NOBODY’S FAULT

Nobody’s Fault

BY NETTA SYRETT

BOSTON: ROBERTS BROS., 1896
LONDON: JOHN LANE, VIGO ST

Copyright, 1896,
By Roberts Brothers.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

And the rest, a few,

Escape their prison and depart

On the wide ocean of life anew.

There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart

Listeth, will sail;

Nor doth he know how there prevail,

Despotic on that sea,

Trade winds which cross it from eternity.

Matthew Arnold.

NOBODY’S FAULT

Out in the London Square a dismal November fog mingled with the gathering twilight, and blotted out the trees and the opposite houses.

Mrs. Trelawney’s drawing-room, where the fire burnt clear, and the softly shaded lamps shed a subdued light, was very pleasant by contrast. Mrs. Trelawney herself sat on one side of the fire in a low seat, beside which a small table was drawn up, covered with multi-colored silks for the embroidery she held.

“Are you very busy just now?” she asked presently of a man who sat leaning back in an arm-chair opposite her on the other side of the table.

“Busy? Stevens is never busy,” her husband assured her. He rose lazily from the sofa as he spoke, and sat down on the arm of his wife’s chair. “He sits in his den before a good fire, with a novel in one hand, and the editorial cigar in the other; and that’s what he calls hard work!”

Stevens groaned. “May you never do anything harder! You don’t mention the kind of novel over which I’m usually to be found gnashing my teeth!”

“Poor man! as bored and savage as all that?” Mrs. Trelawney asked, smiling. “But you get a good one sometimes, of course.”

“Once in three months, perhaps. Oh! there are mitigations of misery, I allow. Last night, for instance, I reviewed a book that interested me. It was good; very good,” he added, meditatively.

“A new writer?”

“Yes, or new to me, at least. It was a woman’s book,—not the usual woman’s novel with a capital W, though, Heaven be praised! The writer’s name is Bridget Ruan. I don’t know whether—”

Mrs. Trelawney dropped her needlework with an exclamation. She turned swiftly to her husband, her eyes shining.

“How splendid!” she said softly, a thrill of excitement and triumph in her voice.

“You know her?” Stevens inquired curiously.

“She is my great friend.” Mrs. Trelawney lifted her head proudly as she spoke.

“Why, you know Bridget Ruan, Mr. Stevens!” she exclaimed, a moment later. “She used to stop with me years ago, after we both left school, you know. You were very much interested in her—”

“Not the clever little girl, whose father—”

“Yes!” she cried, interrupting him in her eagerness. “I forgot that you have never met her since. You’ve been away much too long!”

“Really? Strange that I shouldn’t have known, I mean,” he returned, raising himself a little on one elbow to talk. “I remember her perfectly, of course, but her name had escaped me. Well, it’s a clever story, a very clever story. Strong, but delicate too. No screaming—no rant—but it tells. You have seen it, perhaps?

“She was a striking girl,” he went on musingly. “Is she as beautiful as she promised to be?”

Mrs. Trelawney rose, and crossed the room to a cabinet, from which she took a photograph. She put it silently into his hands.

The editor stood up, and moved nearer the light.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment’s scrutiny. “I remember her face. But she has altered. It was a face full of possibilities. Some of them have become realities, I should say. Yes, she is beautiful—really beautiful.”

“Now you’ve raised yourself, if possible, several inches in Helen’s estimation,” her husband said with a laugh.

Mrs. Trelawney made no remark. She took the photograph gently from Stevens, and, re-crossing the room, put it in its place. There was the suggestion of a caress in the little touch with which she settled the frame, before she returned to her seat.

Then she took up her work, and bent over it a moment without speaking.

“I’m so glad,” she said presently,—and as she raised her head, Stevens thought he detected a trace of tears; “and she’ll be so glad you think well of her book. You must meet her again. I will arrange it. She hasn’t forgotten you. Why, it was you who first praised her work, don’t you remember?”

PART I

CHAPTER I

Thirteen or fourteen years before the afternoon when Bridget Ruan’s novel was discussed in Mrs. Trelawney’s sitting-room, she and Bridget were school-girls at Eastchester.

Saturday was a holiday at Myrtle Lodge,—Miss Brownrigg’s boarding-house for the Eastchester High School girls,—and tennis was in full swing in the school-garden behind the house.

“Play!” “Forty-love!” “Vantage all!” came shrilly from the tennis court. On a side grass-plot, whose trampled, badly kept turf bore witness to the violence of the game, rounders was being played by the little ones, who screamed themselves hoarse, and danced madly in a frenzy of excitement as one small figure after another flew round the course, and avoided the savagely aimed ball.

Several of the older girls strolled quietly along the gravel paths, with arms interlaced, whispering together in the peculiarly confidential “penny-mystery” fashion of school-girls.

“Where’s Bridget? Where’s Bridget Ruan?” one of the tennis-players called suddenly. “We’re making up a new set, and we want her!”

“Bid! Bid! Bridget, where are you?” two or three of them began to call.

Bridget shook her hair over her ears to deaden the sound, and went on writing.

She sat in a little dilapidated arbor in a far corner of the garden. It contained a rickety, dusty table, on which papers and books were untidily scattered. The arbor was surrounded by long rank grass, uncut since the spring, and drenched with the recent rains. The path she had made for herself through it was plainly visible in the trampled, broken-down stalks which extended up to the door.

The summer-house was screened from the rest of the garden by a clump of lime-trees, and in spite of frequent impatient calls, Bridget had been in possession the whole of the afternoon.

“Bid! Bridget!” the cries grew louder and more urgent.

“Bother!” whispered the girl, stamping her foot impatiently and writing faster.

“Bridget! Miss Ruggles wants you. Where are you?”

The girl uttered a smothered, furious exclamation, but otherwise paid no attention.

“She’s never in the summer-house, through all this awfully wet grass!” she heard a nearer voice exclaim. “Run and see, Dulcie; your frocks are short!”

There was a rustling in the grass outside, and in a moment a small child stood examining her damp stockings on the threshold.

