Angela did not quite know how she got out of the house. There was some
fuss and some regret on the part of Mrs Johnston, and Mercy very nearly
cried, but at last she did get away. She stepped into her little
carriage, and drove down the road and went straight as fast as she
possibly could to Mrs Hogg's cottage.
Mrs Hogg was still busy over her washing, but she had come to the
wringing stage, and the steam was not quite so thick in the kitchen, and
certainly her face, flushed and tired as it was, quite beamed when she
saw Angela.
"Dear, dear, Miss Angela, you mustn't come in. 'Tain't a fit place to
put your dainty, beautiful feet into, 'tain't really, Miss."
"Will you come and speak to me here for a minute, Mrs Hogg?" said
Angela, and she waited in the tiny porch.
Mrs Hogg came out.
"You have a girl staying with you, haven't you?"
"Oh, dear me, Miss, so I have, a young girl--I don't know nothing about
her, not even her name, nor a single thing. It was Mary, my daughter,
sent her. She's nothing but a fuss and a worry, and that touchy about
her food as never was, turning up her nose at good red herring and at
pease pudding, and dumplings, and what more can a poor woman give, I'd
like to know?"
"You are sure you don't know her name?"
"No, Miss. She's a very queer girl."
"Is she--you understand those sort of things, Mrs Hogg--is she, in your
opinion, a young lady?"
"Handsome is as handsome does," was Mrs Hogg's rejoinder, "and to my
way o' thinking--to be frank with you--Miss, she ain't."
This was rather a damper to Angela's hopes, but after a minute she
reflected that probably Nesta was a rough specimen of the genus Lady,
and that at any rate it was her duty to follow up this clue to the end.
"I should like to see her," she said. "Where is she now?"
"Oh, Miss, if I thought, even for a single moment, that she was a friend
of yourn, I'd treat her very different; but all she did was to stand in
the middle of my kitchen on Saturday--"
"On Saturday?" said Angela.
"Yes; Miss, on Saturday, and she says as bold as brass--`Mary Hogg sent
me.' That was her; but if I'd known--"
"Where is she now?" said Angela:
"I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in all flustered and angry,
forsooth, because poor old Mrs Johnston hadn't been given a stroke of
blindness--that seemed to put her out more than anything else. She must
have a most malicious mind--that is, according to my way of thinking.
Well, anyhow, Miss, I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in, and I
told her to take it out and eat it. I don't know from Adam where she is
now."
"She would go, perhaps, into the country?"
"Well, Miss, perhaps she would. Would you like Ben and Dan to go along
and look for her!"
"I wish they would," said Angela.
Ben and Dan were rotated out of their lairs in the back part of the
premises, and were only too charmed to do Angela's bidding. They flew
off, fleet as a pair of little hares, down the shady lanes, looking in
vain for Nesta.
But it was Angela herself who at last found her. She had decided not to
drive in her carriage, for the sound of wheels, and the rhythmic beat of
the ponies' feet might startle the girl, and if she really meant to
hide, might make her hide all the more securely. No, she would walk.
So she gathered up her white skirt and walked down the summer lanes.
By-and-by she thought she heard a noise which was different from the
song of the birds, and the rushing of the waters, and the varied hum of
innumerable bees. She stood quite still. It was the sound of distress,
it was a sob, and the sob seemed to come from the throat of a girl.
Angela stepped very softly. She went over the long grass and came to a
tree, and at the foot of that tree lay a girl, her face downward, her
whole figure shaken with sobs. Angela laid her hand on her.
"Why, Nesta!" she said. "How silly of Nesta to be afraid."
The words were so unexpected that Nesta jumped to her feet; then covered
her face, then flung herself face downwards again and sobbed more
piteously than ever.
"I have found you, Nesta, and nobody is going to be in the least bit
angry with you. May I sit by you for a little?"
"You are Miss St Just--you are the person everybody worships and makes
a fuss over. I don't want you. Go away."
"I am sorry you don't want me, but I am not going away. I am going to
stay by you; may I?"
Nesta could not refuse. Angela sat down. Ben and Dan peeped their
round childish faces over the top of the hedge and saw Angela sitting by
Nesta's side.
"Hooray!" said Ben.
"Hurroa!" said Dan.
Angela turned.
"Go back to your mother, boys. Here is a penny for you, Dan, and
another for you, Ben. Go back to your mother, and say that I have found
my friend, Miss Nesta Aldworth, and am taking her back to Castle
Walworth."
This was a most awe-inspiring message; the boys, young as they were,
understood some of its grand import. They rushed presently into their
mother's cottage.
"You be a little flat, mammy!" they said. "Why, the gel you give red
herrings to, and no butter, is a friend of our Miss Angela's."
"The Lord forgive me!" said Mrs Hogg, and she forgot all about her
washing, and sat down on the first chair she could find, and let her
broad toil-worn hands spread themselves out one on each knee.
"The Lord forgive me!" she said at intervals.
Ben was deeply touched. He went and bought some fruit with his penny
and pressed it on his mother, but she scarcely seemed to see it.
