Part 10

The silence of midnight hung over all the house--there was darkness in all the rooms save one. Outside, the rain was falling, but without noise; sometimes the wind blew it against the window-panes in little gusts like the light spray of waves, but for the most part it fell in straight, silent sheets upon the soaking garden and paddocks. Now and again the same fitful wind stirred a Japanese sun-blind at the end of the side verandah. It had a broken pulley, and was hauled up slant-wise; when the wind stirred, it moaned and creaked like a live creature.

Meg was sitting on the drawing-room hearthrug, her head in her hands, her fair hair rumpled back from her forehead, her eyes, intensely thoughtful, fixed on the ashes in the grate. Early in the evening a fire had been lighted; for, although it was only May, it had been a chilly day. The fire had gone out, however, and Meg had not noticed this, though she had been staring hard at it most of the time.

Only one gas-jet was alight, and it was turned low--the room had almost an eerie look in the faint light. A great vase of pampas grass and bulrushes loomed tall and ghostly from the corner near the piano; and a wet, dull moon--when the drifting clouds permitted--looked in at a little side window where the blind was not drawn.

Every one in the house was asleep but Meg.

She was sitting up for Nellie.

Pip had gone out before she had found the bird was flown from the cage in which he had locked her. There was a smoking concert at one of the Colleges, and he had left word that he should not be back that night at all--the last boat left so ridiculously early that one of the men had offered him a bed.

So Meg kept her lonely watch with cold feet and low spirits.

She was wondering if it was not very selfish of her to think of being married. Alan had given her a year, under protest,--at the end of that time he would assuredly claim her. No one was less conceited than our sweet, pale Margaret, but she could not help seeing that things would be much worse at Misrule when her place knew her no more. There was little, eager Poppet with her excitable nature and wonderful capacity for feeling everything,--who would listen patiently to all her funny little plans and thoughts, or take an interest in her keen childish troubles and joys? Poor, reclaimed Bunty, whose sullen reserve and brooding fits of depression she was just beginning to understand and sympathise with--if the old days of "John" and carping blame began again, his character would be ruined.

And Pip, who had just left his glad boyhood paths and was stepping so carelessly into the strange, sorrowful ones of manhood, where there were precipices and pitfalls at every turn,--how she longed to be at his elbow again, giving him the right kind of help! He had spurned her away just now, she knew; but soon, she felt certain, she could slip back to him as if nothing had happened, and keep him from worse things, perhaps.

But not if she made fresh ties for herself.

She told some of her fears, half falteringly, to Alan.

"I think you must give me longer," she said.

But he only laughed at her. Men never understand these things.

"I didn't think you were conceited, Meg," he said; "why, Nellie will make a model eldest sister, by-and-by, of course. And I have far more need of you than these children have. And I'm not going to take you to New Zealand or the Islands; we shall live somewhere in Sydney, and you will still be able to keep your eye on Bunty's collar,--that's the greatest grievance, isn't it?"

Meg was trying to imagine beautiful, spoilt Nell as a model eldest sister this evening as she sat on the hearthrug. Why, not one of the young ones would have acted so wrongfully, so utterly foolishly as she had done about these Brownes; the girl had no "balance" naturally, and her great beauty already seemed likely to prove as much of a snare as beauty is popularly supposed to be. She was not even decently educated; the daily governess they had had so long had been a person of weak will, and Nellie in especial had learned or refused to learn much as she pleased. True, she could play and sing fairly well, and write a ladylike hand; but her French was hopeless, her slate pencil had not travelled beyond discount and the rule of three, and her acquaintance with the great lights of English literature was so restricted that, though she knew Shakespeare wrote "Romeo and Juliet," and "Paradise Lost" was composed by one John Milton, nearly all the other names she met conveyed nothing more to her mind than that they were "men at the end of the history book."