Bridget raised her head with an impatient jerk, and confronted her visitor with an angry, “Well?”

Heavy masses of curling, copper-colored hair hung round her face to her shoulders. It was a small, delicately tinted face, with a dainty, pointed chin, and a pair of big gray eyes. They were singularly bright and restless eyes, and when she was angry they blazed royally.

She was angry now, and the small child shrank back.

“I—I—Alice sent me. Miss Ruggles wants you,” she stammered.

“Confound!” Bridget exclaimed with frank emphasis, snatching up her papers and bundling them into a book.

She rushed out of the arbor like a whirlwind, and the child cowered against the door as she passed. Half way through the long grass she recalled the frightened action, and turned impetuously back.

“All right, Dulcie! I’m not angry with you,” she said, bending over the little girl.

Dulcie flung her arms round her, and kissed her rapturously, tears of fright still in her eyes.

“You may carry up my books for prep. to-night, and bring me the biscuits at supper,” Bridget whispered consolingly, disengaging herself with a hasty kiss.

Miss Ruggles was upstairs in the bedroom, stooping over an open drawer, as the girl entered, panting and frowning.

“Look at this drawer again, Bridget!” she cried angrily. “What do you come to school for, I should like to know?”

“To be bothered from morning till night,” was the prompt, unreflecting reply.

Miss Ruggles stopped in her work of tidying, and stared hopelessly at her for a moment.

“You will be reported, of course,” she said at last, in a voice which indicated that she knew the uselessness of the punishment, but was compelled to inflict it for want of another more efficacious. She began to expostulate and argue in querulous, futile fashion, turning over the contents of the drawer with an air of impotent exasperation. She had just laid her hand on a large, untidy bundle of papers, when, with a swift movement, Bridget swooped upon it, and tucked it under her arm.

“These are private,” she announced breathlessly, shot an annihilating glance at Miss Ruggles, and dashed unceremoniously out of the room.

Down below in the garden Helen Mansfield, her special friend, was sitting alone on the grass near the house reading.

Bridget swept up to her. “Come along! Come into the arbor! Let us talk!” she cried imperiously.

Helen rose and followed her.

“Well! what did she want you for?” she inquired, when the arbor was reached.

“Oh!” Bridget shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. “Another row! Bedroom untidy or something. I’m reported again; so I thought it was waste of time to listen to all Miss Ruggles’ talk, as well as Miss Brownrigg’s, this evening, and I came away in the middle.”

“Bid!”

“Well, you’d have thought I’d broken all the Ten Commandments, instead of leaving my brush and comb out of the bag! What idiots teachers are! They mix up all the big things with the little ones, as though they were all crimes equally. Oh! a boarding-school’s a beast of an institution! Worry, worry, worry, about trifles from morning till night. And Miss Brownrigg calls this ‘preparation for life.’ Does life mean tidy wardrobes, and words underlined with red ink without any smudges, and sums all worked the way of the book or else they’re not right even when the answers are the same? If so, I don’t think it’s worth preparing for.”

“Miss Ruggles isn’t worth exciting one’s self about,” returned the other girl, calmly.

“Not for you, of course. You haven’t any temper. But I’m not made like that. I go mad. I wish I didn’t.” She flung herself down on the seat beside her friend, and there was silence for a moment.

The sunshine filtered through the chinks in the pine-log roof of the summer-house, and fell in little pools and splashes of light on the table, and on the girls’ summer dresses. Shadows of the lime-trees outside danced lightly, and flickered on the rough walls, and brought a sense of dainty stir and flutter into the arbor.

Presently Bridget moved, and broke into a laugh.

“What a duffer Miss Ruggles is!” she exclaimed, her eyes dancing. “I’m so furious when rows are going on that I don’t notice the absurd things she says; but they come upon me afterwards. Just now, for instance, she said it was ‘my duty to keep my linen-drawer tidy, because Christ might come at any moment.’ I must put that in.”

“In? Where?”

Bridget started, and her color rose. “Oh! never mind!” she began.

“What’s in that parcel?” her friend asked, her eyes falling for the first time on the packet Bridget had thrown beside her.

She did not reply for a moment; then she said desperately, “Well, that’s it. My story, you know. I’ve put every one nearly in,—Miss Ruggles and Mademoiselle and Miss Jones, and a good many of the girls. Not exactly, of course, but something like. It’s very stupid,” she added perfunctorily. Then, with a quick change of voice, “No, it’s silly to say that, just because I wrote it. I don’t think it’s stupid; but I daresay you wouldn’t care for it.”

“Let me see.”

“I’ll—I’ll read it to you, if you like.” She blushed again. “Will you tell me what you think of it, Helen? What you really think of it?” she repeated anxiously.

“Yes,” Helen returned.

Bridget began to read, her nervousness betraying itself in the breathless gallop at which she rushed through the first page,—a pace which steadily diminished, however, as she grew accustomed to the sound of her own voice. Then she began to do her work justice by intonation and emphasis, encouraged by an occasional spontaneous laugh from her friend.

It was a crude enough little story of school life; badly constructed, of course, though not without a certain redeeming vigor of its own. The characters, although inclining towards caricatures of their originals, were boldly drawn, with a touch of daring humor. The whole thing was curiously realistic. The girl had indulged in no flights of imagination or rhetoric. She had observed keenly, portrayed faithfully, if somewhat mercilessly, after the manner of the young. There was about it an indication of power rather remarkable in a school-girl effusion.

“Well?” said Bridget, looking up as she dropped the last sheet. “Well?” It was uttered a little breathlessly, and she leant forward in her eagerness, propping her chin on her hands, her elbows resting on the table.

“Yes,” returned her friend, slowly, “I like it. You have made the people seem real, but—” She paused.

“But,” repeated Bridget, impatiently. “Do go on, Helen!”

“I’m trying to think what my father would say.”

Bridget’s face darkened; she began to fidget impatiently with the paper in front of her; but Helen was looking at the sunlit leaves.