"To think as I complained to her of robbing me of half my rightful
bedclothes," was her next remark. "May I see myself in my true light in
the future. How could I tell? How _could_ I tell?"
But down by the stream a very different scene was being enacted; for
Angela, having given her message to the boys, did not say anything more
for a long time. Nesta waited for her to speak. At first Nesta was
angry at being, as she expressed it, caught. She had not that
worshipful attitude towards Angela St Just that all the other girls of
the neighbourhood seemed to feel. She rather despised her, and did not
at all wish to be in her company. But then that was because she had
never before been in close contact with Angela. But now that Angela
gave that remarkable message, that respect-restoring message to the
boys, it seemed to Nesta that a healing balm, sweet as honey itself, had
been poured over her troubled heart. She could not help liking it; she
could not help reflecting over it. A friend of Angela's, and she was to
go back with her to Castle Walworth.
After a little she raised her head again and peeped at her companion.
How pretty Angela looked in her white dress, with her perfect little
profile, the dark lashes partly shading her cheeks. She was looking
down; she was thinking. Her lips were moving. Perhaps she was a real
angel--perhaps she was praying. Very much the same sort of feeling as
she had inspired in the breast of Penelope Carter, began now to dawn in
that of Nesta, and yet Nesta had a far harder and more difficult nature
than Penelope. All the same Nesta was touched. She reflected on the
difference between herself and this young lady, and yet Angela had
spoken of her as her friend. Then suddenly, she did not know why--Nesta
touched Angela on the arm. The moment she did this Angela turned.
Quick as thought her soft eyes looked full into Nesta's face.
"Oh, you poor child, you poor child!" she said, and then she swept her
arms round the girl and kissed her several times on her cheek.
"Now, Nesta," she said, "we won't ask you for any motives. I am not
going to put a single question to you, but I want you just to come
straight back with me to the Castle. I will tell you after dinner what
I am going to do next; but there is no scolding, nothing of that sort,
you are just to come back with me."
"Am I?" said Nesta. "I can't believe it."
"You will believe it when you see it. Come, we must be quick, it is
getting late."
She took Nesta's hand and led her down the road. There was the pretty
carriage, there were the ponies with the silver bells; there was the
smartly dressed little groom.
"Harold, get up behind," said Angela, "I am in a great hurry to get back
to Castle Walworth."
Nesta found herself seated beside Angela, and quick as thought, it
seemed to her, they were flashing through the summer air, past Mrs
Hogg's cottage, where the boys, Ben and Dan, raised the loudest and
heartiest "Hooray!" and "Hurroa!" that Angela had ever heard. The
ponies pricked up their ears at the sound, and flew faster than ever, up
the village high street, past the station, and up and up, a little
slower now, the steep hill where Nesta and Mary Hogg had walked side by
side; then through the portcullis, and into the courtyard of the castle.
Then indeed a new shyness came over Nesta. It was like a troubled,
hopeless, despairing sinner, so she thought, being led into heaven by an
angel.
"I'm not fit--I'm not really," she said, and she tugged at Angela's
hand, as if she would refuse to go in.
"Oh, you are fit enough," said Angela, "you are my friend."
When they got inside, Angela said something to a man who was standing
near in livery, and then they went down a passage, where they met no
one, up some low steps, along another passage and then a door was flung
open, and Angela and Nesta entered. They entered a pretty bedroom,
furnished as Nesta had never seen a bedroom before. Angela went up to a
girl who was sitting by the window sewing.
"Clements," she said, "this is my friend. I want you to put her into
one of my pretty dresses, so that she may come down to dinner with me.
Attend to her and see to everything she wants; she will sleep here
to-night. This room leads out of my room, dear," she said, giving Nesta
another smiling glance, and then she left her.
Clements dressed Nesta in white, and she would have thought on another
occasion that she had never looked so nice. But she was really past
thinking of how she looked, for somehow Angela's treatment was awaking
something different within her, something which had never, even on that
night when her mother was so terribly ill, been truly awakened before.
She looked humble and very sad when Angela came back to her.
"You look quite sweet," said Angela, giving her a kiss. "Come along
downstairs. By the way, I have sent a telegram to Marcia to tell her
that you are all right, and that I am bringing you back to-morrow."
"Home?" said Nesta.
"Well, to your mother. That will make you happy, won't it?"
"Mothery!" said Nesta, and there was a lump in her throat.
"I'll tell you all about it after dinner. I have excellent news for
you," said Angela.
At another time that dinner, eaten in the company of people whom Nesta
had never even dreamed about before, might have confused her, but she
was past being confused now. She had a curious sensation, however, that
the rich and delicately cooked food provided for the guests at Castle
Walworth was as little to her taste as fried herrings and pease pudding
at Mrs Hogg's cottage. There was a heavy weight about her heart; she
could scarcely raise her eyes to look at any one. Angela seemed to know
all that, for after dinner she took her away, and out in the cool garden
in the shadows of the summer night she talked to Nesta as no one had
ever talked to her before.