Chapter Three.
Goblinet.
He remembered nothing more until he woke up that night in his own little bed with a very confused feeling that something dreadful had happened, though he could not think what it was. There was a light in his room, which was strange too, and presently he saw that Nurse was sitting there with her spectacles on, nodding sleepily over a book. What could it mean? He clasped his head with both hands, and tried to remember; but it was startling to find that there was a wet bandage round it, and inside it there was a dull throbbing ache, so he soon gave up trying and lay quietly with his eyes fixed on Nurse, and the funny shadow she made on the wall. At last she gave a most tremendous nod, which knocked off her spectacles, and then she gathered herself up and opened her eyes very wide. Presently she came to the bed with a glass in her hand and leant over Ambrose to see if he was awake; he drank what she gave him eagerly, for he was thirsty, and as he lay down again he said with an effort:
“I think I’ve had a very bad dream, Nurse, and my head does ache so.”
“Well, you’re safe and sound now, my lamb,” she answered, patting his shoulder soothingly; “just you turn round and go to sleep again.”
Still puzzled Ambrose closed his eyes, and wondered vaguely for a few minutes why Nurse called him “lamb.” She had not done it since he had the measles, so he supposed he must be ill; but he did not feel at all equal to asking questions about anything, and was soon fast asleep again.
But this was the beginning of many weary days and nights for poor little Ambrose. When the doctor came the next day he looked gravely at Mrs Hawthorn.
“The child is in a high fever,” he said, “and has had, I should think, some great nervous shock. Great care and quiet are needed. Let him sleep as much as possible.”
But that was the difficulty, for, as time went on, Ambrose seemed less and less able to sleep quietly at night. As evening drew on the fever and restlessness increased; he could not bear to be left alone a moment, and often in the night he would start up and cry out trembling:
“Take her away.” “She is coming.” “Don’t let her catch me.”
It was most distressing for everyone and puzzling too, for no one could imagine what it was that had frightened him in the garret, or how he came to be there at all at that time in the evening. It was evidently a most terrible remembrance to him, for he could not bear the least reference to it, and to question him was a sure way to give him what he called “bad dreams.” So in his presence the subject was dropped; but Mrs Hawthorn and Nurse did not cease their conjectures, and there was one person who listened to their conversation with a feeling of the deepest guilt. This was Pennie, who just now was having a most miserable time of it, for she felt that it was all her fault. If she had not told those stories about the Goblin Lady it never would have happened, although it certainly was Nancy who had put the garret into Ambrose’s head.
Nancy was the only person she could talk to on the subject, but she was not any comfort at all.
“Don’t let’s think about it,” she said. “I knew you made it up. I daresay he’ll get better soon.”
Poor Pennie could not take matters so lightly; it was a most dreadful weight on her mind, and she felt sure she should never have another happy minute till she had confessed about the Goblin Lady. But she was not allowed to see Ambrose, and she could not bring herself to tell anyone else about it. Once she nearly told mother, and then something stuck in her throat; and once she got as far as the study door with the intention of telling father, but her courage failed her and she ran away.
She would creep to Ambrose’s door and listen, or peep round the screen at him while he was asleep, and her face got quite thin and pointed with anxiety. Every morning she asked:
“Is he better, mother? May I go and sit with him?” But the answer always was:
“Not to-day, dear. We hope he is better, but he has such bad nights.”
Pennie was very wretched, and felt she could not bear it much longer.
She was in the nursery one morning looking listlessly out of the window, when her attention was caught by a conversation going on between Nurse and Mrs Hawthorn, who was sitting there with Cicely in her arms.
“I know no more than that baby, ma’am,” said Nurse emphatically, as she had said a hundred times before, “why or wherefore Master Ambrose should take such a thing into his head. It’s easy to frame that he should get scared—when once he was up there in the dark, for he’s a timid child and always has been. But what took him there all alone? That’s what I want to know!”
“I cannot understand it,” said Mrs Hawthorn; “but it makes him so much worse to ask him questions that we must leave it alone until he is stronger. We cannot be too thankful that he was not killed.”
“Which I never doubted for one moment that he was, ma’am, when I found him,” continued Nurse; “he was lying all crumpled up and stone-cold, for all the world like Miss Nancy’s dormouse when she forgot to feed it for a week.”
