Читать книгу A Life Sentence - Sergeant Adeline - Страница 9

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Hubert stopped short. If Miss Vane had been looking at him, she would have seen that his face flushed deeply and then turned very pale. But she herself, with her gold eye-glasses fixed very firmly on the bridge of her high nose, was concentrating her whole attention upon the children.

"Enid," she called out rather sharply, "what are you doing there? Come to me."

Enid turned to her aunt. She was a singularly sensitive looking child, with lips that paled too rapidly and veins that showed with almost painful distinctness beneath the soft white skin. Her features were delicately cut, and gave promise of future beauty, when health should lend its vivifying touch to the white little face. Her eyes, of a tender violet-gray, were even now remarkable, and her hair was of rippling gold.

Her sombre black dress and the sunshine that poured down upon the spot where she was standing contributed to the dazzling effect produced by her golden hair and white skin. There could not have been a greater contrast than that between her and Andrew Westwood's daughter, upon whom at that moment Hubert Lepel's eyes were fixed.

Jenny Westwood, as she was generally called, although her father gave her a different name, was thinner, browner wilder-looking, than she had even been before. Miss Vane knew her by sight, but she had imagined that the child had been taken away from the village by friends, or sent to the workhouse by the authorities. It was a shock to her to find the little creature at the park gates of Beechfield Hall.

Enid did not seem to be embarrassed by her aunt's call. She ran up to her at once, dragging the ragged child with her by the hand. Her face was anxious and puzzled.

"Oh, aunt Leo," she said, "this little girl has nowhere to go to—no home—no anything!"

"Let her hand go, Enid!" said aunt Leo, with some severity. "You have no business to be out here in the road, talking to children whom you know nothing about."

Enid shrank a little, but she did not drop the child's hand.

"But, aunt Leo, she is hungry and——"

"Were you begging of this young lady?" Miss Vane said magisterially, her eyes bent full on the ragged girl's dark face.

But Andrew Westwood's daughter would not speak.

"I'll talk to her," said Hubert, in a low tone. "You take Enid back to the house, aunt Leo, and I'll send the child about her business."

"No, no; you'll miss your train. It is time for you to go. Enid can run back to the house by herself. Go, Enid!"

"Why may I not speak to the little girl too?" said Enid wistfully. It was not often that she was rebellious, but her face worked now as if she were going to cry.

"Never mind why—do as I tell you!" cried Miss Vane, who was growing exasperated by the pain and difficulty of the situation, "I will see what she wants."

Enid hesitated for a moment, then flung herself impetuously upon Hubert.

"Won't you help her?" she said, looking up into his face with sweet entreaty. "I am sure you will be kind. The poor little girl has had nothing to eat all day—I asked her. You will be kind to her, for you are always kind."

Hubert pressed her to him without speaking for a moment, then answered gently—

"Both your aunt and I will be kind to her and help her, Enid—you may be sure of that. Now run away home and leave us; we will do all we can."

For the first time, the little outcast who had excited Enid's pity broke the silence.

"I don't want nothing; I wasn't begging, nor meaning to beg. She found me asleep by the road and asked me if I was hungry—that was all."

"And she is hungry," said Enid, with passion, "and you don't want me to help her. You are unkind! Here, little girl—here is my shilling; it's the only one I've got, and it has a hole in it, but you may have it, and then you can get yourself something to eat in the village."

She dashed forward with the coin, eluding a movement of Miss Vane's hand designed to stop her in her course. The shilling lay in Jenny Westwood's grimy little hand before the lady could interfere.

"Don't take it away," Hubert whispered in his aunt's ear; "it will only make her remember the scene for a longer time."

"I know," Miss Vane answered grimly; and she stood still.

Enid turned sorrowfully, half ashamed of her momentary rebellion, towards the park gate. The other child seemed dazed by the excitement of the speakers, and only half understood what had been going on. She stood looking first at the coin in her hand and then at the donor, with a strange questioning expression on her little brown face. Miss Vane and Hubert also waited in silence, until Enid was out of hearing. Then, as if by the same instinct, each drew a long breath and looked doubtfully at the other and then at the child.

"You will miss your train," said Miss Leonora.

"I have done that already; so we may as well find out what brings the girl here. Why not take her inside the park gates? If any one passes by——"

"You are right, Hubert, as usual. Come here, child—come inside for a minute or two; I want to speak to you."

