Chapter 30 A Bevy of Girls by L. T. Meade
Found at last
Angela did not quite know how she got out of the house. There was some fuss and some regret on the part of Mrs Johnston, and Mercy very nearly cried, but at last she did get away. She stepped into her little carriage, and drove down the road and went straight as fast as she possibly could to Mrs Hogg’s cottage.
Mrs Hogg was still busy over her washing, but she had come to the wringing stage, and the steam was not quite so thick in the kitchen, and certainly her face, flushed and tired as it was, quite beamed when she saw Angela.
“Dear, dear, Miss Angela, you mustn’t come in. ’Tain’t a fit place to put your dainty, beautiful feet into, ’tain’t really, Miss.”
“Will you come and speak to me here for a minute, Mrs Hogg?” said Angela, and she waited in the tiny porch.
Mrs Hogg came out.
“You have a girl staying with you, haven’t you?”
“Oh, dear me, Miss, so I have, a young girl—I don’t know nothing about her, not even her name, nor a single thing. It was Mary, my daughter, sent her. She’s nothing but a fuss and a worry, and that touchy about her food as never was, turning up her nose at good red herring and at pease pudding, and dumplings, and what more can a poor woman give, I’d like to know?”
“You are sure you don’t know her name?”
“No, Miss. She’s a very queer girl.”
“Is she—you understand those sort of things, Mrs Hogg—is she, in your opinion, a young lady?”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” was Mrs Hogg’s rejoinder, “and to my way o’ thinking—to be frank with you—Miss, she ain’t.”
This was rather a damper to Angela’s hopes, but after a minute she reflected that probably Nesta was a rough specimen of the genus Lady, and that at any rate it was her duty to follow up this clue to the end.
“I should like to see her,” she said. “Where is she now?”
“Oh, Miss, if I thought, even for a single moment, that she was a friend of yourn, I’d treat her very different; but all she did was to stand in the middle of my kitchen on Saturday—”
“On Saturday?” said Angela.
“Yes; Miss, on Saturday, and she says as bold as brass—‘Mary Hogg sent me.’ That was her; but if I’d known—”
“Where is she now?” said Angela:
“I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in all flustered and angry, forsooth, because poor old Mrs Johnston hadn’t been given a stroke of blindness—that seemed to put her out more than anything else. She must have a most malicious mind—that is, according to my way of thinking. Well, anyhow, Miss, I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in, and I told her to take it out and eat it. I don’t know from Adam where she is now.”
“She would go, perhaps, into the country?”
“Well, Miss, perhaps she would. Would you like Ben and Dan to go along and look for her!”
“I wish they would,” said Angela.
Ben and Dan were rotated out of their lairs in the back part of the premises, and were only too charmed to do Angela’s bidding. They flew off, fleet as a pair of little hares, down the shady lanes, looking in vain for Nesta.
But it was Angela herself who at last found her. She had decided not to drive in her carriage, for the sound of wheels, and the rhythmic beat of the ponies’ feet might startle the girl, and if she really meant to hide, might make her hide all the more securely. No, she would walk. So she gathered up her white skirt and walked down the summer lanes. By-and-by she thought she heard a noise which was different from the song of the birds, and the rushing of the waters, and the varied hum of innumerable bees. She stood quite still. It was the sound of distress, it was a sob, and the sob seemed to come from the throat of a girl. Angela stepped very softly. She went over the long grass and came to a tree, and at the foot of that tree lay a girl, her face downward, her whole figure shaken with sobs. Angela laid her hand on her.
“Why, Nesta!” she said. “How silly of Nesta to be afraid.”
The words were so unexpected that Nesta jumped to her feet; then covered her face, then flung herself face downwards again and sobbed more piteously than ever.
“I have found you, Nesta, and nobody is going to be in the least bit angry with you. May I sit by you for a little?”
“You are Miss St. Just—you are the person everybody worships and makes a fuss over. I don’t want you. Go away.”
“I am sorry you don’t want me, but I am not going away. I am going to stay by you; may I?”
Nesta could not refuse. Angela sat down. Ben and Dan peeped their round childish faces over the top of the hedge and saw Angela sitting by Nesta’s side.
“Hooray!” said Ben.
“Hurroa!” said Dan.
Angela turned.
“Go back to your mother, boys. Here is a penny for you, Dan, and another for you, Ben. Go back to your mother, and say that I have found my friend, Miss Nesta Aldworth, and am taking her back to Castle Walworth.”
This was a most awe-inspiring message; the boys, young as they were, understood some of its grand import. They rushed presently into their mother’s cottage.
“You be a little flat, mammy!” they said. “Why, the gel you give red herrings to, and no butter, is a friend of our Miss Angela’s.”
“The Lord forgive me!” said Mrs Hogg, and she forgot all about her washing, and sat down on the first chair she could find, and let her broad toil-worn hands spread themselves out one on each knee.
“The Lord forgive me!” she said at intervals.