“I think he would say the style was bad,—might be improved,” she said, unconsciously substituting a phrase of the professor’s for her own.

“Style?” Bridget repeated. “What do you mean? What is style?”

“I don’t know quite; it’s difficult to explain. Father would tell you. It’s a way of saying things, I think.”

“But you said I had made them real people!” Bridget protested.

“So you have.”

“Well! what does it matter how I put the words, as long as I’ve done that?”

“I don’t know, but it does. Father says it is very important. Cultivated people—”

“But I’m not a cultivated person, you see!” Bridget returned fiercely, her face flushing. “I don’t belong to cultivated people, and I don’t know how to finick, and be mincing, and awfully refined in writing, any more than in talking. If that’s what style means, I’d rather be without it, and say straight out what I mean, and what I see. I should hate to be such a young lady”—there was an accent of fierce contempt in the words—“as—as—”

“As I am, for instance,” put in Helen, quietly. “But I thought we were talking about style. I don’t know why people can’t write down what they see, and yet have good style.”

But Bridget was not attending. She had flung out her arms across the table, and, with her head buried in them, was sobbing convulsively.

Helen paused a moment; then she bent over the girl and kissed her hair.

At her touch Bridget sprang up.

“Oh! I’m a beast—a beast!” she cried incoherently. “I’m always being so hateful to you; and it isn’t your fault.... Only, Helen, I can’t help it, I’m so jealous, so horribly jealous!” She paused, sobbing uncontrollably.

“But why, Bid, dear?”

“Oh! it is hateful, I know,” Bridget whispered; “but if you only knew how I envy you your sort of home, your kind of father. You always live with people who are ladies and gentlemen. They talk about interesting things,—books and pictures; and they are—the word you used—they are cultivated people. Sometimes—O Helen, I can’t help it—I almost hate you, for knowing all you do, so easily. It all comes so naturally to you. And I want it too!” she exclaimed passionately. “What I said just now wasn’t true. You knew it wasn’t true. I should like to have style—and—and—all the rest. I want to know the sort of people you know. I shall never care for any others. And I never can,” she added bitterly, “just because,—oh! it’s awful, just as though it were a crime!”

“But, Bridget,” protested her friend, soothingly, “you are so clever! When you are grown up, you will write books. People will want to know you then. Even the stupid people, who— Besides,” she continued hastily, leaving the sentence unfinished, “you are a lady. Nothing can alter that; any one can see it. Why, even that wretched Lena Mildmay—”

“Ah!” cried Bridget, unheeding, “and there again is a worse trouble. I hate myself, Helen; it seems so mean to say anything, even to you, that seems—that seems—” She hesitated, her lips trembling. There was silence for a moment. “Oh! you know I love my mother, Helen,” she whispered brokenly; “but—”

“Yes, yes, Bid, darling!” Helen interposed, in a voice that was already womanly in its tenderness.

There was another short silence, and then Bridget jumped up.

“That’s enough of the dumps!” she said, with a vivid gesture. “You are an angel; and what are my eyes like? Dare I meet the others? or will that little duffer, Mary Molton, say, ‘What’s the matter, Bridget? Have you been crying?’ Come along; let’s play tennis! My style’s good enough there, anyway,” she added mischievously, with a flashing backward glance at Helen, who was picking her way through the wet grass.

It was four years since Miss Brownrigg, departing from her “usual rule,” took a tradesman’s daughter as a boarder at Myrtle House. Times were hard in the educational as well as the outside world, and tradesmen had this saving grace,—they usually paid promptly. Besides, Bridget’s home was a distant one, and, as Miss Brownrigg remarked to her sister, it was very unlikely the other girls would ever know,—“unless, of course,” she added with a sigh, folding up a check for entrance fees paid in advance,—“unless the child is very uncouth, which is unfortunately to be expected.”

Miss Brownrigg’s expectations were, however, falsified in both particulars.

In the first place, Bridget was not uncouth. In the second, she speedily left no doubt in the minds of her school-fellows as to the nature of her social position. It was with considerable relief that Miss Brownrigg saw a slender, graceful little girl emerge from the cab which brought her to the door on the first day of term.

“My dear Eliza,” she observed, “the child is not merely presentable,—she is pretty; she has style. She is even dressed well,—simply, I’m glad to say, but well. We sha’n’t have much trouble.”

This was when the drawing-room door had closed upon Bridget after the first interview, and she was following the maid upstairs to her bedroom,—a dejected little figure, with bent head and trembling lips.

And, in the particular way she expected, Miss Brownrigg was right.

The one or two hardly noticeable peculiarities of phrase and pronunciation—which to a very close observer indicated that her home was not on the same level of refinement as the rest of her school-fellows’—the child corrected herself before she had been in the house a month. She never made a mistake twice. The English teacher, who was observant, noticed that she was at first morbidly sensitive on the subject.

Her mental character, as disclosed in the monthly conclave of teachers, was rather distractingly diverse. She was a dunce, incorrigibly idle, and a genius, according to varying accounts; but they all with one accord lifted up their voices and denounced her iniquities.

With the girls her popularity was undeniable, and the public disclosure of her social status notwithstanding, she retained it during the whole of her school life.

At the beginning of her second term at Myrtle House, a child about her own age came to school for the first time. Bridget always made much of the new girls, flying in the face of the time-honored tradition that they were to be treated as interlopers, and not allowed to display any “cheek” for several weeks.

“The stupidest idea I ever heard,” she declared, “just when they feel loneliest, and most miserable, to treat them badly, in case they should have cheek! Is it likely they’d feel cheeky the first fortnight, poor things? Did you feel cheeky? You cried for nights and nights. You know you did. So did I.”

Essie Langford—who had been petted and dosed with chocolates whenever she was discovered with her head in her locker, dissolved in tears, like a miserable little ostrich—naturally lost her heart to Bridget, and abandoned the idea of suicide.

“Will you let me be your friend?” she whispered one day, creeping up to her. Bridget sat in her favorite attitude, curled up on the floor, with her book on the sofa.

