Chapter Three.
Friends to the Rescue.
There was consternation downstairs when the news of Mildred’s disappointment was made public. The girls clustered together in groups, and talked with bated breath. The number of times that the words “fearful” and “awful” were used would have horrified Miss Chilton if she had been present, and one and all were agreed that their friend was the most pitiable creature upon earth.
Even the little sixth-form pupils were full of sympathy, for Mildred took more notice of them than any of the “big girls”, and even condescended, upon occasion, to spend a holiday afternoon helping them with their games and “dressings up.” Within ten minutes of hearing the news little Nina Behrends had scribbled a note on a leaf of an exercise-book, and fitted it into an envelope together with a bulky inclosure. She trotted upstairs and knocked at Miss Margaret’s door, and when Mildred peered out into the passage with her tear-stained eyes, the little mite pressed the package into her hands and scuttled away as fast as her legs would carry her.
Mildred opened the envelope with a feeling of bewilderment, which was certainly not decreased when she drew forth an aged piece of india-rubber, shaggy and frayed at the ends, as with the bites of tiny teeth. She turned to the note for an explanation, which was given in the following words:
Deer Mildred,
I hope you are quite well. I send you my injy-ruber. The thick side rubs out. I hope it will comfort you that you can’t go home.
So I remain,
Your little friend,
Nina.
Poor little Nina! The “injy-ruber” was one of her greatest treasures, and it had seemed to her that no other offering could so fitly express her love and pity.
The same impulse visited all the other girls in their turn. It was not enough to sympathise in words, it seemed absolutely necessary to do something; and before half an hour was over, every girl was rummaging through the contents of a newly-tidied desk, in search of some tribute which she might send to Mildred in her distress. Such a curious collection of presents as it was! Pencil boxes (more or less damaged); blotted blotters; “happy families” of ducks and rabbits congregated on circles of velvet; photograph frames; coloured slate-pencils;—it would be difficult to say what was not included in the list, while every gift was wrapped in a separate parcel, and offered in terms of tenderest affection.
Bertha Faucit was deputed to carry the presentations upstairs, and she found Mildred sitting upon the window-seat, gazing out into the garden with dreary, tear-stained eyes. There was nothing in the least like a Norse princess about her at this moment. She looked just what she was—a particularly lugubrious, unhappy, English school-girl. Her face lighted up with a gleam of pleasure when she saw her friend, however, for she had been alone for nearly an hour, while tea was going on downstairs, and was beginning to find the unusual silence oppressive.
“Oh, Mildred!” cried Bertha. “Oh, Bertha!” cried Mildred; then they collapsed into silence, gazing at each other with melancholy eyes.
“I can’t—go home!” said Mildred at last, speaking with heaving breath and suspicious gaps between the words. “I have to stay here all the holi—days—by myself! Eight weeks—fifty-six days! I think I shall go mad—I’m sure I shall! My head feels queer already!”
“That is because you have been crying. You will be better in the morning,” said Bertha, and her quiet, matter-of-fact voice sounded soothingly in her friend’s ears. “See, Mildred, the girls have sent you these little presents to show how sorry they are for your disappointment. We couldn’t go out to buy anything new, so you must excuse us if they are not quite fresh. I have brought my crayons,—you said the blue was a nicer colour than yours; Lois has chosen two texts for illuminating, and there are all sorts of things besides. See what a collection! Maggie Bruce has sent an exercise-book with the used leaves torn out. She said it was to be used as an album; and when we go home we are all going to ask our fathers for foreign stamps, and send them on to you. Don’t you want to look at all the other things?”
Bertha had laid the parcels in a row along the floor, and Mildred now took up one after another and examined the contents, while at one moment she laughed, and at the next her eyes ran over with tears.
“How good of them all—how kind! Poor little Nina Behrends presented me with her ‘injy-ruber’ before tea. It is so dirty that it would spoil anything it touched, but it was sweet of the little thing to think of it. A note from Carrie. Poor old Elsie—fancy sending me this! What a nice frame; I’ll put your photograph in it, Bertha. Slate-pencils! does she think I am going to do sums in the holidays? Oh, Bertha, don’t think me horrid, but people seem to me to have a very queer idea of comfort! Miss Margaret sent up strawberry jam and cake for my tea, as if anything to eat could make up for not seeing Mother!—or pencils, or books, or stamps. I’d give all the stationery in the world if I could only wake up and find it was a dream, and that I was really going home!”
“I don’t think that is quite the right way to look at it,” said Bertha, seating herself elegantly on a chair, and speaking in her precise, little, grown-up manner. “We don’t expect these things to ‘make up’; they are not of much value in themselves, but you must think of their meaning, and that is that we all love you, and are sorry for you, and want to do everything in our power to help you.”
“Yes, yes, I know; you are all angels, and I am a wretch!” cried poor Mildred dismally. “I don’t deserve that you should be so kind. I should like to be grateful and patient, but I can’t! Bertha, if you were in my place, and had to stay here at school all alone, without even Lois or a single one of the girls, what would you do?”
Bertha reflected.
“I think I should cry a good deal at first,” she said honestly, “and lie awake at nights, and have a headache, but I should try to be resigned. I have never had anything very hard to bear, and sometimes I have almost wished that I had. I don’t mean, of course, that I want anyone belonging to me to fall ill like your brother. I should like a trouble that affected myself alone, so that I might see how well I could bear it. I love to read about people who have had terrible trials, and have been brave and heroic, and overcome them all. I have an ambition to see if I could imitate them.”
“Well, I haven’t,” said Mildred, “not a bit; and you won’t like it either, Bertha, when it comes to your turn! Besides, I don’t see that there is much chance of being heroic in living alone by yourself in a ladies’ school. Heroes have to fight against armies, and plagues, and terrible calamities, and I have to face only dullness and disappointment. Even if I bear them well it will be no more than is expected of me. ... There would be nothing heroic about it!”
Bertha knit her brows in thoughtful fashion.
“I am not so sure,” she said. “I think it must be pretty easy to be brave when you are marching with hundreds of other people, while drums are beating and flags waving, and you remember that England expects you to do your duty, and that the whole world will talk of it to-morrow if you do well. It would be quite easy for you, Mildred; for you are never afraid, and you would get so excited that you would hardly know what you were doing. It will be much harder for you to sit still here and be cheerful; and to do the hardest thing must be heroic! I will write to you often, Mildred; all the girls will write. You will have heaps of letters.”
“That will be nice. I love letters,” said Mildred gratefully. She cheered up a little at the prospect, and talked to her friend for the next half-hour without relapsing into tears. Nevertheless, the remembrance of the poor, disfigured face weighed heavily on Bertha’s heart, and she could talk of nothing else, as she and Lois finished their packing later on the same evening.
“I feel quite mean to be going home when poor Mildred is left here alone,” she said. “And we have such a happy time. Father and Mother are so good, they give us almost everything we ask in the holidays. I wonder—” She stopped short as if struck with a brilliant idea, and stared into her sister’s eyes.
“I wonder—” echoed Lois immediately, and her voice had the same ring, her face the same curious expression.
The pupils at Milvern House were often amazed at the instinctive manner in which these two sisters leapt to an understanding of each other’s meaning, and the present instance it was evident that Lois needed no explanation of that mysterious “I wonder.” “We are twins, you know,” they were accustomed to say, when questioned about this peculiarity, and it seemed as if this fact did indeed save them from much conversational exercise.
“We will see!” said Bertha again, and Lois nodded her head and repeated, “We will see!” while her face lit up with smiles.
But Mildred did not know what pleasant schemes her friends were plotting on her behalf, and she lay, face downwards, crying heart-brokenly upon her bed.