On this theme Nurse was apt to become very voluble, and there were few things she liked better than describing her own feelings on the occasion. Mrs Hawthorn held up her hand entreatingly: “Do not talk of it, Nurse,” she said; “I cannot bear it.” And then they went on to discuss other matters.
Now all this while Pennie had been trying to make up her mind to speak. There was a fly just in front of her on the window-pane, and as she watched it crawling slowly along she said to herself:
“When it gets as far as the corner I will tell mother.” But alas! before the fly had nearly completed his journey Mrs Hawthorn rose to leave the nursery. As she passed Pennie she stopped and said:
“Why, Pennie, my child, it is not like you to be idle. And you look mournful; what’s the matter?”
“I think Miss Pennie frets after her brother, ma’am,” observed Nurse.
“Well, then,” said Mrs Hawthorn, “I have something to tell you that I am sure you will like. The doctor thinks Ambrose much better to-day, and if you are very quiet and discreet I will let you go and have tea with him this afternoon at five o’clock.”
“Oh, mother, mother,” cried Pennie, “how lovely! May I really?”
“Yes; but you must promise me one thing, and that is that you will not speak of anything that has to do with the garret or his accident.”
Pennie’s face fell.
“Very well, mother,” she said in a dejected tone.
“If you can’t feel sure, Pennie,” said her mother observing the hesitation, “I can’t let you go.”
“I won’t, really, mother,” repeated Pennie with a sigh—“truly and faithfully.”
But she felt almost as low-spirited as ever, for what was the good of seeing Ambrose if she could not make him understand about the Goblin Lady? She remained at the window pondering the subject, with her eyes fixed on the grey church tower, the top of which she could just see through the branches of the pear-tree. It reminded her somehow of her father’s text last Sunday, and how pleased she and Nancy had been because it was such a short one to learn. Only two words: “Pray always.” She said it to herself now over and over again without thinking much about it, until it suddenly struck her that it would be a good thing to say a little prayer and ask to be helped out of the present difficulty. “If I believe enough,” she said to herself, “I shall be helped. Father says people always are helped if they believe enough when they ask.”
She shut her eyes up very tight and repeated earnestly several times: “I do believe. I really and truly do believe;” and then she said her prayer.
After this she felt a little more comfortable and ran out to play with Nancy, firmly believing that before five o’clock something would turn up to her assistance.
But Pennie was doomed to disappointment, for five o’clock came without any way out of the difficulty having presented itself.
“I suppose I didn’t believe hard enough,” she said to herself as she made her way sorrowfully upstairs to Ambrose’s room. Just as she thought this the study door opened and her father came out. He was carrying something which looked like a large cage covered with a cloth. Pennie stopped and waited till he came up to her.
“Why, whatever can that be, father?” she said. “Is it alive? Where are you taking it?”
“It is a little visitor for Ambrose,” he answered; “and I’m taking him upstairs to tea with you both. But you’re not to look at him yet;” for Pennie was trying to peep under the cloth.
When they got into Ambrose’s room she was relieved to find that he looked just like himself, though his face was very white and thin. He was much better to-day, and able to sit up in a big arm-chair with a picture-book. But nevertheless before Nurse left the room she whispered to Pennie again that she must be very quiet.
There was no need for the caution at present, for Pennie was in one of her most subdued moods, though at any other time she would have been very much excited to know what was inside the cage.
“Now,” said the vicar when he was seated in the arm-chair, with Ambrose settled comfortably on his knee, “we shall see what Ambrose and this little gentleman have to say to each other.”
He lifted off the covering, and there was the dearest little brown and white owl in the world, sitting winking and blinking in the sudden light.
Ambrose clasped his little thin hands, and his eyes sparkled with pleasure.
“Oh, father,” he cried, “what a darling dear! Is he for me? I always did want to have an owl so!”
He was in such raptures when he was told that the owl was to be his very own, that when the tea was brought in he could hardly be persuaded to touch it. Pennie, too, almost forgot her troubles in the excitement of pouring out tea, and settling with Ambrose where the owl was to live.
“The nicest place will be,” at last said Ambrose decidedly, “in that corner of the barn just above where Davie’s rabbits are. You know, Pennie. Where it’s all dusky, and dark, and cobwebby.”