“Of course,” she returned, raising abstracted eyes for a second from the open page.

“Well, now let us tell each other what our fathers are,” said Essie, confidentially, lowering her voice, and glancing apprehensively round. “Mine has a sort of business, you know,—not a shop, of course,” she added hastily, “because there are wire blinds up at the windows, but—”

“I don’t want to know what your father is,” Bridget replied scornfully, forgetting her book. “What does it matter? I don’t know him. I know you, not your father.”

The girls were assembling for preparation of home lessons. They gradually drifted, as they generally did, over to Bridget’s side of the room.

“What does Bridget say, the darlint?” one of them inquired.

“She says it doesn’t matter what your father is,” Essie replied in a low voice, blushing furiously.

“Doesn’t matter?” echoed one of the elder girls. “Of course it matters.”

“Why?” Bridget broke out, wheeling round and facing her.

“Why? Oh, well—because— Well, it decides whether you are a lady.”

“How can your father decide that?” asked Bridget, hotly. “He is not you. You are yourself. You decide that. What do you mean by a lady?”

“Some one whose father is a gentleman,” replied Lena, obstinately. “And you can always tell who is the daughter of a gentleman. You’re a lady, Bid, of course. If your father had been a butcher or baker or candlestick-maker, you’d have been quite different. Your face would have been different; you’d have ugly broad hands, instead of nice thin little ones, like yours.” She took one of them with a caress, and tried to draw the girl down beside her on the sofa, but Bridget drew back. “You would dress horribly,—in bad taste, like those Higginses in church, the grocer people, you know. But your frocks are sweet,” she went on, stroking Bridget’s pink cotton skirt admiringly.

“Oh! and then you’d have a horrid uneducated voice. And altogether,—any one can tell a lady. It’s nonsense to say it doesn’t matter who your father is. Why, nobody knows a person whose father is not a gentleman.”

“Of course not!” some of the girls echoed. Others were discreetly silent. One or two remembered reassuringly that mamma always spoke of “your father’s office,” and added, “Of course not!” a little late, but very emphatically.

“Well, then, listen!” cried Bridget, her voice ringing imperatively. “I don’t care who hears! Listen! and see how stupid you all are! I suppose you don’t call a man who keeps a public house a gentleman. Well, I’m the daughter of a man who keeps a public house.”

There was dead silence. A sort of undefinable flutter of surprise and consternation was in the air. Unconsciously the girls fell back a pace or two. Bridget noticed it, and threw up her head defiantly.

“And you’ve all known me, and made a fuss over me, for a year, and thought I was a lady,” she said mockingly, looking round at them with slow scorn. “You can’t even discover a lady for yourselves. You have to wait to be told that she isn’t one. But half of you,” she cried, glancing at them one after another contemptuously, “will be like that as long as you live. You’ll always belong to some one. You’ll be afraid to be yourselves. There! now you know who my father is, and you may do just as you like about ‘knowing’ me, as you call it. Half of you I shouldn’t care to know if I wasn’t obliged; not because of what your fathers are, but because of what you are,—a set of silly, tame sheep, who daren’t think for yourselves!”

She paused breathless and shaking, her eyes blazing. There was a moment’s awkward silence, and then Helen Mansfield, the head girl, moved from the door which she had entered just as the discussion began, and came forward.

“Bid,” she said carelessly, in her usual self-possessed voice, as though nothing had happened, “will you come and help me see to the lockers? It’s my week, and there’s such a lot to do.”

She put her arm round the girl’s waist, not effusively, but in ordinary school-girl fashion, and they left the room together.

Helen Mansfield had a certain vogue at Myrtle House. On points of etiquette she set the fashion. She was “awfully good style.”

The set of the tide was immediately discernible. Lena Mildmay, indeed, went off with her special satellite, murmuring scornfully that “it was coming to something when you never knew who you might be associating with,” and she should “write home about it;” but the others failed to respond.

Throughout the whole of preparation, surreptitious notes, which caused Bridget to writhe, continued to be passed to her, as she sat doggedly working sums, her curly hair hiding her face.

“Darling Bid, will you walk to church with me on Sunday?”

“My dearest Bridget, I’m not a sheep, am I? I’m sure your father must be a very nice gentleman. Here are some chocolate almonds; but eat them quietly, because they scrunch, and old Ruggles hears quickly.”

“My darling Bid, don’t tell any one. My father is a wine-merchant,—something like yours, you see; only, of course, it’s wine. But still, you see, I couldn’t mind much about your father. Besides,—you’ll never tell, will you?—my uncle is a socialist, and mother says it’s a disgrace.”

“Oh, Helen! Helen!” Bridget whispered between her sobs, kneeling beside her friend’s bed that night when the lights were out, “what fools they all are. But I love you. I shall love you for ever and ever.”

The fact that, in spite of her promulgation, Bridget Ruan still led the school, was strikingly apparent when, two or three months later, the girls at Myrtle Lodge were converted.

A revivalist preacher passing through Eastchester was invited to address them, with the result that more than half the school was stricken with conversion. The preacher was, as usually happens in such cases, a man of powerful personality. He spoke fluently, with a certain oratorical effect which appealed strongly to Bridget’s emotional nature. Most of the girls cried copiously. Bridget sat tearless, but white to the lips, as the man prayed, almost suffocated by the violent beating of her heart. Left to themselves, most of the girls would have forgotten the service in a week, but Bridget could not forget. She fanned the wavering flame of ardor in her school-fellows. She, the leader in every game, bitterly denounced hare and hounds, and branded rounders with ignominy. She went about with fixed gaze and unsmiling lips, meditating upon the Second Coming.

She no longer rushed into the dining-room just as the door was being closed for prayers, nor came up flushed and panting when the tail of the two-and-two procession daily formed to walk from the boarding-house to the High School was about to disappear round the corner.

Bridget, in fact, exhibited every sign of that changed heart whose outward manifestation, according to school ethics, consists in a subordination to rules and an immaculate condition of drawers and lockers,—which, from the teachers’ point of view, makes a school conversion a blessed and memorable event.