Ben was deeply touched. He went and bought some fruit with his penny and pressed it on his mother, but she scarcely seemed to see it.
“To think as I complained to her of robbing me of half my rightful bedclothes,” was her next remark. “May I see myself in my true light in the future. How could I tell? How could I tell?”
But down by the stream a very different scene was being enacted; for Angela, having given her message to the boys, did not say anything more for a long time. Nesta waited for her to speak. At first Nesta was angry at being, as she expressed it, caught. She had not that worshipful attitude towards Angela St. Just that all the other girls of the neighbourhood seemed to feel. She rather despised her, and did not at all wish to be in her company. But then that was because she had never before been in close contact with Angela. But now that Angela gave that remarkable message, that respect-restoring message to the boys, it seemed to Nesta that a healing balm, sweet as honey itself, had been poured over her troubled heart. She could not help liking it; she could not help reflecting over it. A friend of Angela’s, and she was to go back with her to Castle Walworth.
After a little she raised her head again and peeped at her companion. How pretty Angela looked in her white dress, with her perfect little profile, the dark lashes partly shading her cheeks. She was looking down; she was thinking. Her lips were moving. Perhaps she was a real angel—perhaps she was praying. Very much the same sort of feeling as she had inspired in the breast of Penelope Carter, began now to dawn in that of Nesta, and yet Nesta had a far harder and more difficult nature than Penelope. All the same Nesta was touched. She reflected on the difference between herself and this young lady, and yet Angela had spoken of her as her friend. Then suddenly, she did not know why—Nesta touched Angela on the arm. The moment she did this Angela turned. Quick as thought her soft eyes looked full into Nesta’s face.
“Oh, you poor child, you poor child!” she said, and then she swept her arms round the girl and kissed her several times on her cheek.
“Now, Nesta,” she said, “we won’t ask you for any motives. I am not going to put a single question to you, but I want you just to come straight back with me to the Castle. I will tell you after dinner what I am going to do next; but there is no scolding, nothing of that sort, you are just to come back with me.”
“Am I?” said Nesta. “I can’t believe it.”
“You will believe it when you see it. Come, we must be quick, it is getting late.”
She took Nesta’s hand and led her down the road. There was the pretty carriage, there were the ponies with the silver bells; there was the smartly dressed little groom.
“Harold, get up behind,” said Angela, “I am in a great hurry to get back to Castle Walworth.”
Nesta found herself seated beside Angela, and quick as thought, it seemed to her, they were flashing through the summer air, past Mrs Hogg’s cottage, where the boys, Ben and Dan, raised the loudest and heartiest “Hooray!” and “Hurroa!” that Angela had ever heard. The ponies pricked up their ears at the sound, and flew faster than ever, up the village high street, past the station, and up and up, a little slower now, the steep hill where Nesta and Mary Hogg had walked side by side; then through the portcullis, and into the courtyard of the castle.
Then indeed a new shyness came over Nesta. It was like a troubled, hopeless, despairing sinner, so she thought, being led into heaven by an angel.
“I’m not fit—I’m not really,” she said, and she tugged at Angela’s hand, as if she would refuse to go in.
“Oh, you are fit enough,” said Angela, “you are my friend.”
When they got inside, Angela said something to a man who was standing near in livery, and then they went down a passage, where they met no one, up some low steps, along another passage and then a door was flung open, and Angela and Nesta entered. They entered a pretty bedroom, furnished as Nesta had never seen a bedroom before. Angela went up to a girl who was sitting by the window sewing.
“Clements,” she said, “this is my friend. I want you to put her into one of my pretty dresses, so that she may come down to dinner with me. Attend to her and see to everything she wants; she will sleep here to-night. This room leads out of my room, dear,” she said, giving Nesta another smiling glance, and then she left her.
Clements dressed Nesta in white, and she would have thought on another occasion that she had never looked so nice. But she was really past thinking of how she looked, for somehow Angela’s treatment was awaking something different within her, something which had never, even on that night when her mother was so terribly ill, been truly awakened before. She looked humble and very sad when Angela came back to her.
“You look quite sweet,” said Angela, giving her a kiss. “Come along downstairs. By the way, I have sent a telegram to Marcia to tell her that you are all right, and that I am bringing you back to-morrow.”
“Home?” said Nesta.
“Well, to your mother. That will make you happy, won’t it?”
“Mothery!” said Nesta, and there was a lump in her throat.
“I’ll tell you all about it after dinner. I have excellent news for you,” said Angela.
At another time that dinner, eaten in the company of people whom Nesta had never even dreamed about before, might have confused her, but she was past being confused now. She had a curious sensation, however, that the rich and delicately cooked food provided for the guests at Castle Walworth was as little to her taste as fried herrings and pease pudding at Mrs Hogg’s cottage. There was a heavy weight about her heart; she could scarcely raise her eyes to look at any one. Angela seemed to know all that, for after dinner she took her away, and out in the cool garden in the shadows of the summer night she talked to Nesta as no one had ever talked to her before.