“I think that sounds just the sort of place he would feel at home in,” said their father; “and now, would you like me to tell you where I got him?”
“Oh, yes, please, father,” said Ambrose, letting his head drop on Mr Hawthorn’s shoulder with a deep sigh of contentment. “Tell us every little scrap about it, and don’t miss any.”
“Well, last night, about nine o’clock, when I was writing in the study, I wanted to refer to an old book of sermons, and I couldn’t remember where it was. I looked all over my book-cases, and at last I went and asked mother, and she told me that it was most likely put away in the garret.”
Ambrose stirred uneasily, and Pennie thought to herself, “They said I wasn’t to mention the garret, and here’s father talking about it like anything.”
“So I took a lamp,” continued Mr Hawthorn, “and went upstairs, and poked about in the garret a long while. I found all sorts of funny old things there, but not the book I wanted, so I was just going down again when I heard a rustling in one corner—”
Pennie could see that Ambrose’s eyes were very wide open, with a terrified stare as if he saw something dreadful, and he was clinging tightly with one hand to his father’s coat.
“So I went into the corner and moved away a harp which was standing there, and what do you think I saw? This little fluffy gentleman just waked up from a nap, and making a great fuss and flapping. He was very angry when I caught him, and hissed and scratched tremendously; but I said, ‘No, my friend, I cannot let you go. You will just do for my little son, Ambrose.’ So I put him into a basket for the night, and this morning I got a cage for him in the village, and here he is.”
Mr Hawthorn looked down at Ambrose as he finished his story: the frightened expression which Pennie had seen had left the boy’s face now, and there was one of intense relief there. He folded his hands, and said softly, drawing a deep breath:
“Then it was not the Goblin Lady after all.”
“The Goblin Lady! What can the child mean?” said the vicar looking inquiringly at Pennie.
But he got no answer to his question, for Pennie’s long-pent-up feelings burst forth at last. Casting discretion to the winds, she threw her arms vehemently round Ambrose, and blurted out half laughing and half crying:
“I made it up! I made it up! There isn’t any Goblin Lady. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I made it every bit up!”
The two children sobbed and laughed and kissed each other, and made incoherent exclamations in a way which their puzzled father felt to be most undesirable for an invalid’s room. He had been carefully warned not to excite Ambrose, and what could be worse than this sort of thing?
Perfectly bewildered, he said sternly:
“Pennie, if you don’t command yourself, you must go out of the room. You will make your brother ill. It is most thoughtless of you. Tell me quietly what all this means.”
With many jerks and interruptions, and much shamefacedness Pennie proceeded to do so. Looking up at her father’s face at the end she was much relieved to see a little smile there, though he did not speak at once.
“You’re not angry, are you, father?” said Ambrose doubtfully at last.
“No, I am not angry,” replied Mr Hawthorn, “but I am certainly surprised to find I have two such foolish children. I don’t know who was the sillier—Pennie to make up such nonsense, or Ambrose to believe it. But now I am not going to say anything more, because it is quite time for Ambrose to go to bed, so Pennie and the owl and I will say good-night.”
What a relief it was to hear the dreaded subject spoken of so lightly. Pennie felt as though a great heavy weight had been suddenly lifted off her mind, and she was so glad and happy that after she had left Ambrose’s room she could not possibly walk along quietly. So she hopped on one leg all down a long passage, and at the top of the stairs she met Nurse hastening up to her patient:
“You look merry, Miss Pennie,” said she. “I hope you haven’t been exciting Master Ambrose.”
“Why, yes,” Pennie couldn’t help answering. “Father and I have both excited him a good deal; but he’s much better, and now he’ll get quite well.”
And Pennie was right, for from that night Ambrose improved steadily, though it was some time before he became quite strong and lost his nervous fears.
The first visit he paid, when he was well enough to be wheeled into the garden in a bath-chair, escorted by the triumphant children, was to see his new pet, the owl. There he was, hanging in his cage in the darkest corner of the barn. Ambrose looked up at him with eyes full of the fondest affection.
“What shall we call him, Pennie?” he said. “I want some name which has to do with a goblin.”
Pennie considered the subject with her deepest frown.
“Would ‘Goblinet’ do?” she said at length; “because, you see, he is so small.”
“Beautifully,” said Ambrose.
So the owl was called “Goblinet.”