As an outcome of her fiery zeal, Myrtle Lodge became characterized by a stern, unbending morality. There were no more whispered conversations in the bedrooms when the lights were out and talking prohibited. Self-imposed bad marks became the order of the day. Even the games took on a quiet, well-conducted, ecclesiastical tone. Bridget invented them. One, which she called Scripture Clocks, consisted in finding texts for every hour in the day, and printing them on to a cardboard time-piece, manufactured for the purpose. She organized, too, a Saturday afternoon prayer-meeting in the cloak-room on the ground floor, and this meeting it was which, in accordance with the irony of fate, was her undoing. She had been implored to take the lead, and offer up prayer herself, but remembering that the fruit of the Spirit is meekness, she had reluctantly declined, giving up her place to an elder girl.

During the prayers she used to kneel beside one of the stained wooden forms, her face enveloped in a waterproof which hung straight and limp from its peg above her head.

She had adopted this attitude, because merely shutting her eyes was not a sufficient safeguard against the seduction of the sunlit leaves round the window, with their background of blue sky. Concentrating her attention thus severely on the prayer, Bridget at first listened devoutly, then less devoutly, and finally began to criticise, and that was fatal.

“How she stammers and hesitates, and says the same things over and over again,” she thought, shaking her hair about her ears in growing irritation. “Why didn’t I pray when they asked me?” She began to compose impassioned addresses, modelled unconsciously on the soul-stirring exhortations of the preacher who had so roused her nature. By degrees she ceased to listen to the halting words of the girl, wrapping the cloak round her head so that her own imaginary prayer might be delivered to a sobbing audience with greater effect, unhindered by the feeble murmurs of her school-fellow. This state of affairs lasted through one or two of the meetings, and then the innings of the Adversary began.

“How ridiculous it is! How absurd you are, making up grand speeches to say to God! How silly it is to be kneeling in this stuffy, dusty room, telling God things that He knows already! How disgusting this waterproof smells!”

She jerked it off with an impatient movement, and it fell upon the head of the girl who knelt next to her, enveloping her in its voluminous folds. She struggled wildly to free herself, “like a cat with its head in a jug,” as Bridget afterwards described the episode, and she began to laugh, softly at first; then the desperate struggles of the girl redoubled themselves so uncontrollably that the form shook, and Essie Langford, who knelt at her left, raised her head sharply, with a sigh of relief when she discovered the cause. Essie’s conversion at the best of times hardly deserved the skin-deep description. Bridget had insisted upon it, as a matter of fact, and now her shallow, pleasure-loving little soul rejoiced, foreseeing the end.

Mary Morton, who was praying, began the first words of the Lord’s Prayer; and when the murmur of response was at its fullest, Essie seized her opportunity.

“Bridget!” Bridget had controlled her laughter, and there was no reply to the whisper.

“Bid!” urged Essie.

“‘Thy will be done’— What?” answered Bridget. The last word was jerked out impatiently, as if in spite of herself.

“The little ones are playing rounders, awfully badly.”

“Be quiet! I know it. Let me think!” she whispered back fiercely; “‘and lead us not into temptation,’” she added, mechanically following the voice of the praying girl.

The Amen was followed by the silence of private prayer, broken suddenly by a quick, decided movement from Bridget, who all at once sprang to her feet. Every head was raised curiously, and in a moment or two every girl had risen from her knees.

“Wait a minute!” Bridget cried, “I began these meetings, so I ought to tell you I’m not coming to any more of them. I’m tired of them. I don’t believe it interests God a bit to see us all kneeling down in this horrid dusty room; and He can hear much better prayers in church.”

There was a horrified murmur of “Bridget!”

“Well, so He can, if He likes prayers. I don’t believe He does, because He never answers any.... Anyway, it’s fine weather. I vote we have rounders after tea.”

There was a large assembly at rounders that evening, and Miss Ruggles, shutting her bedroom window with a bang, remarked to Miss Shuttleworth, the drawing-mistress, that conversion and peace were practically at an end.

The fact that Bridget’s mind had been seriously turned to spiritual matters, however, was not without permanent result. She had been unnaturally quiet throughout a Scripture lesson one Sunday, a month or two after Myrtle Lodge had resumed its normal tone. Just as the lesson was finished she said suddenly, fixing her eyes earnestly on Miss Ruggles,—

“But this is what I want to know,—how do you know there is a God?”

There was an electric silence.

“And you can read your Bible, Bridget, and ask me that!” Miss Ruggles replied in an awed tone.

“But that is just why I do ask. Is there a way of proving that the Bible is true?”

“Yes, there is the way of faith,” Miss Ruggles returned with impressive solemnity, if defective logic.

“But that isn’t a proof; it’s a feeling.”

“A feeling which you must try to cultivate, Bridget. These very foolish ideas spring from your rebellious nature and defiance of all rules,—your habit of questioning the authority of any one who is set over you. It will lead you into great sin unless you guard against it watchfully and with prayer.”

“When I grow up,” said Bridget, abstractedly, as though following her own train of thought, “I will find out about these things; but I sha’n’t believe or disbelieve them yet. There’s no good in it that I can see.”

CHAPTER II

Rilchester, Bridget’s home, was a fair-sized, bustling market-town.

At the corner of the High Street stood The Golden Plume, Mr. Ruan’s property, a large, prosperous-looking public house, with an adjoining private dwelling.

On the day Bridget left school, Mrs. Ruan sat in the drawing-room, with her sister, Mrs. Wainright, a plump, middle-aged woman, who had married a small farmer and lived at Sidford, a town some twenty miles distant from Rilchester.

The room in which the two women were seated was of the uncompromising square description, with two flat sash-windows overlooking the High Street. It was furnished in the style that was fashionable when Mrs. Ruan was married; but in its accessories, leanings towards æstheticism, as understood in Rilchester, were observable. These took the form of Liberty antimacassars tied over the backs of the gilt chairs, flights of Japanese fans (partly concealing the somewhat florid wall paper, with its design of yellow roses and butterflies), and sundry painted tambourines, tied with bunches of colored ribbons, depending from the walls or perched jauntily on screens.