Meg's lips grew severe as the night wore on. In truth she did not know what to do in this crisis, she felt so young and powerless. If Nellie insisted on going to Trafalgar House every night of her life, how could she prevent it? She told herself her sister knew this, and was taking advantage of their father's absence in an exceedingly unworthy way.

Through the rain came the half-deadened sound of wheels along the road. Meg stood up, cramped and cold, sick at heart. How she did dread and detest "scenes," and she knew there must be one!

The gate clicked, but no wheels came up the drive. Meg pulled herself together and went out to the front door with a little shiver. She knew exactly how it would all be: Nell would be flushed and beautiful and defiant; she would brush past her and go upstairs in her pretty, white trailing gown, her head very high. She would most probably say "Mind your own business" or "Hold your tongue," for both these phrases were in Miss Nellie's vocabulary of anger. And then she would lock her bedroom door and go to sleep, rebellious as ever.

Her cold hand pulled back the heavy fastening of the door when light footsteps fell on the verandah. She stood there in silence. But oh! such a little woebegone, dripping wet figure was there, with no wrap on at all, and only a bit of soaking lace on her head!

"Oh, Meg!" she said, and sprang into her sister's arms with a hysterical sob of relief. "Oh, Meg, Meg, Meg! oh, my darling old Meg!"

What could Meg do?

Be angry when the wilful, beautiful creature was sobbing so pitifully?

Shake her aside and speak coldly when she was clinging to her with such a passion of love and relief? She kissed the face, wet with rain and tears.

"Come and get your wet things off, dear," she said; "you should have driven up to the door, the drive's so long."

"I was afraid it would wake every one," was Nellie's answer, broken in three places.

Even when Meg had taken off, with her own hands, the poor spoiled white dress, and wet white gloves, and little muddy shoes; when she had made up a crackling fire of wood in the bedroom open fireplace, and brought her own cosy red dressing-gown and a white shawl for array, Nellie still wept heartbrokenly.

She was overwrought with the excitement of her escape, the evening, and her return. And now Meg's tenderness and utter absence of reproach broke her down altogether.

She put her head on the arm of the easy chair, and all her body shook with sobs.

Meg only stroked the wealth of beautiful hair she had let down to dry; she felt it better not to speak at all.

By-and-by she slipped out of the room and stole down to the kitchen. When she returned, Nellie was a little calmer, and even gave a wet look of interest at the tray she carried. There was a little old saucepan on it, a tin of _cafe-au-lait_, two cups, sugar in a saucer, the end of a loaf of bread, and some pineapple jam.

"I couldn't find the butter," she said, half apologetically, as she set down her load on the bed edge.

"Oh, I don't deserve it!" wept Nellie, meaning less the butter than Meg's kindness.

They had to use the water out of the wash-stand bottle, and in the absence of spoons had to stir their cups with the bone ends of their toothbrushes, but the meal gave them both new life and spirits. Meg toasted the bread on the end of her knife and spread a piece thickly with the toothsome jam. She proffered it to Nell with burnt cheeks and a gay little laugh.

"Oh, _Meg_, you are the best girl on earth!" the girl said, flinging her arms impetuously around her sister's neck. "I'm not fit to black your boots! there's nobody just like you, Meg, in all the world. Oh, Meg darling, why can't you make me more like you?"

Meg only kissed her for answer, kissed her with a sweet, moved look on her face. And then Nellie told everything: how she had dropped from the window on to the tanks and scrambled down from there with the help of the creeper, how she had been in time for the brougham they had sent, how utterly miserable she had been all the evening.

She declared their own comparative poverty seemed beautiful against the Brownes' wealth and glaring vulgarity.

Meg saw all the girl's sensitive nature had suffered, and uttered not a word of rebuke; she even said they would keep the affair to themselves, and not tell Pip.

But she dropped one little word in season before she went to her own room to bed.

The dressing-gown suited the girl's exquisite young beauty marvellously; all the time they had talked Meg could not help admiring.

When they got up she drew her quietly to the long glass of the dressing-table.

