Kitty Trenire Part 26

The story of that night's search she told later--of their long, slow drive over the bleak roads in the teeth of a high wind and a driving rain; of their close examination of every yard of the way, one walking while the other drove; and of their hopelessness when they looked at the gateways and fields, into any of which Anna might have turned, and the lanes down which she might have wandered. But of her own feelings she could not speak--the awful anxiety and remorse; the sense of responsibility and blameworthiness that filled her; her remembrance of Anna's sacrifice for Dan the night she saved his life; her dread of what they might see or hear--those were feelings too deep for words.

So, too, was her agony of joy and relief when at last, almost by a miracle, they came on her lying in a linhay down a lane they had very nearly overlooked in the darkness.

How she had wandered there no one would ever know, and Anna could never tell. She must have doubled back when she found she had taken the wrong road, and then, in her fright and confusion, have gone round, and up and down, until she had lost herself far more effectually than if she had tried to. That she had met no one to ask her way of was not wonderful on such a night and in a neighbourhood where there were only half a dozen cottages altogether, and at long distances apart.

She had recognized Kitty and Jabez when they roused her, but in her relief had had a fit of hysterics which frightened them both nearly out of their wits, and then had fainted.

Poor Kitty did her best to keep calm, and she and Jabez carried Anna to the carriage, and there, wrapped in all the rugs and shawls they could muster, she lay in Kitty's arms while Jabez drove quickly home.

Their shortest and best way now was the road they had travelled so happily in the morning, so once again Kitty had a dim glimpse of the tors, standing up so lonely and desolate in the black night, lashed by the rain and swept by the wind, but she turned her eyes away, half shuddering. They were nearly home when they met Dan crawling along, hopeless and dead beat. He was soaked to the skin, his feet were galled and raw with walking in wet boots, but, worst of all, his search had been fruitless. Crawling painfully, miserably homewards, with a mind full of the fate that might have overtaken Anna--Anna, who had saved his life--was it any wonder that he broke down and cried when, on hearing wheels, and turning to ask for a lift, he recognized first old Prue, then Jabez and Kitty, and, best of all, Anna, and knew that his search was ended?

CHAPTER XVI.

BANISHED.

Kitty was to be sent away to school. That was what that unlucky day had done for Kitty. The fiat had gone forth, and there was no escape.

Aunt Pike had been very frightened indeed when she was summoned home, and learned all about Anna's Helbarrow Tors experience, and found her seriously ill with pneumonia as a result of it. She was very angry and very indignant, and angry fright, or fright and anger combined, make the worst form of anger as a rule.

"Kitty was responsible, and there could not possibly be any excuse for her leaving the spot without her cousin," declared Mrs. Pike.

"Kitty knew that there were many ways amongst which she might get lost, and how lonely it was, and she and Dan should have gone in search of poor Anna, and not have left the place until they had found her or heard for certain where she was. The idea of coming all the way home without her, and with never a thought or a care as to what had become of her!

It was almost incredible!"

"I did think. I did care," pleaded Kitty. "Of course I thought she was ahead of us. I never dreamed that she could have lost her way, or of course I shouldn't have come home without looking for her."

"Then you should have dreamed, or have taken the trouble to find out.

In any case, you should not have left the spot without her."

"But we really thought she was ahead of us," repeated Kitty earnestly, "and we hurried on to pick her up."

"_How_ could you overtake her or pick her up, when you were hurrying as fast as you could away from her, leaving her alone, poor child, to wander about that dreadful, dreadful place, in that awful storm in the dead of night?" demanded Aunt Pike angrily.

"But--" began Kitty, then realized the hopelessness of trying to explain, and said no more.

"For the future I shall always feel," said Aunt Pike severely, "that I not only cannot trust you, Katherine, but that I can never know what mischief you may be leading the younger ones into. I am sure they would not be so wild if they hadn't you as a ringleader."

Kitty's cheeks flamed with indignation. _She_ could not be trusted!

_She_ led the others into mischief! Her eyes darkened with anger at the injustice, for all the trouble had been caused by Anna deciding, in her pig-headed way, that she knew a short cut home, and would take it without waiting for the others and the donkey. She had thought she would get home first and be able to laugh at them and Mokus.

She herself had admitted as much.