The room was incongruous enough, but it did not lack in detail certain deft, dainty touches, which indicated that its possessor gave the rein to her artistic sense as far as, and on the lines on which it had been developed.

This was best exemplified in the appearance of Mrs. Ruan herself and her immediate surroundings. She was a slightly faded but young-looking woman, with blond hair curling a little stiffly above a pretty, somewhat lined and care-worn face. She dressed well. There was no hint of vulgarity or display, but a considerable amount of grace in the simple silk dress she wore, and the soft folds of the gauze fichu knotted at the breast.

The little tea-table drawn up to the fire was dainty too. It was covered by a simple linen cloth trimmed with lace, and the doily that lay in the cake-basket was fine in texture and white as snow.

“You go in for afternoon tea, I see,” said her sister, with the faintest touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Quite fashionable.” She put her cup to her lips, and drank off its contents at one gulp, as she spoke, as a sort of protest.

“Yes, I like it. I think it’s a pretty fashion. Why shouldn’t I have it, if I want to? Of course ’Enry says it’s a ‘lot of tomfoolery,’ but that don’t matter to me.”

Mrs. Ruan occasionally dropped an h, but her voice was clear and musical like her daughter’s.

“Besides, with Bridget coming home and all, I want to have things nice for her. She’ll look for it.”

“When do you expect ’er?”

“In about an hour,” Mrs. Ruan said, glancing at the clock, her face brightening. “There! I ’ave been looking forward to her coming home. I’ve missed ’er dreadfully,—that I ’ave; but of course I had to think of her education. ’Enry was always against this school, you know,—grumbled at the expense an’ all; but I was determined she should go and have good schooling.”

Mrs. Wainright grunted a little.

“I don’t know that ’Enry wasn’t right,” she said. “I always thought it was a mistake myself.”

“A mistake,” her sister echoed indignantly. Her face flushed. “But there, Jinny, you never did have a spark of ambition for your children. Now, I have, and it’s harder for me than for you, p’rhaps,” she added wistfully. “Of course I wouldn’t own it to any one else, but a sister’s different. There’s no doubt about it, a public house is looked down on. It’s a fine paying thing, of course, an’ I can’t say a word against it; that’s where all the bread and butter has come from. But people don’t like it. And if I hadn’t always ’eld my head up, we should never have known the people we do. We should have had to be content with the Browns—you know—that greengrocer lot, and the Witleys—the tobacconists, and that kind. But I never would know them, and now we do go to the Jenkinses sometimes, and the Wilbys, and the Walkers. Not that, between you and me, I think the Jenkinses are any superior to us. Old Jenkins isn’t a bit refined, to my taste, but they’ve got a nice genteel business, and they’re well thought of in the town, and of course that makes a difference.”

“Well, you know your own affairs, I s’pose,” returned her sister; “but my opinion ain’t altered. The girl will come ’ome with ’er ’ed choke full of ’igh and mighty ideas, an’ you won’t find she’s goin’ to be satisfied with the Jenkinses—nor the Wilbys, for that matter, neither. Unfitting a girl for ’er station in life, I call all this education. My Bessie and Janey shall never ’ave it—I’ll see to that.”

“Ah!” broke in Mrs. Ruan eagerly, ignoring the latter part of the speech; “but I look higher for Bid than the Wilbys or Jenkinses even. She’ll meet their friends of course, and be fit to meet them now after being at school all these years. Why, young Spiller, that young fellow in Bailey’s Bank, and Downs, he’s a clerk in Hobson’s office, and Danby, they all visit the Jenkinses. I daresay they laugh at them behind their back,” she continued, as though stating an obvious possibility, “but they go. Bid will marry one of them, I expect, and then she’ll be out of trade altogether.”

“Much better if she stopped in,” Mrs. Wainright said with a sniff. “She’d get a chance of a comfortable ’ome with a nice young publican. Don’t talk to me about yer tuppenny-’apenny clerks.”

Mrs. Ruan drew herself up. “That was always like you, Jinny, always looking out for the main chance. As for me, I’d sooner ’ave my girl married to a man with a nice genteel occupation than have so much money. Besides, all these young fellers have expectations,” she added inconsequently.

“Well, mark my words, you’ll ’ave a time with ’er,” replied Mrs. Wainright. “The child’s been away from you all these years, except fer the ’olidays; and then you’ve generally sent ’er into the country because of ’er ’ealth, or something. Why, you hardly know ’er. You don’t know what she’s like to live with.”

“Bid’s all right,” her mother said confidently. “A more affectionate child you wouldn’t meet with in a day’s march. I own she’s a bit queer sometimes,” she went on slowly, after a moment’s pause, “and she’s got a temper—that’s not to be denied. She’s got mother’s temper, as well as her looks,” she added, “and ’er sharp tongue too.”

“’Ave you got that old picture of mother as a girl?” asked Mrs. Wainright presently. “I ’aven’t seen it for years.”

“Yes, here.” Mrs. Ruan rose and went to a desk under the gilt-legged table at the other end of the room. She unlocked it, and, searching among the papers, presently took out something with which she returned to the fire. “I’ll light the gas,” she said; “it’s quite dusk—you can’t see.”

The gas-jet flared up, and Mrs. Wainright turned the sketch to the light.

It was the head of a fisher girl. A gray kerchief was tied over her curling hair, and a coarse gray peasant’s frock, open carelessly at the neck, was just indicated. The girl’s face was beautiful; there was a touch of dignity about it that was even more arresting than its beauty. On the back of the sketch was scribbled, “Bridget O’Hea,” and a few almost illegible words in French.

“What does that mean?” she asked her sister.

“I don’t know. Father saw it in one of those artist-men’s sketch-books, and wanted to buy it, I’ve heard mother say; but ’e gave it to him—said he had plenty more of her.”

“Bridget’s the very image of her, isn’t she?”

