Part III Chapter 12 The Children's Pilgrimage by L. T. Meade
THE WINSEY FROCK
Her voice almost trembling with suppressed excitement, Cecile turned to her little brother.
"Maurice, Miss Smith lives here. She is an English lady. I must see her. You will stay outside with Pericard, Maurice; and Toby will take care of you. Don't go away. Just walk up and down. I shan't be long; and, Maurice, you won't go away?"
"No," answered Maurice, "I won't run away. I will eat some of that nice breakfast without waiting for you, Cecile; for I am hungry, but I won't run away."
Then Maurice took Pericard's hand. Toby wagged his tail knowingly, and Cecile ran up the steps of Miss Smith's house. A young girl, with the round fresh face of old England, answered her modest summons.
"Yes," she said, "Miss Smith was at home." She would inquire if she could see the little girl from London. She invited Cecile to step into the hall; and a moment or two later showed her into a very small, neatly furnished parlor. This small room was quite in English fashion, and bore marks of extreme neatness, joined to extremely slender means.
Cecile stood by the round table in the center of the room. She had now taken her purse from the bosom of her dress, and when Miss Smith entered, she came up to her at once, holding it in her hand.
"If you please," said Cecile, "Jesus the Guide says you will take care of this for me. He sent me to you, and said you would take great, great care of my money. 'Tis all quite right. Will you open the purse, please? 'Tis a Russia-leather purse, and there's forty pounds in it, and about eleven or twelve more, I think. I must have some to take me and Maurice and Toby down south. But Jesus says you will take great care of the rest."
"Child," said Miss Smith. She was a very little woman, with a white, thin, and worn face. She looked nearer fifty than forty. Her hair was scanty and gray. When Cecile offered her the purse she flushed painfully, stepped back a pace or two, and pushed it from her.
"Child," she repeated, "are you mad, or is it Satan is sending you here? Pretty little girl, with the English tongue, do you know that I am starving?"
"Oh!" said Cecile. Her face showed compassion, but she did not attempt to take up her purse. On the contrary, she left it on the table close to Miss Smith, and retreated to the farther side herself.
"Starving means being very, very hungry," said Cecile. "I know what that means, just a little. It is a bad feeling. I am sorry. There is a turkey egg waiting for me outside. I will fetch it for you in a moment. But you are quite wrong in saying it was Satan sent me to you. I don't know anything about Satan. It was the blessed, blessed Jesus the Guide sent me. He came last night in a dream. He told me to go to the Faubourg St. G—— and I should find an English lady, and she would take great care of my Russia-leather purse. It was a true warning, just as Joseph's dream was true. He was warned of God in a dream, just as I was last night."
"And I am the only Englishwoman in the faubourg," said Miss Smith. "I have lived here for ten years now, and I never heard of any other. I teach, or, rather, I did teach English in a Pension de Demoiselles close by, and I have been dismissed. I was thought too old-fashioned. I can't get any more employment, and I had just broken into my last franc piece when you came. I might have done without food, but Molly was so hungry. Molly is going to-morrow, and I shall be alone. Yes, little English girl, you do right to reprove me. I, too, have loved the Lord Jesus. Sit down! Sit down on that chair, and tell me, in my own dear tongue, the story of that purse."
"I am not an English girl," said Cecile; "I am French; I come from the south, from the Pyrenees; but my father brought me to England when I was two years old, and I don't know any French. My father died, and I had a stepmother; and my stepmother died, and when she was dying she gave me a charge. It was a great charge, and it weighs heavily on my heart, and makes me feel very old. My stepmother had a daughter who ran away from her when she married my father. My stepmother thinks she went to France, and got lost in France, and she gave me a purse of money—some to give to Lovedy, and some to spend in looking for her. I feel that Lovedy has gone south, and I am going down south, too, to find her. I, and my little brother, and our dog, and a big, kind boy—we are all going south to find Lovedy. And last night Jesus the Guide came to me in a dream, and told me that my purse was in danger, and He told me to come to you. Satan had nothing at all to say to it. It was Jesus sent me to you."
"I believe you, child," said Miss Smith. "You bring the strangest tale, but I believe you. You bring a purse containing a lot of money to a starving woman. Well, I never was brought so low as not to be honest yet. How much money is in the purse, little girl?"
"There are four ten-pound notes—that makes forty pounds," said Cecile—"that is Lovedy's money; there are about eleven pounds of the money I must spend. You must give me that eleven pounds, please, Miss Smith, and you must keep the forty pounds very, very safely until I come for it, or send for it."
"What is your name, little girl?"
"Cecile D'Albert."
"Well, Cecile, don't you think that if you had a dream about the forty pounds being in danger, that the eleven pounds will be in danger too? Someone must have guessed you had that money, little one, and and if they can't get hold of the forty pounds, they will take the eleven."