Oh the wonderful picture it showed! the rich, warm colouring of the graceful gown, the young sweet face with its dewy eyes and tremulous lips and pink flush, and all the soft great waves of riotous hair one golden splendour to her waist!

"Look!" said Meg.

The girl looked at her image shyly, almost shamedly, but with a certain little glad quickening at her heart.

"Oh, _Nellie_! how good you ought to be!" whispered the elder girl, and kissed her and slipped away.

*CHAPTER XIX.*

*HEADACHE AND HEARTACHE.*

"Look where the healing waters run, And strive and strain to be good again."

Poor little Nell,--it was almost pitiful to see how good she tried to be after her escapade. There was absolutely nothing she would not have done for Meg. She begged to be allowed to help in the housekeeping, offered to take the darning of Bunty's socks and Peter's terrible stockings as her own particular work, and sternly refrained from looking in her glass when it was not necessary for the straight set of her collar or respectable appearance of her hair.

She consulted Meg as to the best study she could take up--she said she felt ashamed to be so dreadfully ignorant.

"Why, I haven't read anything better than Jessie Fothergill and Rhoda Broughton this year," she said, in a tone of stern surprise at herself.

Meg suggested the "Essays of Elia," "The Professor at the Breakfast Table," "Sesame and Lilies," Lives of various poets.

"You can go then gradually to something deeper," she said. "I'm afraid you might be discouraged if you started on anything more solid just yet."

But Nellie's zeal was too tremendous for half measures.

During the morning of the day after the dinner party, Meg had occasion to go into the nursery for something or other during Miss Monson's hours, and with difficulty restrained a smile.

Nellie always studied--or pretended to--at a rickety-legged draught-table in the window. Her working materials hitherto had consisted of a chased silver pen that looked too elegant to write with, an ornamental inkstand with violet and red ink, a box of chocolates, a novel in brown paper covers, "Le Chien," highly dilapidated, and "Samson Agonistes," which she was supposed to be studying in detail.

This morning all was changed. There was black ink in the bottles, the silver pen was invisible, and a plain penny red one occupied its place on the stag's head. No trace of chocolates, no covered fiction at all. Instead, a pile of books selected from the study simply because they were the most solid looking and driest on the shelves. The choice had occupied Nellie for almost an hour; if any she took down had spaced matter, light-looking conversations, or broken-up paragraphs she instantly replaced them. She had finally selected and carried to the nursery, to Miss Monson's incredulous surprise, the following six: "Sartor Resartus," "The Wealth of Nations," "Marcus Aurelius," "Mazzini's Essays," the "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," and Johnson's "Rasselas."

When Meg came in she was struggling with Carlyle, fingers at ears to keep him quite apart from the object lesson on Ants which Miss Monson was delivering to Poppet and Peter. In the afternoon she practised for two consecutive hours, not waltzes and scraps from the "Mikado" and "Gondoliers" and "Paul Jones" as usual, but Plaidy's technical studies and Czerny's Velocity Exercises and a fugue from Bach.

At night she took out a quantity of red wool that she found in a box, and began to crochet a petticoat for an old woman who lived in a tumble-down bark hut near the river, and had the reputation of being mother of two bushrangers who had been shot, sister to a famous murderer, and daughter of one of the early Botany Bay convicts.

But of course such an abnormal state of goodness could not be expected to continue uninterruptedly, at any rate in its early days. In less than a fortnight the silver pen made its reappearance, and violet ink crept back into one of the bottles. The crochet needle was slipped out of the sixth row of the petticoat and made to work fleecy white wool up into that pretty style of head wrap known as a "fascinator."

"Oh, I didn't do anything so very dreadful, after all," she said to herself, with the blunted memory of ten days. "Dear old Meg is always a little inclined to make mountains out of molehills."

At first there had been a little real fright mixed with the thought of the dinner-party. Five days after it was over, she was in at the chemist's spending eighteenpence of her allowance on a sweet little bottle of scent for Meg.