The little girl glanced doubtfully at Miss Vane's handsome imperious face. She seemed inclined to break away from her questioners and run down the road; but a look from under her long lashes at Hubert seemed to reassure her. The young man's face had certainly an attractive quality—there was some sort of passion and pain in it, some mark of a great struggle which had not been all ignoble; even if he had failed to win the victory, a look which worked its way into the hearts of many who would have refused their hands to him in sign of fellowship if they had known the whole story of his life. This subtle charm had its influence on little Jenny Westwood, although she had no suspicion of its cause. She moved a little closer to him, and followed him inside the iron gates of Beechfield Park. The great trees flung their shade over the broad drive which ran between mossy banks for a mile before the house was reached. Between their trunks the sunshine flickered on sheets of bracken, already turning a little yellow from the heat; the straight spikes of the foxglove, not yet in bloom, were visible here and there amongst the undulating forms of the woodland fern. Hubert closed the gate carefully behind him, and stood with his aunt so as to screen the child from observation, should friends or acquaintances pass by. He had a keen perception of the fact that Miss Vane was making an enormous effort over pride and prejudice and affectionate prepossessions of all kinds in even speaking a word to Andrew Westwood's child. He himself, in the troubled depths of his soul, was stirred by a wild rush of pity and remorse, of sharp unaffected desire to undo what had been done already, to amend the injury that his hand had wrought—a far greater injury indeed than he had dreamt of doing. He had always fancied Andrew Westwood as lonely a man as—in the world's eyes—he was worthless; he had not known until the day of the trial that the prisoner had a child.

"Your name is 'Westwood,' I think?" Miss Vane began stonily.

Hubert was keenly aware of the harshness of her tones. The girl nodded.

"Your father is Andrew Westwood?"

She nodded again, a dull red creeping into her brown cheeks.

"What are you doing here?" There was a tragic intensity of indignation in Miss Vane's way of putting the question, which Hubert wondered whether the child could comprehend. "You ought to be far away from Beechfield—it is the last place to which you should come!"

The child lowered her face until it was nearly hidden on her breast, and spoke for the second time.

"Hadn't nowhere to go," she muttered.

"Have you no home?" said Miss Vane sternly.

"Only the cottage down by the pond where father lived. It is all shut up now."

"Where have you lived for the last few weeks? I heard that you were in the workhouse."

"Yes." Then, evidently with difficulty—"I ran away."

"Then you were a bad wicked girl to do so," said Miss Vane, with severity; "and you ought to be sent back again—and well whipped, into the bargain!"

Hubert made an impatient movement. He had never seen his aunt so much to her disadvantage. She was harsh, unwomanly, inhuman. Was it in this way that every woman would treat the poor child, remembering the story of her father's crime?

Miss Vane read the accusation in his eyes. She turned aside with an abrupt gesture, half of defiance, half of despair.

"I can't help it, Hubert," she said in an undertone. She raised her handkerchief to her eyes and dashed away a tear. "I feel it a wrong to Sydney, to Marion, to the child, that I should try to benefit any of Westwood's family. I can't bear to speak to her—I can't bear her in my sight. It makes me ill to see her."

She covered her eyes with her hand, so that she might not see the ragged miserable-looking little creature any longer.

"It would make matters no better if the child were to die of neglect and starvation at your gates, would it?" said Hubert bitterly. "She must be got out of Beechfield at any rate; you will never be able to bear seeing her about the roads—even amongst the workhouse children."

"No, no, indeed! And Enid—Enid might meet her again!"

"Go back to the house, aunt Leo," said the young man tenderly, "and leave her to me. It is too great a strain upon your endurance, I see. I will take the child to the Rectory; Mrs. Rumbold will know of some home where she will be taken in—the farther away from Beechfield the better."

Miss Vane was unusually agitated. Her face was pale, and her lips moved nervously; she carefully averted her eyes from the little girl whom she had undertaken to question. Evidently she was on the verge of a breakdown.

"I never was so foolish in my life as I have been to-day. My nerves are all unstrung," she said, turning her back on little Jenny Westwood. "I think I'll take your advice, Hubert. Ask Mr. and Mrs. Rumbold, from me, to see after the child. If they want money, I don't mind supplying it. But do make them understand that the child must be kept out of Beechfield." And with these words she walked briskly down the avenue, without looking back. As she had said, the very sight of Andrew Westwood's daughter made her ill.

