The Long Vacation

CHAPTER XXVII. — THE RED MANTLE

     And deemed themselves a shameful part
     Of pageant which they cursed in heart.—SCOTT.

Dolores was waiting till the Christmas term to go to her college. The fame of her volcanic lectures had reached Avoncester, and she was entreated to repeat them at the High School there. The Mouse-trap had naturally been sent to Miss Vincent, the former governess, who had become head-mistress of the High School at Silverton, and she wrote an urgent request that her pupils might have the advantage of the lectures. Would Dolores come and give her course there, and stay a few days with her, reviving old times?

Dolores consented, being always glad of an opportunity of trying her wings, though she had not the pleasantest recollections connected with Silverton, but she would be really glad to see Miss Vincent, who had been always kind to her. So she travelled up to Silverton, and found the head-mistress living in cheerful rooms, with another of the teachers in the same house, all boarding together, but with separate sitting-rooms.

Dolores’ first walk was to see Miss Hackett. It was quite startling to find the good old lady looking exactly the same as when she had come to luncheon at Silverfold, and arranged for G. F. S., and weakly stood up for her sister nine years previously, those years which seemed ages long ago to the maiden who had made the round of the world since, while the lady had only lived in her Casement Cottage, and done almost the same things day by day.

There was one exception, however, Constance had married a union doctor in the neighbourhood. She came into Silverton to see her old acquaintance, and looked older and more commonplace than Dolores could have thought possible, and her talk was no longer of books and romances, but of smoking chimneys, cross landlords, and troublesome cooks, and the wicked neglects of her vicar’s and her squire’s wife. As Dolores walked back to Silverton, she heard drums and trumpets, and was nearly swept away by a rushing stream of little boys and girls. Then came before her an elephant, with ornamental housing and howdah, and a train of cars, meant to be very fine, but way-worn and battered, with white and piebald steeds, and gaudy tinselly drivers, and dames in scarlet and blue, much needing a washing, distributing coloured sheets about the grand performance to take place that night at eight o’clock, of the Sepoy’s Death Song and the Bleeding Bride.

Miss Vincent had asked Miss Hackett to supper, and prepared herself and her fellow-teacher, Miss Calton, for a pleasant evening of talk, but to her great surprise, Dolores expressed her intention of going to the performance at the circus.

“My dear,” said Miss Vincent, “this is a very low affair—not Sanger’s, nor anything so respectable. They have been here before, and the lodging-house people went and were quite shocked.”

“Yes,” said Dolores, “but that is all the more reason I want to go. There is a girl with them in whom we are very much interested. She was kidnapped from Rockquay at the time this circus was there. At least I am almost sure it is the same, and I must see if she is there.”

“But if she is you cannot do anything.”

“Yes, I can; I can let her brother know. It must be done, Miss Vincent. I have promised, and it is of fearful consequence.”

“Should you know her?”

“Oh yes. I have often talked to her in Mrs. Henderson’s class. I could not mistake her.”

Miss Hackett was so much horrified at the notion of a G. F. S. “business girl” being in bondage to a circus, that she gallantly volunteered to go with Miss Mohun, and Miss Vincent could only consent.

The place of the circus was an open piece of ground lying between Silverton and Silverfold, and thither they betook themselves—Miss Hackett in an old bonnet and waterproof that might have belonged to any woman, and Dolores wearing a certain crimson ulster, which she had bought in Auckland for her homeward voyage, and which her cousins had chosen to dub as “the Maori.” After a good deal of jostling and much scent of beer and bad tobacco they achieved an entrance, and sat upon a hard bench, half stifled with the odours, to which were added those of human and equine nature and of paraffin. As to the performance, Dolores was too much absorbed in looking out for Ludmilla, together with the fear that Miss Hackett might either faint or grow desperate, and come away, to attend much to it; and she only was aware that there was a general scurrying, in which the horses and the elephant took their part; and that men and scantily dressed females put themselves in unnatural positions; that there was a firing of pistols and singing of vulgar songs, and finally the hero and heroine made their bows on the elephant’s back.

Miss Hackett wanted to depart before the Bleeding Bride came on, but Dolores entreated her to stay, and she heroically endured a little longer. This seemed, consciously or not, to be a parody of the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, but of course it began with an abduction on horseback and a wild chase, in which even the elephant did his part, and plenty more firing. Then the future bride came on, supposed to be hawking, during which pastime she sang a song standing upright on horseback, and the faithless Lord Thomas appeared and courted her with the most remarkable antics of himself and his piebald steed.