Cecile felt herself growing a trifle pale.
"I never thought of that," she said. "I cannot look for Lovedy without a little money. What shall I do, Miss Smith?"
"Let me think," said Miss Smith.
She rested her chin on her hand and one or two puckers came into her brow, and she screwed up her shrewd little mouth. After a moment or two her face brightened.
"Is the money English money, little girl?" she said.
"Yes," answered Cecile; "the captain on board the boat from England did change some, but all the French money is gone now."
"That won't do at all, Cecile; you must have French money. Now, my dear, will you kindly take that eleven pounds out of your purse and reckon it before me?"
Cecile did so—eleven sovereigns lay glittering and tempting on Miss Smith's table.
"There, child, I am going to put on my bonnet and shawl, and I shall take that money out with me, and be back again in a few moments. You wait here, Cecile, I will bring back French money; you watch your purse until I return."
While Miss Smith was out, there came a ring to the door bell, and the little fresh-colored English servant brought in a letter, and laid it beside the purse which Cecile stood near, but did not offer to touch.
In about twenty minutes Miss Smith reappeared. She looked excited, and even cheerful.
"It does me good to help one of the Lord's little ones," she said, "and it does me good to hear the English tongue; except from Molly, I never hear it now, and Molly goes to-morrow. Well, never mind. Now, Cecile, listen to me. Do you see this bag? It is big, and heavy, it is full of your money; twenty-five francs for every sovereign—two hundred and seventy-five francs in all. You could not carry that heavy bag about with you; it would be discovered, and you would be robbed at once.
"But I have hit on a plan. See! I have brought in another parcel—this parcel contains cotton wool. I perceive that little frock you have on has three tucks in it. I am going to unpick those tucks, and line them softly with cotton wool, and lay the francs in the cotton wool. I will do it cleverly, and no one will guess that any money could be hidden in that common little winsey frock. Now, child, you slip it off, and I will put the money in, and I will give you a needle and thread and a nice little sharp scissors, and every night when folks are quite sound asleep, and you are sure no one is looking, you must unpick enough of one of the tucks to take out one franc, or two francs, according as you want them; only be sure you sew the tuck up again. The money will make the frock a trifle heavy, and you must never take it off your back whatever happens until you get to the English girl; but I can hit on no better plan."
"I think it is a lovely, lovely plan," said Cecile, and then she slipped off the little frock, and Miss Smith wrapped her carefully in an old shawl of her own; and the next two hours were spent in skillfully lining the tucks with their precious contents.
When this was finished Miss Smith got a hot iron, and ironed the tucks so skillfully that they looked as flat as they had done before. Some of the money, also, she inserted in the body of the frock, and thus enriched, it was once more put on by Cecile.
"Now, Cecile," said Miss Smith, "I feel conceited, for I don't believe anyone will ever think of looking there for your money; and I am to keep the Russia-leather purse and the forty pounds and they are for an English girl called Lovedy. How shall I know her when she comes, or will you only return to fetch them yourself, little one?"
"I should like that best," said Cecile; "but I might die, or be very ill, and then Lovedy would never get her money. Miss Smith, perhaps you will write something on a little bit of paper, and then give the paper to me, and if I cannot come myself I will give the paper to Lovedy, or somebody else; when you see your own bit of paper again, then you will know that you are to give Lovedy's purse to the person who gives you the paper."
"That is not a bad plan," said Miss Smith; "at least," she added, "I can think of no better. I will write something then for you, Cecile."
She forthwith provided herself with a sheet of paper and a pen and wrote as follows:
"Received this day of Cecile D'Albert the sum of Forty Pounds, in four Bank of England notes, inclosed in a Russia-leather purse. Will return purse and money to the bearer of this paper whoever that person may be.
"So help me God. HANNAH SMITH."
As Hannah Smith added those words, "So help me God," a deep flush came to her pale face and the thin hand that held the pen trembled.
"There, Cecile," she said, "you must keep that little piece of paper even more carefully than the money, for anyone who secured this might claim the money. I will sew it into your frock myself." Which the good soul did; and then the old maid blessed the child, and she went away.
Long after Cecile had left her, Miss Smith sat on by the table—that purse untouched by her side.
"A sudden and sore temptation," she said, at last, aloud. "But it did not last. So help me God, it will never return—SO HELP ME GOD."
Then she fell on her knees and began to pray, and as she prayed she wept.
It was nearly an hour before the lonely Englishwoman rose from her knees. When she did so, she took up the purse to put it by. In doing this, she for the first time noticed the letter which had arrived when she was out. She opened it, read it hastily through. Then Miss Smith, suddenly dropping both purse and letter fell on her knees again.
The letter contained the offer of a much better situation as English teacher than the one she had been deprived of. Thus did God send both the temptation and the deliverance almost simultaneously.