The Long Vacation Part 46

"I do believe we could" cried Dolores. "If I could only get a note to her! And this red ulster! I wonder if Miss Hackett would help!"

Dolores waited for Miss Hackett, who had lingered behind, and told her as much of the facts as was expedient. There was a spice of romance in the Hackett soul, and the idea of a poor girl, a G. F. S. maiden, in the hands of these cruel and unscrupulous people was so dreadful that she was actually persuaded to bethink herself of means of a.s.sistance.

"Where did you meet the girl?" she said. Dolores told her the street.

"Ah! depend upon it the things were with Mrs. Crachett, who I know has done was.h.i.+ng for people about on fair-days, when they can't do it themselves. She has a daughter in my G. F. S. cla.s.s; I wonder if we could get any help from her."

It was a very odd device for a respectable a.s.sociate and member of G. F.

S. to undertake, but if ever the end might justify the means it was on the present occasion. Fortune favoured them, for Melinda Crachett was alone in the house, ironing out some pale pink garments.

"Are you was.h.i.+ng for those people on the common, Melinda?" asked Miss Hackett.

"Yes, Miss Hackett. They want them by seven o'clock to-night very particular, and they promised me a seat to see the performance, miss, if I brought them in good time, and I wondered, miss, if you would object."

"Only tell me, Melinda, whom you saw."

"I saw the lady herself, ma'am, the old lady, when I took the things."

"No young person?"

"Yes, ma'am. It was a very nice young lady indeed that brought me down this pink tunic, because it got stained last night, and she said her orders was to promise me a ticket if it came in time; but, oh my! ma'am, she looked as if she wanted to tell me not to come."

"Poor girl! She is a G. F. S. member, Melinda, and I do believe you would be doing a very good deed if you could help us to get her away from those people."

Melinda's eyes grew round with eagerness. She had no doubts respecting what Miss Hackett advised her to do, and there was nothing for it but to take the risk. Then and there Dolores sat down and pencilled a note, directing Ludmilla to put on the red ulster after her performance, if possible, when people were going away, and slip out among them, joining Melinda, who would convey her to Miss Hackett's. This was safer than for Gerald to be nearer, since he was liable to be recognized. Still it was a desperate risk, and Dolores had great doubts whether she should ever see her red Maori again.

So in intense anxiety the two waited in Miss Hackett's parlour, where the good lady left them, as she said, to attend to her accounts, but really with an inkling or more of the state of affairs between them.

Each had heard from New Zealand, and knew that Maurice Mohun was suspending his consent till he had heard farther from home, both as to Gerald's character and prospects, and there was no such absolute refusal, even in view of his overthrow of the young man's position, as to make it inc.u.mbent on them to break off intercourse. Colonial habits modified opinion, and to know that the loss was neither the youth's own fault nor that of his father, would make the acceptance a question of only prudence, provided his personal character were satisfactory. Thus they felt free to hold themselves engaged, though Gerald had further to tell that his letters from Messina purported that an old priest had been traced out who had married the impresario, Giovanni Benista, a native of Piedmont, to Zoraya Prebel, Hungarian, in the year 1859, when ecclesiastical marriages were still valid without the civil ceremony.

"Another step in my descent," said Gerald. "Still, it does not prove whether this first husband was alive. No; and Piedmont, though a small country, is a wide field in which to seek one who may have cut all connection with it. However, these undaunted people of mine are resolved to pursue their quest, and, as perhaps you have heard, are invited to stay at Rocca Marina for the purpose."

"I should think that was a good measure; Mr. White gets quarry-men from all the country round, and would be able to find out about the villages."

"But how unlikely it is that one of these wanderers would have kept up intercourse with his family! They may do their best to satisfy the general conscience, but I see no end to it."

"And a more immediate question--what are we to do with your sister if she escapes to-night? Shall I take her to Mrs. Henderson?"

"She would not be safe there. No, I must carry her straight to America, the only way to choke off pursuit."

"You! Your term!"

"Never mind that. I shall write to the Warden pleading urgent private business. I have enough in hand for our pa.s.sage, and the 'Censor' will take my articles and give me an introduction. I shall be able to keep myself and her. I have a real longing to see Fiddler's Ranch."

"But can you rough it?" asked Dolores, anxiously looking at his delicate girlish complexion and slight figure.

"Oh yes! I was born to it. I know what it was when Fiddler's Ranch was far from the civilization of Violinia, as they call it now. I don't mean to make a secret of it, and grieve your heart or Cherie's. She has had enough of that, but I must make the plunge to save my sister, and if things come round it will be all the better to have some practical knowledge of the ma.s.ses and the social problems by living among them."

"Oh that I could make the experiment with you!"

"You will be my inspiration and encouragement, and come to me in due time."

He came round to her, and she let him give her his first kiss.

"G.o.d will help us," she said reverently; "it is the cause of uprightness and deliverance from cruel bondage."