The forsaken Annet consoled herself with careering about, taking a last leave of her beloved steed—a mangy-looking pony—and performing various freaks with it, then singing a truculent song of revenge, in pursuance of which she hid herself to await the bridal procession. And as the bride came on, among her attendants Dolores detected unmistakably those eyes of Gerald’s! She squeezed Miss Hackett’s hand, and saw little more of the final catastrophe. Somehow the bride was stabbed, and fell screaming, while the fair Annet executed a war dance, but what became of her was uncertain. All Dolores knew was, that Ludmilla was there! She had recognized not only the eyes, but the air and figure.

When they got free of the crowd, which was a great distress to poor Miss Hackett, Dolores said—

“Yes, it is that poor girl! She must be saved!”

“How? What can you do?”

“I shall telegraph to her brother. You will help me, Miss Hackett?”

“But—what—who is her brother?” said Miss Hackett, expecting to hear he was a carpenter perhaps, or at least a clerk.

“Mr. Underwood of Vale Leston—Gerald Underwood,” answered Dolores. “His father made an unfortunate marriage with a singer. She really is his half-sister, and I promised to do all I could to help him to find her and save her. He is at Oxford. I shall telegraph to him the first thing to-morrow.”

There was nothing in this to object to, and Miss Hackett would not be persuaded not to see her to the door of Miss Vincent’s lodgings, though lengthening her own walk—alone, a thing more terrible to her old-fashioned mind than to that of her companion.

Dolores wrote her telegram—

“Dolores Mohun, Valentia, Silverton, to Gerald Underwood, Trinity College, Oxford. Ludmilla here. Circus. Come.”

She sent it with the more confidence that she had received a letter from her father with a sort of conditional consent to her engagement to Gerald, so that she could, if needful, avow herself betrothed to him; though her usual reticence made her unwilling to put the matter forward in the present condition of affairs. She went out to the post-office at the first moment when she could hope to find the telegraph office at work, and just as she had turned from it, she met a girl in a dark, long, ill-fitting jacket and black hat, with a basket in her hand.

“Lydia!” exclaimed Dolores, using the old Rockquay name.

“Miss Dolores!” she cried.

“Yes, yes. You are here! I saw you last night.”

“Me! Me! Oh, I am ashamed that you did. Don’t tell Mr. Flight.”

There were tears starting to her eyes.

“Can I do anything for you?”

“No—no. Oh, if you could! But they have apprenticed me.”

“Who have?”

“My mother and Mr. O’Leary.”

“Are they here?”

“Yes. They wanted money—apprenticed me to this Jellicoe! I must make haste. They sent me out to take something to the wash, and buy some fresh butter. They must not guess that I have met any one.”

“I will walk with you. I have been telegraphing to your brother that I have found you.”

“Oh, he was so good to me! And Mr. Flight, I was so grieved to fail him. They made me get up and dress in the night, and before I knew what I was about I was on the quay—carried out to the ship. I had no paper—no means of writing; I was watched. And now it is too dreadful! Oh, Miss Dolores! if Mrs. Henderson could see the cruel positions they try to force on me, the ways they handle me—they hurt so; and what is worse, no modest girl could bear the way they go on, and want me to do the same. I could when I was little, but I am stiffer now, and oh! ashamed. If I can’t—they starve me—yes, and beat me, and hurt me with their things. It is bondage like the Israelites, and I don’t want to get to like it, as they say I shall, for then—then there are those terrible songs to be sung, and that shocking dress to be shown off in. My mother will not help. She says it is what she went through, and all have to do, and that I shall soon leave off minding; but oh, I often think I had rather die than grow like—like Miss Bellamour. I hope I shall (they often frighten me with that horse), only somehow I can’t wish to be killed at the moment, and try to save myself. And once I thought I would let myself fall, rather than go on with it, but I thought it would be wicked, and I couldn’t. But I have prayed to God to help me and spare me; and now He has heard. And will my brother be able—or will he choose to help me?”

“I am sure of it, my poor dear girl. He wishes nothing more.”

“Please turn this way. They must not see me speak to any one.”

“One word more. How long is the circus to be here?”

“We never know; it depends on the receipts—may go to-morrow. Oh, there—”

She hurried on without another word, and Dolores slowly returned to Miss Vincent’s lodgings. Her lecture was to be given at three o’clock, but she knew that she should have to be shown the school and class-rooms in the forenoon. Gerald, as she calculated the trains, might arrive either by half-past twelve or a quarter past four.

