were to
find me there."
No sooner said than done. I went down to the edge of the river, and
drew the boat inshore by the chain that held it. Then I stepped
gingerly in, half frightened at my own temerity, and sat down. The
boat glided slowly out again to the length of its chain and then
became motionless. But it was motionless only for a moment or two. A
splash in the water drew my attention to the chain. It had been
insecurely fastened to a branch of the willow; my weight in the boat
had caused it to become detached and fall into the water, and with
horrified eyes I saw that I had now no means of getting back to the
shore. Next moment the strength of the current carried the boat out
into midstream, and I began to float slowly down the river.
I sat like one paralysed, unable either to stir or speak. The willows
seemed to bow their heads in mocking farewell as I glided past them. I
heard the faint baying of a dog on some distant farm, and it sounded
like a death-note in my frightened ears. Suddenly the spell that had
held me was loosened, and I started to my feet. The boat heeled over,
and but for a sudden instinctive movement backward I should have gone
headlong into the river, and have ended my troubles there and then.
The boat righted itself, veered half round, and then went steadily on
its way down the stream. I sank on my knees and buried my face in my
hands, and began to cry. When I had cried a little while it came into
my mind that I would say my prayers. So I said them, with clasped
hands and wet eyes, and the words seemed to come from me and affect me
in a way that I had never experienced before. As I write these lines I
have a vivid recollection of noticing how blurred and large the moon
looked through my tears.
My heart was now quieted a little; I was no longer so utterly
overmastered by my fears. I was recalled to a more vivid sense of
earth and its realities by the low melancholy striking of some village
clock. I gazed eagerly along both banks of the river, but although the
moon shone so brightly, neither house nor church nor any sign of human
habitation was visible. When the clock had told its last syllable, the
silence seemed even more profound than before. I might have been
floating on a river that wound through a country never trodden by the
foot of man, so entirely alone, so utterly removed from all human aid,
did I feel myself to be.
I drew the skirt of my frock over my shoulders, for the night air was
beginning to chill me, and contrived to regain the seat I had taken on
first entering the boat. Whither would the river carry me? was the
question I now put to myself, To the sea, doubtless. Had I not been
taught at school that sooner or later all rivers emptied themselves
into the ocean? The immensity of the thought appalled me. It seemed to
chill the beating of my heart; I grew cold from head to foot. Still
the boat held its course steadily, swept onward by the resistless
current; still the willows nodded their fantastic farewells. Along
the level meadows far and wide the white mist lay like a vast
winding-sheet; now and then through the stillness I heard, or seemed
to hear, a moan--a mournful wail, as of some spirit just released from
earthly bonds, and forced to leave its dear ones behind. The moonlight
looked cruel, and the water very, very cold. Some one had told me that
death by drowning was swift and painless. Those stars up there were
millions of miles away: how long would it take my soul, I wondered, to
travel that distance--to reach those glowing orbs--to leave them
behind? How glorious such a journey, beyond all power of thought,--to
track one's way among the worlds that flash through space! In the
world I should leave there would be one person only who would mourn
for me--Sister Agnes, who would----But what noise was that?
A noise, low and faint at first, just taking the edge of silence with
a musical murmur that seemed to die out for an instant now and again,
then coming again stronger than before, and so growing by fine degrees
louder and more confirmed, and resolving itself at last into a sound
which could not be mistaken for that of anything but falling water.
The sound was clearly in front of me,--I was being swept resistlessly
towards it. A curve of the river and a swelling of the banks hid
everything from me. The sound was momently growing louder, and had
distinctly resolved itself into the roar and rush of some great body
of water. I shuddered and grasped the sides of the boat with both
hands. Suddenly the curve was rounded, and there, almost immediately
in front of me, was a mass of buildings, and there, too, spanning the
river, was what looked to me like a trellis-work bridge, and on the
bridge was a human figure. The roar and noise of the cataract were
deafening, but louder than all was my piercing cry for help. He who
stood on the bridge heard it. I saw him fling up his hands as if in
sudden horror, and that was the last thing I did see. I sank down with
shut eyes in the bottom of the boat, and my heart went up in a silent
cry to heaven. Next moment I was swept over Scarsdale Weir. The boat
seemed to glide from under me; my head struck something hard; the
water overwhelmed me, seized on me, dashed me here and there in its
merciless arms; a noise as of a thousand cataracts filled my ears for
a moment, and then I recollect nothing more.