“Yes—might be ’er daughter. She don’t favor either you or ’Enry a bit,” Mrs. Wainright declared.

“Do you remember when we were little, running about barefoot on the shore at Dara’s Bay?” asked her sister presently in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder to see that the door was shut; “and mother telling us stories over the peat fire in the evenings—an’ singing. What queer outlandish things she told us, do you remember?—and the things she sung. Sometimes I ’ave the air running in my head for days now, and I can see her great big eyes when she told the stories to us children—just like Bid’s. Do you remember the painter-folk that hung about the cottage? Mother used to wear a scarlet shawl, and sit on that bit of old wall by the sea—didn’t she?—and knit. Can’t you see her now? And the artists that used to come and talk to her? She always made them laugh, I mind me.”

“Yes. Who’d think, to see us sittin’ in our drawing-rooms now, we’d come out of that little wood shanty?” Mrs. Wainright replied. “But I don’t know that we weren’t ’appy enough.”

“Bridget came across this picture one day, when she was a little thing,” Mrs. Ruan resumed after a pause, locking the sketch away in the desk again, “and she asked who it was, and I told ’er it was her grandmother, but she was never to tell a word about ’er being only a fisher girl. And what do you think she said?—that’s what I mean by Bridget being queer. She said she’d much rather be a fisher girl and live in a hut by the sea than keep a public house. I smacked her for it—silly little thing.—She ought to be here by this time.

“Oh, here’s father!” Mr. Ruan was a thick-set, rather powerfully built man, with a somewhat florid complexion, and a taciturn manner.

“Room’s very ’ot,” he remarked, shaking hands with his sister-in-law. “Bridget not come yet?”

“No, she’ll be here in a few minutes. I didn’t go to meet her because Jinny came in. There! that’s the cab, isn’t it?”

She ran to the top of the stairs, but Bridget was already half way up.

“Well, mother!” she cried gayly, flinging herself into her arms. “Here I am!—the train was awfully late. How are you, father? oh! and Aunt Jinny.”

She entered the room with her arm round her mother’s waist, kissing her between the words, over and over again. The maid came in with fresh tea, and she sank into a low chair by the fire, pulling off her gloves, and chattering.

Mrs. Ruan glanced triumphantly at her sister, and then back again at Bridget.

“Child! how you’ve grown!” she exclaimed, with a glance at the girl’s slight, erect figure and bright eyes.

“So I ought,” Bridget cried. “I’m eighteen. Eighteen! Aunt Jinny, what do you think of that? Lovely tea, mother—oh! and hot cakes!—delicious!”

Presently Mrs. Wainright rose to go. Mr. Ruan accompanied her to the front door, and his wife left the room to give an order to the maid about the luggage.

Bridget was left alone for a few minutes.

She glanced round the room, and the light went out of her eyes. She heard her father’s gruff voice in the passage downstairs. “Tell that idiot of a maid of yours to take these boxes out of the way!” he shouted irritably.

The color flamed in the girl’s cheeks. She rose from her seat, and went slowly to the fire, and knelt before it. She saw the red glow of the coals through a blinding haze of tears.

In a flash, as it seemed, the full significance of her home-coming was revealed to her.

“Oh!” she whispered, “what a wicked girl I am! I’m glad to see mother, but—I—don’t want to come home. I didn’t know it would be as bad as this.— What shall I do? What shall I do?”

“An invitation for the Jenkinses—for the 14th,” Mrs. Ruan said, triumphantly, coming into the dining-room one morning.

Bridget sat at the table writing. She had been home about three months. Mr. Ruan, who had not yet gone to business, lay back in his arm-chair before the fire, with the paper. His coat hung over the back of the chair; he usually preferred to sit in his shirt-sleeves when he was off duty.

Bridget looked up. She frowned a little, began to speak, and was silent, biting the end of her pen.

“Well, what is it?” Mrs. Ruan’s voice changed at once into an irritable, complaining key. “You don’t want to go, I suppose?”

“Don’t want to go?—why not?” exclaimed Mr. Ruan, looking up from his paper. “Aren’t the Jenkinses good enough for her? You don’t seem to ’ave made so many friends at school, my girl; so if you’re not invited away to stay with swells, you must put up with the people ’ere, or go without.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to go,” Bridget replied, turning away her head.

“Didn’t say. Of course not; it’s your manner,” retorted her mother. “I thought you’d come back more fit to ornament society, that I did,” she said bitterly. “Instead of which you seem to care for no gayeties like other girls—nothing but those everlasting books. I’m sure—”

“That ’ull do, mother,” her husband broke in, raising his voice. “She’ll go—that’s all about it—and take some music, can’t you?” he added angrily, turning to Bridget, “and let them see you can play. Hang it all! I expect old Joe Jenkins is laughing in his sleeve, to think of all the money I’ve spent on you. A ’undred and twenty a year! and what’s the good of it?”

Bridget sprang to her feet, and with reckless haste began sweeping all her papers together.

“Do let’s talk about something else!” she cried, with sudden passion.

“Why haven’t any of your school-fellows asked you to their homes?” inquired her mother, querulously. “I daresay you were stupid enough to tell them who we are, and that’s why.”

“That is just the reason!” Bridget exclaimed, closing her lips tightly.

“Well!—of all—”

But Bridget had reached the open door. She ran upstairs to her room, and shut herself in.

Mrs. Ruan waited till she heard the bedroom door shut, and then broke into helpless tears.

CHAPTER III

The Jenkins party was at its height. The plush-covered chairs were all pushed back against the wall, leaving a sea of crimson carpet exposed, in the midst of which, like a solitary black island, stood a tall hat, into which Mr. Jenkins was endeavoring to throw cards. On the marble-topped chiffonier, in front of a glass-covered statuette of a fat little girl with an emaciated lamb, and a little boy in a white parian sailor suit teaching a dog to beg, there were plates of nuts, half oranges, and apples cut into quarters.

