A quiver of the eyelids only showed the child felt the tones. "Give it to me," she repeated imperatively.
The next moment the watch and chain, wrapped in a clean pocket-handkerchief, were in Meg's grasp, and she had departed. Mr. Standish, stooping under the shelving ceiling on a level with the strip of window, looked out and watched the wet umbrella making its way under the flaring gas and over the muddy street. When it disappeared he turned and looked about him. There was a sincerity, a poverty, a purity about the tiny chamber that affected him with a wholesome shock. Over the little white bed hung the fashion-plate that he had mended, in the pasteboard frame he had manufactured for it. A bit of scarlet ribbon fastened it to a nail, with an elaborate bow. Above it, as a pious Catholic might have crossed about some saint's image branches of blessed palms, so Meg had placed sprigs of lavender, that delicately scented the room. On the peg behind the door hung the little Sunday frock, turned inside out. On a table, under a clean pocket-handkerchief, were placed three books that he had given her—a volume of ballads, "Stories from the History of England," a gaudily illustrated shilling copy of "Cinderella." Also under the pocket-handkerchief was a bundle of paper, tied with scarlet ribbon, that proved to be some of his articles neatly cut out. A black clay pipe of his, which Meg had mended, was put up like a little Indian idol over the table. The little room, so spotlessly clean, and so characteristic in all its details, was distinctly Meg's room, telling of that mystic love for her mother, and of her solitary friendship.
Mr. Standish was not tired of waiting when Meg appeared, her hand clutching the bodice of her dress.
"Here, I've got the money," she said, as carefully pulling out the handkerchief and opening it she displayed a roll covered with paper; "twenty-five pounds—count; and here's the ticket. Don't lose it on any account. Perhaps I'd better keep it for you."
"Twenty-five pounds, Meg!" said Mr. Standish.
"He wanted to give me twenty. I said 'No, twenty-five.' He was smiling when he said twenty. Those men always smile when they want to cheat you," said Meg, with a nod of retrospective observation. "He gave me twenty-five pounds at last, though. Count."
The child cut short the words of thankfulness that rose to Mr. Standish's lips.
"Go," she said imperatively, taking him by the hand and leading him to the door; "pay the man and get him off."
A few minutes later, with great glee, Meg watched the departure of the bailiff; she thought with pleasure as he made his way downstairs that he seemed a little stiff, as if he had got rheumatism. After the hall door had slammed behind the representative of the law she stood hesitating. Soon her diffident feet slowly brought her to Mr. Standish's threshold. She pushed the door softly open. He was sitting by the table, his face covered with his hands. He looked up as she entered.
"He's gone," said Meg, nodding. "Aren't you glad?"
"You have done me a great service, Meg. How can I thank you for it?" said the young man, rising and taking the child's two hands in his.
"Don't thank me—not at all," said Meg with ardor, looking up into his face. "Just promise never to lend your money again—never."
"No—never again!" replied Mr. Standish, shaking his head. He led the child in and sat down, still keeping her hand in his. "How did you guess that man was a bailiff?"
"Oh," said Meg, with the scornful brevity of wide experience in her voice, "I knew him by his sleeky ways. I've watched them at their dodges. They're up to almost anything."
Mr. Standish laughed out loud; but the laugh suddenly fell as he thought of all that knowledge implied. He said gently, after a pause:
"I thought the little friend who used to sit by my fireside had left me. I missed you, Meg."
"You were tipsy that night," the child answered, with a quaver in her voice that did not take from its severity.
"You punished me hard, Meg. Don't you know I had to drink so many healths. There was the queen's health to drink, and I should have been a disloyal subject if I had not drunk that; and there was the lord mayor's health, I should have been a bad citizen if I had not drunk that; then there were the directors' healths, and there were one another's healths." As Meg remained unmollified, he went on, "Meg, I will tell you a secret. I was not so bad as I looked that night—I put it on a little for your benefit."
"That was wicked of you," said Meg with spirit.
"It was," agreed Mr. Standish candidly. "Come, Meg, won't you forgive me if I promise——"
"You promised before," interrupted the child.
A desire to rehabilitate himself in the child's eyes seized Mr. Standish. He felt a touch of awe of that creature regarding him with steady gravity, and he found himself pleading his cause before her as if she were a little chief justice.
"If he got himself into difficulties for his friends, they were often to be pitied; so many in this world were born weak, like spiritual cripples who needed a helping hand."
"No use to them when they get it," said Meg. "They're always in a muddle."
Mr. Standish once more repressed an inclination to laugh at the child's precocious wisdom. He admitted there was truth in what she said. Once, three years ago, just before coming here, he had given all he had to a friend, and it had been of no use.
"Did you lend him much money?" asked Meg.
"Yes; he was in the greatest distress. I loved him, Meg. I would do it again if he came to me. If he was reckless, he was so handsome and so jolly. He came and told me all about his trouble. His father was very stern; he would not see him or help him. My friend wanted three hundred pounds. It was all the money that I had."
"And you gave it?" she said, and stopped.
He nodded.
"Did he never pay you back?" she faltered.
"Never, Meg. It is a sad story. There was some disgrace, and he died."
She did not speak; the fate of the stranger seemed to affect her but little.
"You gave him all your money?" she repeated, and again she paused; then she put out her hand and stroked his head, with a look of tender and ineffable admiration.
CHAPTER IV.
FAREWELL.
There followed a time of perfect happiness for Meg, during which, for a few weeks, she sat by her friend's fireside, watched him at his writing, listened to his reading, ruled over the meals that he took at home, and questioned him concerning those that he took abroad.