Kitty's mind travelled back over that night search--the cold, the wet, the horror of it, her own exhaustion and Dan's; then she came back again suddenly to the present, and Aunt Pike's voice saying,--

"You know, Katherine, I have had to overlook more than one serious piece of ill-behaviour on your part since I have been here. Of course I put down much to the lawless, careless way in which you grew up, but, at the same time, I must admit that, after that very unpleasant episode with Lettice Kitson, I have never felt really quite easy in allowing Anna to be much with you. I could not avoid feeling that you were having anything but a good influence over her, and but for your poor father's sake--"

Kitty's cheeks were white enough now, and her eyes were very wide and full of indignation as she met her aunt's stern gaze, but there was no fear or shame in them. She opened her lips, but before a word escaped them she closed them again, hesitated, and then walked quickly away.

And the next thing she knew was that she was to be sent away, and when she heard it she thought her heart would break indeed.

Her father, though most reluctantly, had agreed to the plan, because he could see no prospect of peace or happiness for her at home. He very often in those days sighed deeply from a heavy heart, for his home was very different from what he had hoped it would be. It was true that things were more orderly, but the old careless joyousness, the muddle and confusion, seemed now vastly preferable.

Aunt Pike had never approved of Kitty. Her careless, dreamy nature was a constant offence in her eyes; her sudden impulses, her want of concentration, her idle moods, when she sat just thinking and thinking and doing nothing, irritated Mrs. Pike beyond endurance. They were as opposite to each other in tastes and natures as any two persons could be, and neither could understand or make allowance for the other.

And Dr. Trenire, seeing all this, and how they irritated and annoyed each other, saw how bad it was, too, for Kitty's character, and at last consented, though very, very reluctantly, to Mrs. Pike's strongly-urged proposals that Kitty should be sent to a boarding-school.

Poor Kitty! If ever there was in this world one poor little mortal more stricken with home-sickness than another, that poor little mortal was Kitty. She loved every inch of the house and garden, of Gorlay, and of her county, and every person and animal who made up her home and her home life--loved all, too, with such an intensity that she felt it would be utterly impossible to live day after day away from them.

It was a relief to her to hear that the school she was to go to was no farther off than Plymouth, but beyond that she took no interest in it, for the school was of Mrs. Pike's selecting, and wicked Kitty detested it before she even knew anything about it, and made up her mind to go on detesting it, no matter what it turned out to be. To her it was simply a prison, and she could not and would not try to love her jailers.

She felt, too, a conviction that her aunt would have told Miss Pidsley, the headmistress, all the story of the suspicion which had rested on her, and told it from her own point of view, of course.

There was one good outcome of the resentment Kitty bore her aunt for "getting her sent away," as she put it--it made her determine not to let Mrs. Pike see how much she felt it, and so helped her to bear up bravely. Helped her, that is, to bear up by day, but oh the nights!

Oh, those long, miserable nights of heart-break and homesickness, when the pain was so intense as almost to drive her to appeal on her knees to Aunt Pike to let her stay at home, to promise abjectly to be and do all that she could wish. And there were those other terrible moments, too, when misery nearly drove her to tell the truth about Anna and Lettice.

Those were, perhaps, the hardest impulses of all to fight, for she knew that but to speak would mean, probably, that she would be considered fit to remain in her home, and Anna it would be who would be sent away.

All her life after Kitty was thankful that she had had the strength given her to resist this temptation, but it was a very real one at the time. There was to be no delay in sending her away. She was to go at the end of the Christmas holidays, and active preparations for her outfit began at once. To Betty this was most enthralling, and largely made up for the painful part, but Kitty took no interest in it whatever.

Not even the fact of having a new Inverness and umbrella, and four new dresses all at once, not to speak of gloves, and hats, and shoes, and a number of other things, could rouse her to any sense of pleasure.

She was very sorry later, and wept many a bitter tear over the new blotter her father bought her, and the nice m.u.f.f and boa he gave her.

When it was too late, she could never see them without remembering the delight with which he unwrapped them and gave them to her, the expectant look in his kind eyes of the pleasure they would bring to her, and of her own coldness, her unsmilingness, the indifference with which she took them and laid them down with scarcely a glance, yet all the while her heart was breaking, breaking with her love for him and all he did for her. How could she care what she wore, or did, or used, if she was exiled from him!

Then came the day when Mrs. Pike took her to her school and left her.

It was a wet, stormy day, and Kitty sat looking through the streaming windows at the rain-swept country with a heart as stormy. But though everything looked old and worn, and as unbeautiful as the day itself, she gained some consolation from the sight. "The next time I see them,"

she thought, gazing wistfully at the trees and houses, the bridges and fields, "I shall be going home! home! home!"

"Yes, but thirteen long weeks must elapse first," came the next thought.

