Hollowmell Part 8

"I think," he remarked, quietly. "That I might give you a _little_ further information on the subject, since you seem so very much interested in it. Minnie was along with Charlie on Sat.u.r.day night, on his interesting errand, and also Miss Chartres."

Archie gave a low whistle of surprise, and stared at Seymour, as though expecting him to say more, but if such was his expectation, he was doomed to disappointment, for Seymour having delivered in these few words the full extent of his information on the topic under discussion, closed his lips and turned his attention to his book again.

Minnie looked distressed, but Archie did not notice it in his astonishment and eagerness to know more about this mysterious proceeding.

"Is it true, Minnie?" he demanded. "Seymour, who told you that?--I declare I don't believe a word of it."

"Edward Laurence told me," replied Seymour, without looking up. "His mother was down there at Hollowmell yesterday, and came home full of it.

I did not know before to-day that I had a saint for a sister; and as for not believing it, if you don't, just look at her and you soon will."

And sure enough her face was dyed with a hot flush that mounted even as he spoke to the roots of her hair, though he could only have been instinctively aware of her confusion, for his head was still bent over his book.

Archie looked from the one to the other in open-mouthed astonishment for a minute or two, and then it dawned upon him that Minnie looked, to say the least of it, uncomfortable, and stifling his curiosity, which was by this time greater than ever, as best he could, suddenly relapsed into silence.

Soon afterwards Seymour left the room, and Minnie resolved to seize this opportunity of telling Archie the real facts of the case.

"It was so kind of you," she commenced rather confusedly, "to help me as you did just now. I could not tell you about it while Seymour was here, for you know very well how he laughs at religion, and says it is all done for show, and that there is no heart in it at all. I don't mean that I should have told you if Seymour had not been here, for I wouldn't have mentioned it if he had not--"

"Never mind about that," interrupted Archie, impatiently, "proceed with the story--or," he hastily interrupted himself, "not if it bothers you to talk about it. I don't mind much, you know."

Minnie smiled, knowing well how much he did mind, and a.s.sured him that it would not bother her at all to tell him, as she knew he would listen patiently, and not ridicule anything she might say.

She then proceeded to tell him in as few words as possible, what had taken place at Hollowmell on Sat.u.r.day night, and how it came about that Mabel happened to be there at such a late hour.

"Why," exclaimed Archie, when he had listened with an interest, which surprised himself as entirely as it surprised Minnie; for though of an unusually curious disposition, he invariably found his interest flag after drinking in the first few details of anything. "Why, if you aren't a party of complete 'bricks--' Seymour called you a saint, but I say a 'brick,' and if you aren't content with that, I don't know what _will_ content you." And he stared at her with an expression of intense approval that was irresistible.

"But what I want to know is this," he continued in a tone of confidential deliberation, when her amus.e.m.e.nt had subsided. "However did you manage to get Charlie into such a pie? He and Seymour go together in these affairs; I should have considered Ned a more suitable subject for a purpose of that kind."

"O, I hadn't time to think, I suppose, I was in too great a hurry to get away--and besides I wasn't sure whether Ned was in or not. I'm glad now it was Charlie, for I don't think he'll look on these things with the same eyes now, as he used to, after what he saw of their value and necessity when nothing else could avail."

"Ah, well, I don't know much about it myself, but I suppose we must attend to them some time, though there's no particular hurry at present for any of _us_ that I can see."

"Oh, but there is!" cried Minnie anxiously, "don't you see that the end may come any day, and that though we are young, we haven't any guarantee that we will live even one day more--there are so many ways we may die, and just consider that one of them might overtake us within an hour."

"O, yes, of course, it _might_," was his light reply, "but that's very unlikely. It's a rather dull sort of subject this--I think I'll run round to Jack Durnard's for a map I lent him yesterday."

He walked out unconcernedly, and Minnie made no effort to stop him, knowing how useless further remonstrance on this point would be.

Next day Mabel was allowed to come to school, greatly to Minnie's delight, and was not worse on that account contrary to her aunt's confident expectation, indeed the life and activity with which she found herself surrounded there, and into which she was ere long sucked, seemed to raise and disperse the cloud of depression which had enveloped her, so that in a few days she was her old self again.

The examination in which Mona and Minnie were to take part, was now drawing near, and both were very hard at work in consequence. Minnie, who never did anything by halves, wrought with all her energy, and denied herself the pleasure of being at Hollowmell as often as usual, that she might keep herself in right working order.

Not that she hoped to stand first on the list, for that hope she had abandoned when she resolved to keep back her Latin translation, but there were candidates from other schools in the neighbourhood, and the honour of the school was as much a consideration with her as any individual honour could be.

They were both too busy just at that time to indulge in any of their usual skirmishes, even if they had been particularly inclined, which, singularly enough, neither happened to be. Mona, to do her justice, had not, since the day on which she had been so ignominiously defeated about the Hollowmell scheme, troubled Minnie with any of her ordinary most provoking remarks; she held aloof, it is true, in a way which many considered to bode no good to their future peace when she would once more be at liberty to resume her attacks.

In this, however, they were mistaken, for matters remained "in statu quo" after the examination was over, and the school had fallen into its usual routine again.

There was a good deal of speculation as to which would stand highest, but as it would be some time before the result could be communicated, these speculations were soon allowed to die away, and be replaced by objects of more immediate interest.