On a memorable afternoon they celebrated together, with much pomp, over a banquet of jam puffs and lemonade at a confectioner's shop in the Tottenham Court Road, the redemption from pawn of his father's gold watch and chain. Meg again played the part of Deus ex machina in the transaction, and personally paid the ransom of the precious pledge. In honor of the event, Mr. Standish presented her with a copy of Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," with "Meg" printed in gold letters on the cover. The sight of her name thus honored overcame the child. He explained to her, when she appeared inclined to rebuke him for extravagance that the political squib, the jokes which used to have a depressing effect upon her, had brought him the unlooked-for cash.
Shortly after this festivity Mr. Standish's movements once more became erratic. Meg could discover no signs, however, of the symptoms that she feared. He seemed mysteriously elated and full of business, yet he wrote less. He admitted when she questioned him that something was absorbing his time, but his answers were evasive concerning the nature of this new interest. He promised that she would know what it was shortly.
One day Mr. Standish had a long talk with Mrs. Browne over a bottle of sherry, after which he went out and returned late. The landlady was maudlinly effusive over Meg that evening, puzzled the child with her ramblingly affectionate talk, and filled her with vague apprehension. Mr. Standish's answers to Meg's queries were also unsatisfactory.
A few days later a dandified elderly gentleman wearing a frilled shirt visited the journalist. As he was leaving Mr. Standish called Meg in, and introduced her to the visitor as "the child I spoke to you about." The elderly gentleman looked at her peeringly, with his head on one side. He chuckled, patted her cheek, and told her if she were a good girl something wonderful might happen to her. The announcement, far from cheering Meg, deepened the foreboding in her heart.
That evening she softly entered Mr. Standish's room. A confused dread seized her when she saw the floor littered with books and papers lying about in parcels. The journalist was sitting by the fire, abstractedly poking the embers.
Meg touched his elbow. "Are you not going to write to-night?" she asked in a low voice.
"Not to-night, Meg. I am going to talk to you instead."
She remained motionless by his chair, questioning him with her glance only.
Still he did not speak. After a moment or two he said abruptly, "Meg would you like to go to school?"
"I go to school every day. What do you mean?" she asked, looking at him with quick suspicion.
"I mean quite another sort of school—one kept by ladies, and where your schoolfellows would be ladies; where you would make lots of nice friends; and where you will sleep at night instead of——"
"You mean go away from here—quite?" interrupted Meg, growing pale to the lips.
"Yes," he answered.
"What do you want me to go away for?" she demanded, a flash of anger in her eyes.
"Because I do not like to leave you with no one but Mrs. Browne to look after you; and I am going away."
"When?" she asked tremulously.
"To-morrow."
She gave an exclamation that sounded like a cry.
He drew her to him.
"Listen, Meg. It will make me very unhappy if I think you are fretting when I am gone. I want my little friend to be brave; she must not fret."
"Where are you going?" she faltered, mastering her emotion.
"I am going to travel and write accounts of what I see, for a newspaper that will pay me very well. It is a great lift for me, Meg, and I want you to have your lift also."
She did not speak, but kept her eyes fixed upon his face. He then gently and guardedly told her that he had got from Mrs. Browne the name of the family solicitor who paid for her keep. He had gone to see him to speak of Meg. The elderly gentleman with the frilled shirt, who had patted her on the head, was the solicitor in question. His name was Mr. Fullbloom. The young man did not tell the child that he had found out how shamefully misapplied by the landlady was the allowance she received, nor did he tell her that he had made in writing a vivid statement of her forlorn and neglected condition in the boarding-house.
He laid as light stress as he could on the refusal of the solicitor to give up the name of the child's mysterious patron.
"Some one takes a great interest in you, Meg," he said in conclusion; "and Mr. Fullbloom came to assure me from that person that you would now be placed in a first-rate school, where you will have plenty of comrades of your own age, teachers who will care for you; and you will grow up to be a little lady, like your mother in the picture."
Meg listened cold and silent to the end.
"Won't you be glad to go to school to be educated?"
"No," she answered, stiffening herself and jerking out her words, relapsing in her excitement into her old pronunciation. "I will hate going. I don't want to be edicated. What do I want to be edicated for? And if you cared for me you would not wish me to go away, you would not."
Tears stood in her eyes, but anger kept them from falling.
"Do you wish to remain here when I am gone Meg?" he asked.
"No," she replied faintly, as if her heart failed her at the suggestion. "Why can't I go where you go? Who'll light your fire for you, who'll look after you? You want somebody to look after you."
"I know it, Meg, and no one would look after me as you would."
"I'd not want much to eat or drink," Meg went on, alive to the economical side of the question; "and once you said you felt lonely without me."
"So I will, Meg," he answered, drawing her nearer and keeping his arm about her. "And it is just because I care for you that I want you to go to school, that I want you to learn all that can be taught you. I want your little hands to grow soft, that now are hard with housework for me."
The child's face worked, but she controlled the rising sob.
"Listen, Meg. It may be in five years, it may be in six years, it may be when you are a tall, accomplished young girl of eighteen, I shall come to the school where you are, and—" He paused.
"Take me home to be your housekeeper?" said Meg.
A laugh drifted to his face.
"Better than that. We will be friends, close friends, such friends as never were, if you go to this school," he said.
"You promise?" said the child, holding him with her eyes.
He nodded. "I promise, Meg."
"Then I will go to that school," she said submissively, putting her hand into his.
