Betty Vivian: A Story of Haddo Court School

by L. T. Meade

“Tell us more, please, Betty?” asked an eager voice.

“Give me a minute,” said Betty. She shut her eyes. Her face was deadly white. Presently she opened her eyes again. “I see the same great, vast moor, and it is winter-time, and the moor from one end to the other is covered—yes, covered—with snow. And there’s a gray house built of great blocks of stone—a very strong house, but small; and there’s a kitchen in that house, and an old man with grizzled hair sits by the fire, and a dear old woman sits near him, and there are two dogs lying by the hearth. I won’t tell you their names, for their names are—well, sacred. The old man and woman talk together, and presently girls come in and join them and talk to them for a little bit. Then one of the girls goes out all alone, for she wants air and freedom, and she is never afraid on the vast white moor. She walks and walks and walks. Presently she loses sight of the gray house; but she is not afraid, for fear never enters her breast. She walks so fast that her blood gets very warm and tingles within her, and she feels her spirits rising higher and higher; and she thinks that the moor covered with snow is even more lovely and glorious than the moor was in summer, when the fairy bells were ringing and the fairies were dancing all over the place.

“I see her,” continued Betty; “she is tired, and yet not tired. She has walked a very long way, and has not met one soul. She is very glad of that; she loves great solitudes, and she passionately loves nature and cold cannot hurt her when her heart is so warm and so happy. But by-and-by she thinks of the old couple by the fireside and of the girls she has left behind. She turns to go back. I see her when she turns.” Betty paused a minute. “The sky is very still,” she continued. “The sky has millions of stars blazing in its blue, and there isn’t a cloud anywhere; and she clasps her hands with ecstasy, and thanks God for having made such a beautiful world. Then she starts to go home; but——”

Up to this point Betty’s voice was glad and triumphant. Now its tone altered. “I see her. She is warm still, and her heart glows with happiness; and she does not want anything else in all the world except the gray house and the girls she left behind, and the dogs by the fireside, and the old couple in the kitchen. But presently she discovers that, try as she will, and walk as hard as she may, she cannot find the gray stone house. She is not frightened—that isn’t a bit her way; but she knows at once what has happened, for she has heard of such things happening to others.

“It is midnight—a bitterly cold midnight—and she is lost in the snow! She knows it. She does not hesitate for a single minute what to do, for the old man in the gray house has told her so many stories about other people who have been lost in the snow. He has told her how they fell asleep and died, and she knows quite well that she must not fall asleep. When the morning dawns she will find her way back right enough; but there are long, long hours between now and the morning. She finds a place where the snow is soft, and she digs and digs in it, and then lies down in it and covers herself up. The snow is so dry that even with the heat of her body it hardly melts at all, and the great weight of snow over her keeps her warm. So now she knows she is all right, provided always she does not go to sleep.

“She is the sort of girls who will never, by any possibility, give in while there is the most remote chance of her saving the situation. She has covered every scrap of herself except her face, and she is—oh, quite warm and comfortable! And she knows that if she keeps her thoughts very busy she may not sleep. There is no clock anywhere near, there is no sound whatever to break the deep stillness. The only way she can keep herself awake is by thinking. So she thinks very hard. That girl has often had a hard think—a very hard think—in the course of her life; but never, never one like this before, when she buries herself in the snow and forces her brain to keep her body awake.

“She tries first of all to count the minutes as they pass; but that is sleepy work, more particularly as she is tired, and really sometimes almost forgets herself for a minute. So she works away at some stiff, long sums in arithmetic, doing mental arithmetic as rapidly as ever she can. And so one hour passes, perhaps two. At the end of the second hour something very strange happens. All of a sudden she feels that arithmetic is pure nonsense—that it never leads anywhere nor does any one any good; and she feels also that never in the whole course of her life has she lain in a snugger bed than her snow-bed. And she remembers the fairies and their music in the middle of the summer night; and—hark! hark!—she hears them again! Why have they left their palace underground to come and see her? It is sweet of them, it is beautiful! They sit on her chest, they press close to her face, they kiss her with their wee lips, they bring comforting thoughts into her heart, they whisper lovely things into her ears. She has not felt alone from the very first; but now that the fairies have come she never, never could be happier than she is now. And then, away from the fairies (who stay close to her all the time), she lifts her eyes and looks at the stars; and oh, the stars are so bright! And, somehow, she remembers that God is up there; and she thinks about white-clad angels who came down once, straight from the stars, by means of a ladder, to help a good man in a Bible story; and she really sees the ladder again, and the angels going up and coming down—going up and coming down—and she gives a cry and says, ‘Oh, take me too! Oh, take me too!’ One angel more beautiful than she could possibly describe comes towards her, and the fairies give a little cry—for, sweet as they are, they have nothing to do with angels—and disappear. The angel has his strong arms round her, and he says, ‘Your bed of snow is not so beautiful as where you shall lie in the land where no trouble can come.’ Then she remembers no more.”

At this point in her narrative Betty made a dramatic pause. Then she continued abruptly and in an ordinary tone, “It is the dogs who find her, and they dig her out of the snow, and the dear old shepherd and his wife and some other people come with them; and so she is brought back to the gray house, and never reaches the open doors where the angels ladder would have led her through. She is sorry—for days she is terribly sorry; for she is ill, and suffers a good bit of pain. But she is all right again now; only, somehow, she can never forget that experience. I think I have told you all I can tell you to-night.”

Instantly, at a touch, the lights were turned on again, and the room was full of brilliancy. Betty jumped up from her posture on the floor. The girls flocked round her.