The plans had been settled; Gerald had arranged with a cab which was to take him and his sister to a house five miles out in the country, of which Miss Hackett had given the name, so that they might seem to have been spending the evening with her. Thence it was but a step to the station of a different railway from that which went through Silverton, and they would go by the mail train to London, where Ludmilla could be deposited at Mrs. Grinstead's house at Brompton, where Martha could provide her with an outfit, while Gerald saw the editor of the 'Censor', got some money from the bank, telegraphed to Oxford for his baggage, and made ready to start the next morning for Liverpool, whither he had telegraphed to secure a second-cla.s.s pa.s.sage to New York for G. F. Wood and Lydia Wood, the names which he meant to be called by.

"The first name I knew," he said, "the name of Tom Wood, is far more real to me or my father than Edgar Underwood ever could be."

He promised that Dolores should have a telegram at Clipstone by the time she reached it, for she had to give her second lecture the next day, and was to return afterwards. All this had been discussed over and over again, and there had been many quakings and declarations that the scheme had failed, and that neither girl could have had courage, nor perhaps adroitness, and that the poor prisoner had been re-captured. Gerald had made more than one expedition into the little garden to listen, and had filled the house with cold air before he returned, sat down in a resigned fas.h.i.+on, and declared--

"It is all up! That comes of trusting to fools of girls."

"Hark!"

He sprang up and out into the vestibule. Miss Hackett opened the door into the back pa.s.sage. There stood the "red mantle" and Melinda Crachett. Gerald took the trembling figure in his arms with a brotherly kiss.

"My little sister," he said, "look to me," then gave her to Dolores, who led her into the drawing-room, and put her into an arm-chair.

She could hardly stand, but tried to jump up as Miss Hackett entered.

"No, no, my poor child," she said, "sit still! Rest. Were you followed?"

"No; I don't think they had missed me."

She was so breathless that Miss Hackett would have given her a gla.s.s of wine, but she shook her head,

"Oh no, thank you! I've kept the pledge."

The tea-things were there, waiting for her arrival. Dolores would have helped her take off the red garment, but she shrank from it. She had only her gaudy theatrical dress beneath. How was she to go to London in it? However, Miss Hackett devised that she should borrow the little maid-servant's clothes, and Gerald undertook to send them back when Martha should have fitted her out at Brompton. The theatrical costume Miss Hackett would return by a messenger without implicating Melinda Crachett. They took the girl up-stairs to effect the change, and restore her as much as they could, and she came down with her rouge washed off, and very pale, but looking like herself, as, poor thing, she always did look more or less frightened, and now with tears about her eyelids, tears that broke forth as Gerald went up to her, took her by the hand, and said--

"Brighten up, little sister; you have given yourself to me, and I must take care of you now."

"Ah, I do beg your pardon, but my poor mother--I didn't know--"

"You don't want to go back?"

"Oh no, no," and she shuddered again; "but I am sorry for her. She has such a hard master, and she used to be good to me."

Miss Hackett had come opportunely to make her drink some tea, and then made both take food enough to sustain them through the night journey.

Then, and afterwards, they gathered what had been Ludmilla's sad little story. Her father, in spite of his marriage, which was according to the lax notions of German Protestants, had been a fairly respectable man, very fond of his little daughter, and exceedingly careful of her, though even as a tiny child he had made her useful, trained her to singing and dancing, and brought her forward as a charming little fairy, when it was all play to her.

"Oh, we were so happy in those days," she said tearfully.

When he died it was with an injunction to his wife not to bring up Ludmilla to the stage now that he was not there to take care of her.

With the means he had left she had set up her shop at Rockquay, and though she had never been an affectionate mother, Ludmilla had been fairly happy, and had been a favourite with Mr. Flight and the school authorities, and had been thoroughly imbued with their spirit. A change had, however, come over her mother ever since an expedition to Avoncester, when she had met O'Leary. She had probably always contrived a certain amount of illicit trade in tobacco and spirits by means of the sailors in the foreign traders who put into the little harbour of Rockquay; but her daughter was scarcely cognizant of this, and would not have understood the evil if she had done so, nor did it affect her life.

O'Leary had, however, been the clown in Mr. Schnetterling's troupe, and had become partner with Jellicoe. The sight of him revived all Zoraya's Bohemian inclinations, and on his side he knew her to have still great capabilities, and recollected enough of her little daughter to be sure that she would be a valuable possession. Moreover, Mrs. Schnetterling had carried her contraband traffic a little too far, especially where the boys of the preparatory school were concerned. She began to fear the gauger and the policeman, and she had consented to marry O'Leary at the Avoncester register office, meaning to keep the matter a secret until she could wind up her affairs at Rockquay. Even her daughter was kept in ignorance.

Two occurrences had, however, precipitated matters. One was the stir that Clement had made about the school-boys' festival, ending in the fine being imposed; the other, the discovery that the graceful, well-endowed young esquire was the child who had been left to probable beggary with a dying father twenty years previously.