Until eight o'clock, when she usually said good-night, Meg helped Mr. Standish to pack up. She asked to be allowed to remain up a little longer, but he refused the petition.
"It is not good-by, Meg; it is good-night only," he said cheerily, stroking her head; then stooping, he kissed the child's forehead. "God bless you, little Meg!"
Meg did not go to bed. She made no pretense to undress. She lay on the floor of her attic all night, letting the solitude of the coming years pass in anticipation over her heart. In the gray of the morning some furtive sounds reached her ears, and she sprang up listening. A few moments after, Mr. Standish, portmanteau in hand, emerged from his room. A gray little figure stood waiting for him in the dim dawn, as it had waited for him once before. It was Meg, pressing something to her heart.
"My child, I had hoped, I had planned to avoid this for you," he said. "I hoped you would be asleep."
The child's lips moved, but she did not speak. Abruptly stretching out the hand that she had held pressed against her bosom she put something into his. It was the fashion-plate that had been to her as her mother's portrait.
"Is that for me, Meg?" he asked.
She nodded.
"I'll keep it safe. I'll give it back to you, Meg, when we meet again," he replied, tenderly folding the battered print and laying it inside his pocket-book.
The child kept a stern silence.
"We'll meet again, Meg; I promise you that. Poor little Meg!" he said feelingly. "It is hard for you; but I will write to you—I will write. No one will ever care for me as you have cared."
He kissed her, and as still she preserved the stern silence of repressed grief he turned quickly away. As he ran down he looked back and saw the child watching him, with her face thrust through the banisters.
He waved his hand to her and smiled. The next moment the hall door clapped below, and from above there came the sound of sobbing in the darkness.
CHAPTER V.
A MYSTERIOUS VISIT.
A few days after, in the early afternoon, as Meg was sitting on the floor in her attic with the bundle of articles given her by Mr. Standish spread out on her lap, the books he had given her on the floor around her, the door opened and Mrs. Browne entered.
Meg had been silent and repellent since her friend's departure. She had lived alone, communing with her grief.
The landlady sat down on the child's bed and began rocking herself backward and forward, uttering faint moans.
Meg looked at her gravely and apparently unmoved.
"What are you crying for?" she asked at last, when Mrs. Browne's moans became too emphatic to be passed over in silence.
"I am going to lose you, Meg—after all these years—There's a gentleman downstairs—waiting to take you away. Oh! oh! oh!" moaned Mrs. Browne.
"A gentleman—what gentleman?" asked Meg with trembling eagerness, a light springing to her eyes, for her thoughts had flown to her only friend.
"A kind gentleman—Mr. Fullbloom—You must remember, Meg, as I always said—Mr. Fullbloom—pays for you regular—regular as quarter-day comes, he pays. Remember, as I always said it—And now he's come to take you away from me—who loves you as a mother."
"Is he coming to take me away to that school?" asked Meg, sitting up straight, speaking in curt and business-like tones.
"Yes, you're to go to a school—a grander school—a ladies' school—and you'll forget me, who loved you like a mother."
Meg did not answer. She began to prepare rapidly for her departure. She was going to the school; and this was the first step toward rejoining Mr. Standish in the future.
She paid no heed to Mrs. Browne's feeble grieving over the shabbiness of her wardrobe, her unmended boots, and to the landlady's repeated injunctions to "speak up for me who has been good to you as a mother to the gentleman." Every week, Mrs. Browne protested, she had meant to buy Meg a pretty dress and hat.
"What do I want with a fine dress at school for? I am going to learn—that's what I am going to do. I am going to be a lady," said Meg severely, locking the writing-case, a present from Mr. Standish, in which she had deposited her bundle of articles, and wrapping her books in brown paper.
"The gentleman says you're to take nothing with you except just what will go in a little bag," said Mrs. Browne; "and I've brought you my best hand-bag."
"I'll not go away without these things," said Meg ardently. "I'll not go to school or nowhere without them."
Mrs. Browne shook her head; but Meg was not to be moved.
A few minutes' later, attired in her Sunday garments, her feet shod in worn boots, Meg, carrying her parcel, went downstairs, followed by Mrs. Browne. In the best parlor stood the gentleman she had once seen in Mr. Standish's room, and to whom she had been introduced as the "little girl I spoke to you of."
He still wore a frilled shirt and tapped a silver snuffbox, and he looked at Meg with his head very much on one side.
"Ready to go—ready to go!" he said in a quick chirping voice. "Not crying, eh? not crying?"
Meg disengaged her hand to take the one proffered to her.
"Can't take that parcel," said Mr. Fullbloom, shaking his head. "Can't take it."
"Then I won't go away—I won't go to the school without it," said Meg with fierce decision.
"Tut, tut, tut!" said the lawyer. "What's inside it? Lollipops, eh? lollipops?"
"No," said Meg, pale with eagerness; "it's books and things—keepsakes. I'll never part with them—never!"
"Oh, hoity-toity!" said Mr. Fullbloom, then impressed with the child's resolute look. "Well, well," he added, jerking his head to the other side, "perhaps we'll find a place for it in the carriage."
Then once more Mrs. Browne lifted up her voice, and weeping embraced Meg, who submitted to her caress with a certain stiff-backed irresponsiveness. It is probable that if Meg had been called under other circumstances to leave the gloomy old boarding-house and the boozy landlady, about whom clustered all the associations of her childhood, she would have felt the pang of the uprooting; but an absorbing affection now filled her little heart, and with it had come new hopes and ambition.
