Chapter 2
THE FLIGHT.
A confirmation was to be held during the spring in the neighbouring village; and the clergyman who prepared the Orphanage children looked upon Kate as a most promising candidate; she was gentle, and attentive, and wrote her papers with so much care.
The Confirmation day dawned as sweetly and as brightly as a Confirmation day should do. The birds were singing their hearts out in the Orphanage garden; primroses and wallflowers were blooming in every corner; the apple-trees were in festive array, and little pink and white petals floated on the breeze, and came in at the open windows.
Then a troop of little girls in grey dresses with white caps assembled, prayer-book in hand, at the door, waiting for Mother Agnes.
What could keep Mother Agnes so long? The bells have been ringing for nearly half-an-hour, and they would certainly be late! No, here she comes, but with a very grave face--much too grave--and oh, where is Kate?
"Children, we must start," said the Mother sternly, "Kate is not coming." Naturally the children wondered, and questioned amongst themselves what had happened, but they little suspected the real facts. Mother Agnes had gone to look for Kate in the dormitory, feeling that she should like to take the child's hand in hers, and say something to comfort and to strengthen her. But Kate was not in the dormitory. Her grey Sunday dress lay, neatly folded on the bed, the Confirmation cap arranged on the top of it, and by its side a note, addressed in a bold, round hand to Mother Agnes.
What on earth could this mean? Mother Agnes stared at the dress, fingered the note, and then unfastened it with a hand that trembled a little. The contents were these--
"DEAR MOTHER AGNES,--You have been good to me, so I will tell you that I am leaving, and not going to come back any more. And it is not because I do not like you, for I do, though I have never loved any one but Frances; but I cannot stay in this place any more. Oh! you do not know what the pain is that I bear. When the birds sing, I seem to hear Frances' voice singing with them as she did last spring, and I see her running amongst the flower-beds, and I cannot look at the apple-tree without seeing her little fair face peeping at me from between the blossoms. Perhaps you will not care whether I go or stay, but I hope you will not mind about me, for I shall go to London to find a place. There's many younger than me in places already. But if I do not find a place, perhaps I will drown myself in the river, for I am sick of life, and I hope you will not think about me, or mind.----KATE DANIELS."
Mother Agnes' face grew very white as she read this letter--but no time was to be lost--she sat down and wrote a little note giving information to the police, and sent it by a servant; and then she went downstairs to join the waiting children. She tried to comfort herself by thinking that Kate could not have got very far in so short a time. At the most she could only have been gone an hour, and surely she would be quickly found? And yet, strange misgivings took possession of Mother Agnes' mind.
* * * * * *
Ten days later, a tall woman dressed in black was hastening at early dawn along the Thames embankment, near Westminster. Mother Agnes scarcely knew herself, her heart seemed bursting.
It was the old story of the one lost sheep becoming all in all to the shepherd. The days had seemed months since poor Kate was missed, and this first news of a girl who might possibly turn out to be Kate, had made Mother Agnes hurry up to town by the night train, quite forgetting that she could not disturb St. Thomas' Hospital with inquiries at such an early hour. So she paced feverishly up and down by the river-side, thinking. It did seem just what she could imagine Kate doing, rushing across the road to save a little child about the age of Frances from being run over, and both children, whoever they might be, were knocked down by the passing omnibus. They were much injured, and were accordingly carried to St. Thomas' Hospital. The younger child was soon identified through her own statements, but the elder one remained long unconscious. Her dress was very ragged, but her underclothing bore the stamp of some institution.
Mother Agnes went over in her mind every word of the short report she had received, again and again.
How strange London looked at this early hour! She scarcely knew it in the dim grey light, with hardly a sound in the streets, and there floated into her mind lines of Wordsworth's, written from this very spot at this very hour, three-quarters of a century ago--
"Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep, And all that mighty heart is lying still!"
But was it all so still? What of the sick in the hospitals, constrained to watch and bear the world's burdens through the long hours of darkness. Oh, if she could only pierce those great walls and stand by the bed-side of the poor girl of whom her thoughts were now so full!
* * * * * *
Even the children's ward in St. Thomas' Hospital looked strange and un-home-like in that dim grey light. It was nearly silent too, except for occasional little moans, coming from little beds. But from one bed there came something besides a moan: a childish voice half whispered the word "Kate."
"Yes, dear," came from the next bed, in a low voice, "what is it?"
"Do you feel better, dear Kate? and would my doll help you to bear the pain?"
Kate smiled gently. "I do feel a little better; and I am getting rather big for a doll. But tell me, what is your name, dear? What am I to call you?"
"My name is Frances," said the little girl.
Kate shuddered, and tried to turn her head away.
"Is anything the matter?" asked the little voice, as Kate did not speak.
"No, nothing," said poor Kate, not very truthfully--and then to change the subject--"Where are your people? Where do you live?"
"I have five, up in heaven, waiting for me," said Frances slowly, "and I live with my aunt. She keeps a baker's shop, and when I am not at school, I clean the floors, and mind the little ones, and I go to bed when the baby does, to keep her quiet. And when the stars come out, I lie there, thinking of my father and our own little ones, and thinking of Jesus Christ, thinking,--thinking,--longing to see His face."
The great voice of the great Westminster clock at this moment told the hour. How solemn it sounded in the stillness; even more solemn than when it speaks out above the roar of London life in the day-time.
"I am going to sleep again now," said the little child. "Good-night, dear Kate; God bless you, and mind you wake me if the pain is bad."