"But what are thirteen weeks?" said the worn-looking objects cheeringly. "Nothing! We have seen years pa.s.s by, and thirteen weeks are but so many moments, flying already."

Then at last they reached their station, and their journey was over; but in all the years to come, never, never again would Kitty Trenire pa.s.s the long, ugly rows of squalid backs of houses just outside the station, and dull depressing streets, never again would she enter that station itself, without living through once more and tasting again the misery, the strangeness, the forlornness which filled her heart that afternoon.

She might come in the height of happiness, in the company of those she loved best, with hope and joy before and behind her, but never could the sight of it all, the smells, and the sounds, fail to bring back to Kitty memories of that supremely miserable day, and through any happiness make her taste again for a moment the forlornness, the black misery which swamped her as she first stood on that draughty, dingy platform.

There was a smart tussle with the porter over the getting out of Kitty's luggage, for Aunt Pike was one of those unfortunate persons who never fail to come to words with porter or cabman, who, in fact, rub every one the wrong way to start with by taking for granted that they are trying to s.h.i.+rk their duties and to cheat her.

Then came the inevitable tussle with the cabman as to the fare, during which Kitty glanced about her at the people on the platform, picking out with special interest those boys and girls who looked as though they also were going to school, and expending on them a great amount of pity which was probably in some cases quite wasted.

At last came the summons to "get in," and Kitty got into the musty old cab beside her aunt, and they were started on the last stage of their journey through rain-washed busy streets, where the people were hurrying along under umbrellas, or in omnibuses and cabs. Now and then a cab laden with luggage would lumber past them on its way to the station, and Kitty's mind would follow the people inside it through a whole long chapter of imaginary happenings until something else pa.s.sed and distracted her thoughts.

By-and-by they left the streets, and came to a quiet suburb, where road after road, lined on either side with houses exactly like each other, stretched in depressing monotony. To Kitty it looked the very acme of correct, neat, yet hateful propriety, and her thoughts flew back longingly to the dear old irregular wind-swept street of Gorlay, which was to her then the most lovable and lovely spot on the face of the earth. At last, when she was almost tired of speculating on the people who lived in the houses they were pa.s.sing, and of pitying them for being condemned to such a fate, the jolting cab drew up before a corner house, one of the primmest of all the houses in the dullest of all the roads they had pa.s.sed that afternoon, and Kitty saw a s.h.i.+ning bra.s.s plate on the rails at the foot of the tiny patch of trim garden, and on the bra.s.s plate "Miss Pidsley."

That was all. And this was the place that was to be her home! It was quite a small school to which she had been banished--a small private one where a few girls "who needed particular attention and training received the individual care they needed," as Aunt Pike carefully read out from the prospectus, dealing poor Kitty thus the last and most crus.h.i.+ng insult.

If the outside of the house had been unlike home and Gorlay, the inside was even more so; the extreme neatness, the absolute spotlessness of everything, the bareness, the high, square, ugly rooms, each and all weighed on Kitty's spirits with a fresh load of depression. At the thought of being left there for months together with not a face about her that she knew, or a person who cared for her, she felt positively sick with misery. She even dreaded the moment when Aunt Pike should depart. But the moment soon came, and with a peck at Kitty's cheek, and a last request that she would make the most of the excellent opportunities for improvement now opening out before her, and a desire that she would _try_ to be a good girl. Aunt Pike left her, and Kitty gazed after her with eyes aching with the tears she would not shed.

She pictured her journeying home to Gorlay, saw her driving up through the street, drawing up before the old house, the door opening and the light streaming out, and Betty and Tony--and then the tears came, whether she would or no, and drowned every thought and sight and sound but that of her own misery.

No. 127 Laburnum Road was under the joint partners.h.i.+p of two ladies, Miss Pidsley and Miss Hammond. Miss Pidsley was the chief partner, and took the lead. She interviewed the parents, managed the house, the meals, and almost everything, while Miss Hammond's duties lay more especially with the girls, their lessons and games.

Before ever Kitty went to the school she had decided that she could not like Miss Pidsley. She declared that she knew exactly what she would be like. She would be cold, and stern, and hateful, or Aunt Pike would not have taken to her; and when Miss Pidsley came into the room to receive them, she knew that to some extent she was right. Her new mistress welcomed them--at least she shook hands with them--and she smiled--at least she half closed her eyes in a weary fas.h.i.+on, and widened her lips, but there was no heartiness or gladness in it. But while Kitty felt the chilliness of it, she could not help sympathizing with Miss Pidsley.

To her it would have been wonderful if any one had been able to smile in such a house as that.