A brougham was waiting at the door. Into it she stepped, and after her, Mr. Fullbloom. The next moment she was driving swiftly and silently along. It was all very strange; yet Meg did not feel surprised. Grief had lifted her unconsciously to a higher level of expectation; all unknowingly her attitude toward life was changed.
She was vaguely aware that she was the object of her companion's amused and attentive observation. For all his waggish ways and darting movements Mr. Fullbloom had a shrewd and observant mind. He was a lawyer, accustomed to note with discriminating eye external signs that gave him the clew to the personality of those with whom he came in contact. It had grown to be a second nature with him to take note of appearances. This little maid's imperturbable demeanor before the tears of Mrs. Browne, her quick, fearless trust in him, her determined attitude toward the bundle covered with brown paper, piqued his curiosity, and moved a deeper interest in her than that which he usually accorded to children. The clear-cut little profile, he acknowledged, had a character of its own. Meg's attitude, as she sat upright and somewhat stiffly, partook of the same individuality. Mr. Fullbloom noted every detail of the child's dress—the well-worn turban hat crowning the brown crop of hair, the shabby velveteen dress, the weather-beaten jacket with its border of mangy fur, the old boots, the darned worsted gloves covering the hands that clasped the parcel.
"I think I know a little girl who is not very sorry to leave the old house—not sorry," he said at last, stooping forward and cocking his head with that bird-like swiftness.
"I want to go to that school. Are we going there now?" inquired Meg.
"Perhaps we are—perhaps we are not—perhaps we are going to a fairy palace," replied Mr. Fullbloom with a suggestive sidelong glance.
Meg looked at him smilelessly.
"There are no fairies," she said curtly. "Am I going to that school?"
"Before I tell I want to know who gave you those keepsakes—who was it? The clever young gentleman who took such an interest in little Miss Meg, and who had set his heart so much upon her going to school—was it?" said Mr. Fullbloom facetiously, laying his hand upon the bundle.
"Mr. Standish," answered Meg softly; and the lawyer was astonished at the emotion perceptible on the child's face. It seemed to quiver like the chords of a harp upon which a hand is laid.
The silence was broken, and the lawyer began to question. Meg was guarded and reticent in her monosyllabic replies; but by a few leading questions the lawyer got from her what he wished to know.
He became satisfied that the picture Mr. Standish had drawn of her isolation, neglect, and half-servile position in the boarding-house was unexaggerated. His veiled cross-examination was scarcely concluded before the brougham drew up before a large house overlooking a square, in which tall trees cast their shade athwart the smoothly shaven turf.
"Was this grand house the lady's school?" thought Meg.
A solemn man in black opened the door; an imposing being in a gold-buttoned coat, plush breeches, and silk stockings came forward, and Meg by a dexterous move just rescued her parcel from his officious clutches.
Mr. Fullbloom led her into a side room, saying as he left her that he would be back immediately. The firelight glowed upon frames and mirrors, delicate porcelains, and blue satin hangings. For a few moments the little Cinderella figure remained standing immobile amid these surroundings, lost in wonder, then the lawyer returned, and taking her by the hand conducted her upstairs.
Who was she going to see now? Was she about to be brought before the master or mistress of this fairy palace?
Meg was aware of passing through a room larger and more splendid than the one she had just left. Then Mr. Fullbloom pushed open a door and ushered her into another room furnished with bookcases filled with books, a long table, and dark leather chairs.
An old gentleman was sitting there. His chair was against the window, so that his face was in shadow, but his white hair shone. He was leaning back; there was something rigid in his attitude; his long white hands grasped the arms of the chair.
"Here is the little girl," said Mr. Fullbloom.
The white-haired gentleman made no sign of greeting, and did not speak for a moment; but a close observer might have noticed, even in that half-light, a slight twitch of the old hand.
"You are the little girl who spent all your life in Mrs. Browne's boarding-house?" he said at last, abruptly.
"Yes, sir," said Meg with a quiver in her voice.
In her heart she thought the elderly gentleman was not to be compared in appearance with the glittering footman; but his chill stare seemed to freeze her.
"You remember no other place? You have never been to another?" he asked.
"I remember other places, but I have never lived in another place," said Meg with her usual accuracy.
"What is your name?"
"Meg."
"Meg what?"
"Browne," said Meg.
"No, that is not your name. Beecham is your name. Don't forget—Beecham."
"Beecham?" repeated Meg, amazed.
"Take off your hat!" said her interlocutor.
Meg lifted her left hand to obey, but the elastic caught in her hair, and she put her precious parcel down to free her right hand.
"You were to take nothing out of that house," said the old gentleman sternly.
"I won't give them up—I won't!" cried Meg with kindling countenance, and with hands outstretched to protect her parcel.
"You won't!" repeated the old gentleman with frozen severity. Mr. Fullbloom bent over his chair. There was a whispered colloquy. Then the old gentleman said in a voice that might have been that of an audible icicle: "You may keep those things if you do not ask for anything else."
"I do not want anything else," said Meg with energy.
"Turn to the light."
Meg, all rebellion smoothed from her countenance, turned, obedient as a light-haunting flower, toward the gleam of sunshine filtering through the heavy curtains. The light fell caressingly on the spirited little face in its renewed quietude.
"That will do," said the old gentleman; and he fell into a brooding silence.
"This little girl wants to grow up a learned little lady—a learned little lady," put in Mr. Fullbloom cheerily after a pause.
"Yes, that is what I want to be," answered Meg with an eager nod.