And one of the grooms from Trafalgar House came in with a prescription.

"The old lady's pretty bad," he said, in answer to a question of the chemist that Nell had not caught, "and two more of the maids are down."

Nellie lingered a few minutes, counted her change several times, examined the nail and tooth-brushes displayed in a glass case, and read an advertisement setting forth the merits of somebody's pills.

The man said he would call back for the medicine in half an hour, and departed. Then she went back to the counter.

"Is it Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne who is ill?" she asked, remembering with a pang the poor old woman's wistful "I just wish you was my little girl!"

"Yes, she's down with scarlet-fever--several of the servants too," he said, and went to the gas to melt some sealing-wax.

The girl went home with a grave face. Apart from regret at the old lady's illness, there was the fear that she herself might have caught it. She went straight to her room and examined her tongue anxiously at the glass; then she held one wrist gravely with a finger and thumb, and asked herself if she felt feverish.

But the pulse was calm, the tongue healthily red,--she laughed at herself.

"I never felt better in my life," she said aloud. After some deliberation she decided she would not tell Meg. "She'd only worry, and prepare herself for my immediate funeral," she thought. "I should be all over red spots by now if I had got it."

So that is how it happened, when ten days had gone and she still felt exuberantly well, that the silver pen returned and the fascinator was commenced. One could not wear sackcloth for ever.

She even borrowed "Comin' thro' the Rye" and "Joan" from a girl-friend; and "Rasselas" and "Sartor Resartus" slipped down behind the table and were forgotten.

But she had intended all the time to consult Alan. He had been away for almost a fortnight in Victoria, or she would have asked him before.

The afternoon he returned, and as soon as she could get him away from Meg, she asked him if he would come down into the garden with her, as she wanted to ask him something very particularly.

The young doctor laughed, and put himself very much at her service.

"I hope it's not about the style of hats in Melbourne," he said in mock alarm, as they went down the path; "for I culpably forgot to notice. If it's only sleeves, now, I can tell you--they're up to the ears, and a yard and a half wide."

"It's about the state of my health," she said sententiously,--"I wish to consult you _professionally_, Dr. Courtney!"

He put on a sympathetic look.

"The heart, I suppose?" he said.

But Nell stopped short in the summer-house.

"Don't be stupid!" she said. "Look here, Alan, have I, or have I not, got scarlet-fever?"

He could not help laughing. It seemed so absurd for a fine girl--the picture of health--to ask such a question.

"Your skin is cool--your pulse normal--your tongue fit for a health advertisement. If you have got it you're managing to conceal it very well," he said. "You might give me the recipe for my other patients."

"I was talking to some one who had scarlet-fever just after," Nell returned,--"that's all."

There was no fun in Alan's face now.

"When?" he said sharply.

"Oh, nearly a fortnight ago!"

"You've not got it, then," he said. "Did you change your things after?--take every precaution? How did it happen?"

She told him everything, blushing hotly at the surprise in his face when he heard she had been to Trafalgar House.

He looked exceedingly serious over it.

"There's no knowing what may be the end of it," he said, a frown of anxiety on his brow. "How could you do such a thing, Nellie? You might have known Meg's judgment would be good."

"But you say I haven't got it," the girl answered, resenting the elder-brotherly tone of reproof, "so there's no need for any more fuss."

"How do I know you did not bring it home with you and give it to one of the others?" he said shortly.

Nell looked aghast.

"Why, I couldn't do that, could I?" she said, with startled eyes. "I never dreamt any one but I could have got it."

"You ought not to have been allowed with the others," he said. "However, as things are, I daresay no harm has been done. No one has been complaining of headache or sore throat, have they?"

Nellie thought hard for a minute or two. She reviewed each member of the family rapidly in succession, and tried to remember if any one's appetite had failed at any meal lately, that was always the great test of health at Misrule.

"No," she said at last. Then she caught her breath.