Nervously she endured her survey of the school, replying to the comments as if in a dream, and hurrying it over, so as must have vexed those who expected her to be interested. She dashed off to the station, and reached it just in time to see the train come in. Was it—yes, it was Gerald who sprang out and came towards her.

“Dolores! My gallant Dolores! You have found her!”

“Yes, but in cruel slavery—apprenticed.”

“That can be upset. Her mother—is she here?”

“Yes, and O’Leary. They sold her, apprenticed her, and these people use her brutally. She told me this morning. No, I don’t think you can get at her now.”

“I will see her mother at any rate. I may be able to buy her off. Where shall I find you?”

Dolores told him, but advised him to meet her at Miss Hackett’s, whom she thought more able to help, and more willing than Miss Vincent, in case he was able to bring Ludmilla away with him.

“Have you heard from my father?”

“Yes—what I expected.”

“But it will make no difference in the long run.”

“Dearest, do I not trust your brave words? From Trieste I hear that the endeavour of Benista to recover his wife is proved. There’s one step of the chain. Is it dragging us down, or setting us free?”

“Free—free from the perplexities of property,” cried Dolores. “Free to carve out a life.”

“Certainly I have wished I was a younger son. Only if it could have come in some other way!”

Dolores had to go to luncheon at Miss Vincent’s, and then to deliver her lecture. It was well that she had given it so often as almost to know it by heart, for the volcano of anxiety was surging high within her.

As she went out she saw Gerald waiting for her, and his whole mien spoke of failure.

“Failed! Yes,” he said. “The poor child is regularly bound to that Jellicoe, the master of the concern, for twenty-five pounds, the fine that my uncle brought on the mother, as O’Leary said with a grin, and she is still under sixteen.”

“Is there no hope till then?”

“He and O’Leary declare there would be breach of contract if she left them even then. I don’t know whether they are right, but any amount of mischief might be done before her birthday. They talk of sending her to Belgium to be trained, and that is fatal.”

“Can’t she be bought off?”

“Of course I tried, but I can’t raise more than seventy pounds at the utmost just now.”

“I could help. I have twenty-three pounds. I could give up my term.”

“No use. They know that I shall not be of age till January, besides the other matter. I assured them that however that might end, my uncles would honour any order I might give for the sake of rescuing her, but they laughed the idea to scorn. O’Leary had the impudence to intimate, however, that if I chose to accept the terms expressed, ‘his wife might be amenable.’”

“They are?”

“Five hundred for evidence on the previous marriage in my favour; but I am past believing a word that she says, at least under O’Leary’s dictation. She might produce a forgery. So I told him that my uncle was investigating the matter with the consul in Sicily; and the intolerable brutes sneered more than over at the idea of the question being in the hands of the interested party, when they could upset that meddling parson in a moment.”

“Can nothing be done?”

“I thought of asking one of your old ladies whether there is a lawyer or Prevention of Cruelty man who could tell me whether the agreement holds, but I am afraid she is too old. You saw no mark of ill-usage?”

“Oh no. They would be too cunning.”

“If we could help her to escape what a lark it would be!”

“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 assistance.

“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 washing for people about on fair-days, when they can’t do it themselves. She has a daughter in my G. F. S. class; I wonder if we could get any help from her.”

It was a very odd device for a respectable associate 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 washing 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 incumbent 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 passage, 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 masses 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.

“God 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-class passage 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 fashion, 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 passage. 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 glass 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.

Jellicoe, the principal owner of the circus, advanced the money for the fine, on condition of the girl and her mother becoming attached to the circus; and the object of O’Leary was to make as much profit as possible out of the mystery that hung over the young heir of Vale Leston. His refusal to attend to the claim on him, together with spite at his uncle, as having brought about the prosecution, and to Mr. Flight for hesitating to remunerate the girl for the performance that was to have been free; perhaps too certain debts and difficulties, all conspired to occasion the midnight flitting in such a manner as to prevent the circus from being pursued.

Thenceforth poor Lida’s life had been hopeless misery, with all her womanly and religious instincts outraged, and the probability of worse in future. Jellicoe, his wife, and O’Leary had no pity, and her mother very little, and no principle; and she had no hope, except that release might come by some crippling accident. Workhouse or hospital would be deliverance, since thence she could write to Mrs. Henderson.

She shook and trembled still lest she should be pursued, though Miss Hackett assured her that this was the last place to be suspected, and it was not easy to make her eat. Presently Gerald stood ready to take her to the cab.

Dolores came to the gate with them. There was only space for a fervent embrace and “God bless you!” and then she stood watching as they went away into the night.