"If you are sent to school," resumed the stranger sternly, bending on the child a glance that seemed to her to be one of aversion, "you must promise never to speak of that time spent in the boarding-house. You are to forget everything that happened there, and everybody you met there."
"I'll not forget every one. There is one person I will never forget—never," replied Meg with energy.
"Mr. Standish, the young man who was her friend. Can't ask her to forget him yet—can't do that," put in Mr. Fullbloom in a tone of jaunty conciliation, shaking his head. "I feel sure Meg will not speak about him."
"I don't want to talk about him," said Meg, her voice instinct with the sacredness of her affection.
"Do you know how to read?" asked the old gentleman.
"Yes," replied Meg briefly.
Her mysterious questioner opened a volume, turned rapidly over the pages until he came to one where a chapter ended. He passed his forefinger over the page with a heaviness that widened the delicate nail.
"When a chapter is done, it is done—you turn the page." He suited the action to the words and brought his palm down upon the book. "You understand?" Meg nodded. "You begin another chapter—the first chapter of your life is finished—you understand?" Again Meg nodded. "It was an ugly chapter—it remains with you to make the next chapter a better and a finer one."
"I will not talk of anybody or of anything; but I will always think of one person," persisted Meg, intent upon making the conditions of the bargain clear between her and this stranger.
"I cannot dictate to your thoughts," he replied. "I want you to promise not to speak about the past. What will you say when you are questioned concerning it by teachers, schoolfellows, or servants?"
"I'll tell them it's none of their business, that's what I will tell them," said Meg, with spirit and a relapse into a pronunciation that savored more of Mrs. Browne's than of Mr. Standish's influence.
Mr. Fullbloom chuckled, but the old man remained smileless.
"I have nothing more to add; take the child away," he said.
Mr. Fullbloom put out his hand to Meg. She hesitated, looking toward the old gentleman to say good-by.
Once more the child encountered a glance that seemed to freeze her with its mysterious dislike and she went out in silence.
CHAPTER VI.
MISS REEVES' ESTABLISHMENT FOR YOUNG LADIES.
Moorhouse was a red brick mansion of Elizabethan architecture, standing on the outskirts of the old-fashioned town of Greyling, nestling under a misty embattlement of distant downs. Tracts of ferny solitudes and clumps of woodland lay beyond, cloven by the long straight road that led Londonward. It was difficult to imagine that such rural peacefulness could be found at thirty miles distance from the big metropolis.
Moorhouse was a boarding-school for young ladies. It had gained a high reputation under the direction of its present head-mistress, Miss Reeves, a middle-aged lady of dignified appearance.
It was to Moorhouse Mr. Fullbloom was taking Meg. The child had never gone on a railway journey. The shriek and whistle of the engine as the train dashed along startled her. She felt whirled forward as by a demoniac force, and the pant of the engine seemed to her like the audible heart-beat of some dread monster. She sat rigid and silent in the corner by the window as she passed out of the station across the bridge-spanned river, past squalid streets and roofs crowding below. At last she emerged into more airy and peaceful surroundings. The speed and pant still filled the limpid daylight with terror; but Meg fought against her unstrung nerves and compelled herself to look out of the window. She was passing through a pageantry of meadows lying in the mild sunshine of the March afternoon; of cows grazing, of a pallid golden light in the sky, veiled with fleecy purple clouds. She heard the passing chirp of birds; she caught glimpses of leafless woods spreading a tracery of boughs against the brightness of the sky. There were banks flickering with suggestions of primroses under the hedges; undulating greenswards losing themselves in blue distances. Through the terror of that ride the influence of nature brought comfort to her heart. An exhilarating sense that she was traveling to a better land overcame fear. A house in the distance, perched on a height, with the sunlight on its windows, appeared to her a type of that school to which she was journeying; a sort of magic academy where she would grow worthy of becoming Mr. Standish's friend.
Mr. Fullbloom coughed and Meg turned her head. She caught the amused glance of her traveling companion fixed upon her. The solicitor had been dividing his attention between his paper and the child by his side. Meg had been unconscious of his investigation.
"Reach the school soon now," said the lawyer with his accustomed airy nod.
"I am glad of it," replied Meg.
"Want to be a learned little lady, eh?"
"Yes, that is just what I want to be," Meg answered in an eager tone; "learned as a lady."
"Well, so you will be—excellent school that of Miss Reeves—learn to dance, play the piano, to speak French, German—any amount of accomplishments. Bless me, there will be no talking to you in a year or two. Have to study hard, though."
Meg nodded in token of her readiness to face any amount of study.
"Don't forget your name—Beecham—it is not Browne. Madam was not your mother, or for the matter of that any relation," said the lawyer.
"I knew she was not my mother," said Meg in a low voice.
"No, indeed; light and darkness could not be more unlike."
"You knew my mother?" cried Meg, a flush kindling her cheeks.
"I knew her a little," replied the lawyer guardedly. "You are like her about the mouth and eyes."
"I am not a bit like her," Meg answered in a tone of offense. "She was beautiful—like an angel."
"Yes, she was beautiful," acquiesced Mr. Fullbloom.
Meg looked at the lawyer with a new expression. A halo surrounded his brow, for he had seen her mother.
"Did the old gentleman I saw to-day know her too?" she asked softly.
The lawyer put up his finger and wagged his head.
"Little girls must not ask questions. They must be seen, not heard," he replied, taking up his paper and growing absorbed in its contents.
He did not speak again until the train shortly after stopped at Greyling station.