"Essie had a headache this morning," she faltered. "Oh, but she fell down and bumped her head, so that accounts, and she ate four jam tarts yesterday when no one was in the room; that's the cause of hers, Alan, isn't it?--oh, you can see it is."

"I'll look at her," he said. "Does Meg know anything about all this?"

"I didn't like to worry her," Nellie answered, and followed him up the path like a criminal found out in blackest iniquity. She had never dreamed she was endangering the others. Poppet met them on the second path.

"Afternoon tea's ready, and Meg says aren't you two ever coming in. No, I don't want any, there's only gingerbread."

Alan felt her pulse, and asked to see her tongue.

"There's something alarming in a little girl who doesn't like gingerbread," he said; but there was a professional look in his eye.

"She never eats gingerbread," Nell exclaimed, almost indignant with him for having fears when the child looked so rosy.

"Poppet's all right," he said in a low tone, as they went on; and Nellie could have cried in her relief.

"Peter next," she said.

They went down into the paddock, where Peter was engaged in chasing a fat duck from end to end, without a thought in his mind of being cruel to it. He was hot, certainly, but that was the exertion of running and shouting.

"Is your throat sore?" Nellie burst out, before they fairly reached him.

"I thould think I can thout if I like," he said in an injured tone, taking her anxious query for sarcasm.

Alan caught him by the back of his sailor coat.

"Mad, quite mad," he said--"only lunatics rush about like this. Hold him while we find out the symptoms, Nellie, and see whether we'll have to extract his teeth, or put his legs in plaster-of-Paris."

"He's all right too, I think," he said, when the released boy sprang away again after the duck, that was panting in a corner with one anxious eye on its enemy.

"Bunty's _beautifully_ well," Nell said eagerly, as they went up to the house again. "You should just see him eat, Alan. And Pip is splendid, so is Meg, as you can see."

Meg was standing on the front verandah, a troubled look in her eyes.

"Oh, there you are!" she said.

"Here we are," said Nellie. She drooped her eyes guiltily. "Is the tea cold?"

But Meg did not answer her.

"I wish you'd come and look at Essie, Alan," she said. "She's been eating pastry, and it's upset her, poor little thing. I don't like her looks."

"Does her head ache?" Nellie asked with dry lips.

"She says her head aches, her throat aches, and her legs ache,--everything aches," was Meg's answer. "Esther always gives her aconite if she's out of sorts, Alan. I gave her five drops this morning: was that right?"

"Quite," he said; "I'll go up and look at her now."

He went up the stairs behind Meg, a very grave look in his eyes.

And Nellie followed with a face as colourless as the great white roses she had stuck in her belt so lightheartedly half an hour ago.

*CHAPTER XX.*

*MY LITTLE ONE DAUGHTER.*

"Misery,--oh! Misery, This world is all too wide for thee!"

The very next day came a letter from India.

"Oh, this beautiful, beautiful country!" wrote Esther. "Oh, the colouring, the life in everything I I cannot tell you how _new_, painfully new, Australia seems compared with it. Imagine a little perky, pretty cottage beside a grand old castle, whose walls bear the mark of centuries. India is the castle. Or a nice, clean, healthy child in pinafores, very fond of play, and more than a little inclined to be spoilt, beside an old, old seer with a grand head grown white with wisdom, and wide eyes dim with staring at eternity. Australia is the nice clean child.

"It is the age of the place that sobers me. I feel I ought to go about on tiptoe and speak in a whisper half the time. We are at Ajmere just now: from the window here I can see a white temple on the peak of wild mountains. It is called Taraghur, or the abode of the stars, and the Mohammedans make pilgrimages to it. Yesterday we rode (I wear a white linen habit and a helmet, girls) to Pookur, twelve miles away. It is a spot considered sacred by the Hindoos; indeed, it is one of the most sacred places in India. There is a lake lying in a basin among the hills, with its banks studded with buildings, old temples, and gardens, and in the centre a ruined fane I am afraid to say how many hundreds and hundreds of years old.