Hubert turned again towards the girl, wondering whether she had overheard the conversation, which had been carried on in low tones, and, if she had overheard it, how much she had understood. He could not find out from her face. It was not a face that lacked intelligence, but it was at present sullen and forbidding in expression. The black hair that hung over her eyes hid her forehead, and gave her a rough, almost a savage look.

"You do not want to go back to the workhouse, do you?" Hubert said, keenly regarding the stubborn face.

"No—I won't go back."

"Why not?"

A hot burning blush sprang to the child's cheeks.

"They call me names," she said in a low voice.

"They? Who? And what names?"

"The other girls, and the mistress too, and the women. They said that my father's wicked, and that I am wicked too. They say that he is to be hanged."

The child suddenly burst out crying; her sobs, loud and unrestrained, fell painfully on Hubert's ear.

"I went to the prison to see him, but they would not let me; and then I came back here."

She sobbed for a minute or two longer, and then became quiet as suddenly as she had broken into tears, rubbing her eyes with one hand, and peering furtively at Hubert between the black fingers.

"They were wrong," Hubert said at length. "Your father is not dead; he is not to be hanged at all." He paused before he spoke again. "He is in prison; he will be in prison for the rest of his life—a life sentence!"

He spoke rather to himself than to the child. Never had he realised so fully as at that moment what prison actually meant. To be shut up, away from friends, away from home, away from the sweet wild woods, the country air, the summer sun, to labor all day long at some heavy monotonous task, such as breaks the spirit and the heart of man with its relentless uniformity of toil—to wear the prison garb, to be known by a number, as one dead to the ordinary life of men, leaving at the prison gates that name which would be henceforth only a badge of disgrace to all who bore it in the outer world—these aspects of Andrew Westwood's sad case flashed in a moment across Hubert Lepel's mind with a thrill of intolerable pain. What could he do? Rise up and offer to bear that terrible punishment himself? It could not be—for Florence's sake, he told himself, it could not be. And yet—yet——Would that at the very beginning he had told the truth, and stood where Andrew Westwood stood, so that the ruffian and the poacher might not have to bear a doom that separated him for ever from his only child!

"Do you mean," said Jenny Westwood slowly, "that father will never come out of prison any more?"

"Perhaps—after many years—he may come out."

"Many years? Three—or five?"

"More—more, I am afraid, my little girl—perhaps in twenty years—if he is still alive."

He scarcely knew what impulse prompted him then to tell her the truth. He repented it the next moment, for, after a horrified stare into his face, the child suddenly flung herself down upon the gravelled path and burst into tears, accompanied by passionate shrieking sobs and wild convulsive movements of her limbs.

"He shall come out—he shall come out!" Hubert heard her cry between her gasps for breath. "He can't do without me. Take me to him, or I shall die!"

In utter dismay Hubert tried persuasion, argument, rebuke, for some time in vain. At last he turned away from her, and began walking up and down a short stretch of the drive, bitterly regretting the impulse that had caused him to take the care of this strange child, even for a few moments, on his hands. But he had promised to get rid of her, and he must do so, if only for Enid's sake. It would never do to let this little wild creature go on roaming about the village, asking questions about her father. And there were better motives at work within the young man's breast. It seemed to him that he had brought a duty on himself—that he was at least responsible for Andrew Westwood's forlorn and neglected child.

He had not paced the drive for many minutes before the sobs began to grow fainter. Finally they ceased, and the child drew herself into a crouching position, with her head resting against the steep mossy bank just within the gate. Seeing her so quiet, Hubert thought that he might venture to speak to her again.

"You must not cry so bitterly," he said, almost as he might have spoken to a grown-up person, not to a child.

"Grieving can do your poor father no good. Wait and grow up quickly. He may come out of prison some day, and want his little daughter. If I take you to a place where you can be taught to be a good girl, like other girls, will you stay there?"

The child raised her head and fixed her dark eyes upon him.

"Not to the workhouse?" she said apprehensively.

"I promise you—not to a workhouse, if you will be a good child."

She scrambled to her feet at once, and, rather to Hubert's surprise, put one hot and dirty little hand into his own.

"I will be good," she said briefly; "and I will go wherever you like."

Nothing seemed easier to her just then.