Before long they had reached Moorhouse, and the door had opened for Meg. As she passed through the portal of the red brick mansion she felt as if she stood upon the threshold of a sanctuary. This sense deepened when, a few moments later, she was confronted by a majestic lady, whom the lawyer introduced to her as Miss Reeves, who looked at her kindly and scrutinizingly. After a low-voiced colloquy with Mr. Fullbloom at the other end of the room, Miss Reeves took her by the hand, saying:
"Your guardian has confided you to my care. I hope, my dear child, that we may both learn soon to love and trust each other."
Meg took with confidence the extended hand. Shortly after, Mr. Fullbloom bade her an airy farewell, and she followed Miss Reeves into a room where a meal was going on.
"Miss Grantley and Madame Vallaria," said the head-mistress addressing the two ladies sitting at either end of the table, "let me introduce to you a new pupil, and to you, young ladies, a new school-fellow—Miss Margaret Beecham. Ursula Grey, let her sit beside you; look after her, she is a stranger."
The room swam around Meg as she took her seat near a girl with a pleasant rosy face and bright eyes shining behind a pair of clever-looking spectacles. The child fancied she detected muffled exclamations, and that on all sides a stare was turned upon her which was not friendly.
The young ladies appeared to her beautifully dressed. They wore pretty brooches and necklaces of colored beads; their shining hair fell about their necks, and they had delicate bits of lace round their throats and wrists. One girl appeared to Meg so beautiful that she forgot everything in the delight of looking at her.
She was roused by a nudge of the elbow.
"Miss Grantley is speaking to you," said her spectacled neighbor. The young lady's lips were quivering with restrained smiles.
"Miss Beecham, will you take a glass of milk or a cup of cocoa?" said the lady at the head of the table.
Meg looked blankly in the direction of the speaker.
"Is not your name Beecham?" said this lady with a shade of annoyance in her voice.
Meg shook her head in the negative; then suddenly remembering the warning she had received not to forget:
"Yes—Beecham—that's my name," she said hurriedly, with the vivid nod that usually accompanied her assertions.
A titter went round the table.
"Hush!" said Miss Grantley severely.
Meg sat stiff and upright.
"Will you have milk or cocoa?" repeated Miss Grantley.
"Cocoa," blurted out Meg with monosyllabic brevity, in her confusion forgetting her manners.
She was intensely aware of the nudgings going on around her; of subdued fits of laughter shaking some of the young ladies; of the surprised stare of others. She caught Miss Grantley's cold glance.
Meg seized with both hands the cup passed on to her and hurriedly gulped down some of its contents.
As she put it down she again encountered shocked and amazed glances. An embarrassed misgiving fell upon her. Breaking her bread into small morsels she slowly munched, gazing down into her plate.
When she became aware of a general pushing back of chairs and of rising about her, Meg stood up. She knew the teacher was saying grace. Her spectacled neighbor then nodded.
"Come along," she said, and Meg followed.
The girls were pouring into another room. They at once surrounded Meg. The whispers became audible.
"Who is she?"
"Who brought her?"
"Where did she come from?"
To Meg's surprise, one of the girls approached her and said with familiar cordiality:
"What is your name—your real name, I mean?"
"My real name?" repeated Meg. She was standing inflexibly upright near a table.
"The name you were called by before to-day?" said her interrogator.
"You did not recognize your name when you were called Beecham—what is your real name?" said another.
Meg did not answer for a moment. She remembered her promise to the mysterious white-haired stranger. Then she said huskily:
"What does it signify what name I had before?"
Again she paused.
"Then you had another name?" said the pretty girl in a thin, high voice. "How very romantic!"
"Don't tease her—what does it signify?" put in Ursula.
"What does it signify?" was repeated all round in what Meg fancied a not unkindly tone. She took courage.
"What is in a name?" demanded one of the girls.
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet would it not?" said another.
"Yes," said Meg, bewildered.
"Where did you live!" questioned one.
Meg remained mute. Again her promise to the mysterious stranger sealed her lips.
"Up a tree," suggested one.
"Second branch," said another with a laugh.
"Letters to you came addressed 'Miss What's-her-name, second branch, fourth tree, on the right side of the road,'" cried a third.
This description of Meg's late abode was greeted by peals of laughter.
"Visitors climbed up," suggested another.
"Why do you say those things?" asked Meg, looking round on the laughing faces. "I am come here to learn lessons—to grow up to be a lady. That's what I come for."
"A lady!" echoed all around her.
"A lady is born a lady," said a tall girl who had not spoken hitherto. She had a high nose and a voice of ice.
"My mother was a lady," said Meg.
"Your mother!" was echoed all around.
Meg did not answer; words seemed to tremble on her lips as she gazed on her tormentors.
"Is your dress her taste?" asked one.
"Did she teach you to say 'Cocoa' like that, without saying 'if you please'?" asked another, mimicking Meg's answer to Miss Grantley.
"My mother taught me nothing—she is dead," said Meg slowly.
There was a pause.
Then the tormentors began again.
"Are you sure you would know a lady if you saw one?"
"Would you call the grocer's wife a lady because she wears a silk dress?" demanded the Roman-nosed young lady in her chilly voice.
"No," said Meg with concentration.
"Does a lady go about playing the street-organ?" asked a fat, stupid-faced girl.
"No," again said Meg fiercely. Then addressing the assembly generally, but looking especially at the high-nosed young lady, she went on: "Why do you want to know all those things about me? It's idle curiosity—that's what I call it. And if my dress is ugly, what is that to you? I come here to learn lessons and to be a lady."
"But do you know what it is to be a lady?" replied the girl.