About this time the girls were making preparations for a grand floral demonstration which was to take place at the end of June, for their work had been going on now for four months. It was still almost a month till then, but the hearts of these youthful missionaries were already growing troubled as they contemplated the ambitious nature of their undertaking, when an incident occurred which, not in itself having any connection with their project, yet grew into a solution of their difficulty, or rather out of it grew the solution.

They had thought of asking the parents and friends of the boys and girls to be present and share in the festivity, but found that their limited s.p.a.ce forbade the carrying into effect of this amiable project. They were very loath to abandon it, however, as at that time there was great discontent among the miners, and indeed a strike was threatened.

They were not vain enough to imagine that the result of this scheme would be to avert the impending catastrophe, but they had such faith in the soothing effect of good-natured social intercourse with them, and a display of real and unaffected interest in them and all concerning them, that they hoped at least to lessen in some degree the spirit of disaffection that pervaded the district.

Some one suggested that they should hire a hall which stood at that end of the town, erected for temperance purposes but seldom used, and this suggestion, being favourably received, would have been carried out at once, but for the unfortunate reason that the hall was engaged for every Sat.u.r.day up to that time and several weeks beyond it for meetings of the miners.

There was no other place at all suitable to be had, and so they found their good intentions frustrated at the very outset.

"I am afraid we shall have to give it up," sighed Bessie Raynor, one of the most energetic and indomitable among them in the pursuit of anything on which she had set her heart; and on the carrying out of this scheme she _had_ set her heart, as its success involved a private one of her own.

Her father was also a coal-master like Minnie's, but his works were in quite a different part of the country so that they were inaccessible to her at present. They had a house there, though, just outside the little mining village, and there they usually removed during the Summer months.

Fired by Minnie's example, Bessie had formed the resolution of initiating something of the same kind among her father's work-people when she should be among them again in a few weeks' time at most; accordingly, she was anxious to acquire as much experience as possible in the different sections of the work set on foot by the "Hollowmell Mission," and their varied results.

The case was felt to be hopeless indeed when Bessie gave in, and as nothing further could be done, and no fresh idea was promulgated, the meeting separated with the intention of giving the matter a careful re-consideration in case any solution might present itself hitherto unthought of.

Minnie was in very low spirits indeed, for her father was looking more care-worn and troubled every day, and was even now away attending one of those meetings from which he usually returned only to shut himself up in his study without seeing or speaking to any one.

Mabel was not out that day, she was naturally rather delicate, and had drooped very much of late, indeed, she had not been right since the night of Mrs. Malone's death, and this added a new cause for anxiety to Minnie's already troubled mind.

She walked slowly home trying to think of a way of bringing their plan to a successful issue, and so doing something, at least, towards the diffusion of a better spirit among the people. She could not bear the thought of being idle while there was a vague possibility of the slightest improvement being made in the present aspect of affairs. But her brain seemed willing to turn to anything but that, and she found herself as far off as ever from any settlement by the time she reached home.

Her father had not yet returned, and the boys were out, so she sat down in the window to await their arrival. She had fallen into a sort of dream, and was performing all sorts of impossible feats before an admiring audience, composed for the most part of miners, but among whom she could distinguish the faces of her father, Mabel, Charlie, and a certain Mr. Laurence, the identical good-looking Methodist minister to whom Mona Cameron had on one occasion alluded.

Strangely enough, or rather, not strangely at all, for what impossible thing is not possible in a dream, Mona was her fellow-actor in this vision, and the two were in the midst of some wonderful acrobatic display, when they happened to touch each other and the result was a sudden "phiz," not a moral "phiz," such as the pupils of Miss Marsden's school were in the habit of witnessing, but a real, or rather what seemed to her a real chemical "phiz" in which both were involved, and without much surprise she beheld herself seethe and bubble "just like lemonade," as she afterwards described it, and finally vanish into viewless vapour.

Just at that moment a sharp report in her ear caused her to start and wake, and there, sure enough, was her father in the act of drawing the cork of a lemonade bottle, while Archie poured out the contents of another, which must by some mysterious means or other have got into her dream.

"Well, sleepyhead!" exclaimed Archie, "did you condescend to wake at last? Do you know how long you have been sleeping?"

Minnie looked round in half-awakened surprise.

The curtains were drawn, the gas-jets lit, and the supper on the table, nearly finished too.

"Why did you allow me to sleep so long?" asked Minnie in rather an injured tone.

"As to that," replied Archie, "I'd have wakened you fast enough--you know my usual accommodating spirit--but papa would not hear of it."

"And really you did look so uncommonly tired," added Ned, "that we all thought it a charity to let you go on. I hope it was a pleasant dream--you seemed to do a great deal of talking during it."

Minnie laughed, and taking her seat at the table proceeded to entertain them with an account of it, and its absurd termination, which was received with shouts of laughter, and Minnie was glad to observe that her father joined them in their merriment without the appearance of force or strain, which she had noticed on similar occasions during the last few weeks.

"But what put the miners in your head?" He enquired curiously, when they were at last sober again.

"I suppose it must have been with hearing so much about them for some time back, and we were talking about them down in the Hollow this afternoon. I knew you were trying to satisfy them, and I was bothering myself because I could do nothing when things were going wrong."

"Well, if all that was on your mind, I hardly wonder at your dreaming of miners," remarked Mr. Kimberly smiling.