"One is born, not made a lady," said another.
"If," said Meg, trembling with energy, looking round on her persecutors, "to be a born lady makes one laugh at another because she's badly dressed, and to mock her because she's not got fine manners, then to be a born lady is to be vulgar and cruel—that's what I think."
For a moment there was silence; then the stupid-looking girl, coming close to Meg and thrusting her face near hers, said in a jeering drawl:
"I saw you and your mother selling matches in Bond Street last Easter holidays. Your mother had a red handkerchief round her head and a monkey under her arm."
"That is a falsehood!" said Meg. Up flashed the little brown hand and came down with a slap on the dull, mocking face.
There was a hubbub.
Cries of "She's a savage!" "A gypsy!"
"We will tell Miss Reeves," was vociferated on all sides.
Above the tumult rose the voice of Ursula:
"You deserved that slap, Laura Harris. Miss Beecham had told us her mother was dead. She has been teased too much."
A bell sounded and the head-mistress, followed by the other teachers and the servants, entered the room.
"Silence, young ladies," said Miss Reeves.
Prayer-time had come at Moorhouse.
CHAPTER VII.
AT SCHOOL.
Meg was going through the ordeal that her friend had set for her, and she strung herself to endurance. She felt she was tabooed by these fashionable young ladies, and she fiercely anticipated their neglect. She avoided them; she rejected Ursula's advances with impatience.
For awhile some of the girls felt a temptation to bait this little badger, but at last either the freshness or the excitement of the sport died away. Perhaps, too, a certain amount of fear restrained them. The slap administered to Laura Harris had made an impression, and it was considered advisable not to goad the "savage" beyond bounds. Meg after awhile was very much left alone.
She was an outcast, and she felt homesick for the London cage from which she had flitted, and which the presence of a friend had cheered. For the first time, also, she realized her ignorance, and with resolute heroism she set herself to learn. She worked with astonishing zeal. At her books and lessons Meg did not feel so lonely. At church and in her walks through the pleasant country lanes the sense of her absolute isolation was lifted. In recreation hours she sat apart from her schoolfellows. There was a yew tree on the outskirts of the playground into which she climbed to read Goldsmith's "Animated Nature." She began its perusal for the sake of the donor; then, gradually, this book of wonder fascinated her. The description it gave of strange, beautiful creatures, of birds especially, enthralled her. She gathered from the pages hints of far-away countries that called to her like a voice. This little town-bred heart was seized with a passionate love of nature and a foolish love of wild flowers. As she formed one of the regiment of girls who tramped, two and two, through the country lanes, the beauty of nature seemed to comfort Meg as if the touch of a reassuring hand were laid upon her heart. She would almost forget, then, that she was an object of mockery or patronage to her fellows. In the beautiful old church she felt nearly happy. "I am out of school," she would say to herself. The voice of the organ took her immensely. It seemed to be a voice talking to God. She liked the clergyman also. He was an old gentleman who appeared to her to be endowed with great benevolence. She thought his sermons marvels of eloquence. When, in answer to her long stare, his eye sometimes rested upon her, she felt immensely distinguished and honored.
The teachers of Moorhouse were as much puzzled concerning Meg as were the girls. She knew so much of some subjects and so little of others. Miss Reeves, after a careful examination of the new pupil's acquirements, declared that Meg might beat the girls of the upper class in knowledge of some parts of history, and in familiarity with some of Shakespeare's plays; while the lower classes might overmaster her in the elements of arithmetic, geography, and other subjects.
Mr. Foster, the arithmetic master, a lank man with a large nose and a long neck, who looked like an innocent vulture, and who had never been known to give a bad mark, contenting himself with feebly rubbing out the mistakes on the slates presented to him, was bewildered by Meg's absolute ignorance of the rules of arithmetic, and by her dependence upon her fingers for counters.
"Miss Beecham is a table-rase, as was the great philosopher Descartes before he began to observe for the sake of his method," said the professor to Miss Reeves, with forefinger uplifted, for Mr. Foster was proud of making little pedantic jokes.
Madame Vallaria, the middle-aged lady who superintended the music of the establishment, teaching piano and singing from morning till night, was divided between admiration for Meg's correct ear and determination to learn, and despair over the stiffness of her fingers and her ignorance of the first elements of music. The signora was hot-tempered; her nerves were jarred by listening to incessant practice.
"No, no, it is impossible! I will not teach you—I will refuse—I will say to Miss Reeves that I cannot!" She sometimes exclaimed, addressing Meg: "Your fingers are like the chop sticks the Chinese do use for eating. You thump—thump—thump! I hear it in my sleep. It ever gives me the nightmare." Sometimes Mme. Vallaria relented and with voluble heartiness would exclaim: "Oh, Povera! your leetle heart is set to learn; you are so courageous; and your ear it is exact, like a machine made to catch the sounds. Yes, I will teach you—you shall learn it yet—the piano—never fear!"
Mr. Eyre, the shy and eminent professor who came down twice a week from London to take classes of history and English literature of younger and elder pupils, would alternately pass from delight to annoyance at Meg's answers. Her indifference to dates appeared to him a sort of moral deficiency—it amounted to contempt. Her power of realizing historical facts and characters in which she took an interest was vivid, as if she had been a spectator of the events described, and had a personal acquaintance with the actors therein. He vowed she spoke of Julius Cæsar as if she knew him, and of his murder as if it had happened yesterday and was the subject of a leader in this morning's Times. He was appalled and puzzled, he exhorted, he raged; but his eye rested expectantly upon Meg when her companions floundered behind, and the dullness of the class was relieved for him by the audacity of her answers.
"You ought to go up to London to see the coronation," he said to her one day when the theme of the lesson was Queen Elizabeth's reign, and Meg surpassed herself in the brilliancy of her descriptive replies and the astounding incorrectness of her dates.
"What coronation?" asked Meg.
"That of Queen Elizabeth."
"But she is dead and buried in Westminster Abbey," Meg rejoined blankly, being dismally dense in apprehending a joke.
"Is she?" replied Mr. Eyre with feigned astonishment, and as was his wont when he bantered his pupils, he set about biting what remained of his nails and scribbled the lessons to be learned in the following week.
"Let her go on! She will go forever and ever backward till she is stopped by the pyramid of Ghizeh!" he remarked another day as Meg placed the date of Cromwell a century too early, and was sending it back another hundred years when she found she was wrong.
Miss Grantley, the English and geography teacher to the younger class, was antagonistically chilly in her treatment of Meg. The child felt she was disliked, and with that precise and unsympathetic teacher her deficiencies came out flagrantly. Signora Vallaria's voluble wailings, Dr. Grey's jokes, did not dispirit Meg as did Miss Grantley's frosty censoriousness.
Meg was solitary, and in her solitude she grew defiant and repellent. Her heart suffered from the atmosphere of repression. As far as outward appearances went she resembled her comrades; she was dressed like her fellow-pupils, her wardrobe having been replenished under Miss Reeves' direction; but inwardly she was not of them. She sat among them like an owl among sparrows.
She observed them. As she had watched the hubbub of the lodging-house, so she now watched the routine of the school. The girls of the first class, tall, elegantly dressed, appeared to her like young goddesses.
Some of those nodded to her kindly as they passed, and she returned the salute awkwardly without a smile.
Among the girls who had tormented her on her first night, a group, headed by Miss Rosamond Pinkett, the cold-eyed, straight-backed, Roman-nosed young lady, kept up an aggressive attitude. It still appeared to Miss Pinkett that a degradation had been inflicted on the school by the introduction of the "savage," and she ignored Meg with contemptuous coldness. This young lady's bosom friend, Gwendoline Lister, the beauty of the school, had a nature addicted to romance. Her mind was like a story-book in which every page contained a thrilling incident of which she was usually the heroine.
The sudden appearance of Meg, in a costume that suggested the dress of a poor tradesman's child, her fierce refusal to betray anything concerning her antecedents except the reiteration that her mother was a lady, fired the beauty's fancy. Meg, she imagined, was the scion of a noble family, stolen by gypsies, found at last, and sent here to be educated.
"Daughter of a ballet-dancer, my dear, you mean," Miss Pinkett said with an icy sniff. "That ridiculous drawing speaks volumes."
The drawing to which Miss Pinkett alluded, and from which the Beauty had evolved her romance, was an attempt made by Meg to repeat from memory that dear fashion plate, which she had given away.
She had rudely drawn a small-mouthed, large-eyed face, the head wreathed with roses, the dress covered with roses. Underneath she had written in Roman characters, "My mother." This drawing had been found in Goldsmith's "Animated Nature," taken out by prying fingers, and had been passed from hand to hand. Where others had found food for mockery, Miss Lister had found food for her imagination.
Meg had come on the scene as Miss Pinkett was in the act of examining the sketch. With a cry she had snatched it out of the enemy's grasp, and, tearing it to bits, she had flung herself from the presence of the girls.
Ursula continued the defense of the stranger, and made advances to Meg, which the child persistently refused.
"Why won't you take my sweets?" Ursula asked once in a piqued tone.
"I don't want them," said Meg with jerky abruptness.
"Why? Is it because you have none to give in return?" demanded Ursula bluntly.
"I don't want them—that is all!" answered Meg.
"It is pride—nothing but pride!" said Ursula, turning away with a displeased gleam of her spectacles.
A few days later an incident happened which showed that Meg was not all indifferent to kindness. The spring had come and decked with lavish waste of blossoms disgraced corners as well as more favored places. It had rimmed with a fringe of velvet wallflower the top of the arid garden wall. The orange and brown blooms spread in the sunlight, swayed in the breeze, attracted the murmuring bees, and sang the praise of spring in delicate wafts of perfume.
"How delicious those wallflowers smell," said Ursula, sniffing the air with head thrown back. "It is a shame they should be unpluckable. I wish I had a handful."
Meg heard the wish as she sat perched on the yew tree. When Ursula turned away she abandoned her leafy throne, and swung herself from one of the branches on to the trellis that covered the wall. It was a high wall, but she climbed it with the precision of a woodland animal, here grasping the trellis, there planting her foot on some bit of projecting masonry. "You'll fall!" cried a chorus of voices. "To climb that wall is absolutely forbidden, Miss Beecham," called out Miss Pinkett's voice. "I will go and tell Miss Grantley," cried Laura Harris, setting off at a run. Meg, undismayed by warnings and threats, pursued her quest.
A moment later Ursula felt a gentle touch on the elbow, and a fragrant bunch of brown blossoms was thrust into her hand.
"Meg, you did not!" she cried with amazed spectacles, gazing at the child, who bore marks of her recent encounter with the perils of the wall.
Meg nodded.
Ursula buried her nose into the flowers with a hesitating expression as Miss Grantley came up, followed by girls.
"Miss Beecham, go indoors at once! You shall stay in this afternoon for this unlady-like and disobedient conduct. Ursula, those flowers must be given up!"