The light from the glass chandelier, with all its dangling irresponsible pendants, streamed down upon the kneeling form of Mr. Jenkins, and brilliantly illuminated the scene. A group of young men, among whom were a few girls in a chronic state of giggle, stood behind their host, applauding his skill, or making rash boasts about the brilliance shortly to be observed in their own performances, when he should have resigned his place. The rest of the company sat round the room on the plush-covered chairs. Most of the young men had congregated on one side, and the girls on the other.

Only two or three of the men were in evening dress. The girls for the most part wore much starched summer muslins, high at the neck and long in the sleeves. Some of them had put on their winter best gowns, and attempted to give the “evening” touch by bows of heliotrope or pink chiffon, light gloves, and hair bound with a colored ribbon.

Mrs. Jenkins, a fat comfortable lady in black silk, with an écru lace cap, sat in an arm-chair, alternately beaming upon the young people and applauding “papa’s” lucky shots.

“Carrie, dear, won’t you give us a song?” she begged presently. “That pretty new one of yours—what is it? I never can remember.”

“Oh, lor, ma! How many times am I to tell you it’s as old as the hills! She means ‘Queen of my Heart,’” said Carrie, turning to the girl next her. “Every one’s sick and tired of it, of course, but pa likes it.”

“Never mind, dear, it’s always sweet. I love it. It reminds me of that darling Haydn Coffin. Isn’t he a dear? Isn’t he handsome? My! Susie and I did make fools of ourselves over him the first time we saw him. Do sing it, Carrie. I’ll shut my eyes and dream of him,” she cried in a tone of chastened sorrow, though her smile was cheerful. She was a plump girl, with green plush sleeves, and a Swiss belt covered with coffee lace.

Carrie rose to look for her music.

“Allow me,” said one of the young men, crossing the room in a great hurry. Mr. Spiller was tall and pale, with a facetious expression and sandy hair. He was a great wit, and whenever he said, “Allow me,” or “May I offer you any refreshment?” the girls giggled.

“Mr. Spiller, how absurd you are! You’re killing,” Carrie murmured, with laughter.

“Not at all,” observed Mr. Spiller, with truth. “Always delighted to wait on the ladies, I’m sure. Little dears! we all love them.”

“Rude man,” said Carrie, shaking out her skirts, and pushing the music-stool backwards and forwards.

Mr. Spiller’s gallantry did not carry him far enough to turn over the leaves of the song. He presently strolled away, and walked leisurely in front of the rank of chairs on the girls’ side of the room, with his hands in his pockets. Some of them nudged each other as he passed, and giggled.

“Doesn’ he fancy himself—just,” observed Mary Wilby. “But he’s handsome, don’t you think so?”

“Yes, isn’t he divine!” whispered her friend. “I b’lieve he’s going to talk to Miss Ruan. Yes,” with a sigh, “he is.”

“She fancies herself, if you like. I believe she’s awfully stuck-up—really; despises us, I shouldn’t wonder, for all she’s pleasant enough when you meet her.”

“Stuck up! what’s she got to be stuck-up about? Why, her father’s only a publican. I must say I wonder at Mrs. Jenkins knowing the Ruans. Nice shop and all as they’ve got, and so well up as you might say they are. I hate public-house people myself. It’s such a low business. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t look much as though she belonged to one, does she? Queer-looking girl. Do you think she’s pretty?”

“No—much too strange-looking for my taste. I suppose we’re not good enough for her after her boarding-school people. She’s never made any friends since she came home. I don’t know her at all—don’t want to either; but Nellie Clarke says she went in there one day, and couldn’t get on with her a bit. She was polite enough, but Nellie says she couldn’t understand her; she didn’t seem to care for anything—not the church even, nor Mr. Millar, and he’s the best-looking of the curates. Anyway, Nellie couldn’t do with her at all.”

“Look at her,” urged Mary, nudging her friend again. “She’s hardly answering Charley Downs. Don’t you hate that way she has of looking on the carpet?—so indifferent; though I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t to show off her eyelashes. I believe she can hardly keep a sneer off her face.”

“She wouldn’t surely have the cheek to sneer at Charley Downs. Surely he’s good enough for her. Why, he’s in Bailey’s Bank, you know.”

“Oh, bless you, she wants a duke! What a dress, too. I think it’s downright affectation to come in a dress as plain as that. Just to make herself look different from us. She knew all the girls would likely wear their summer muslins.”

“It’s awfully well made, though; and that bit of lace is good, you can see.”

“So it ought to be. They’ve plenty of money—must have, or her dad couldn’t have sent her to a swell school.”

The conversation, to which “Queen of my Heart” had made an excellent accompaniment, was broken off by the inevitable high note with which all of Carrie’s songs ended.

“Thank you, dear!” both girls exclaimed, in haste and simultaneously. “We have enjoyed it so.”

“Carrie, my girl, let’s have something to eat,” shouted Mr. Jenkins, who had persistently aimed cards at the hat throughout the song, accompanied by loud exclamations at intervals of “Got ’im!” “Boss shot!” “Try another!”

“Here, you young folks! Can’t enjoy yourselves on an empty stomach, you know. All nonsense.”

“Pa!” exclaimed Carrie, with annoyance. “How stupid you are!”

“Stupid, my dear, I may be; faint, I am. When’s supper, mother? Oh my! look at ’em frowning! Said something I oughtn’t to, ’ave I? Can’t help it. Food’s the main thing in life, eh? What do you say, all of you?”

Mr. Jenkins trotted about with a plate of ginger-nuts in one hand, and one of quartered apples in the other, talking cheerfully to the company at large.

“Now, young men, make yourselves useful. Wait on the ladies.”

Thus admonished, the youths dashed at the chiffonier, where they jostled one another for the green dessert plates.

“Have a nut, Miss Ruan,” implored Mr. Spiller, returning to her side. “So sustaining. Not one? Won’t you share one with me now?” he whispered facetiously, bending towards her.

The girl drew back proudly. There was no mistaking the gesture.

“That girl of Ruan’s is too big for her boots, as the saying is,” whispered Mrs. Jenkins to a friend.

“Is she? She’s quiet, I noticed, but she’s pleasant mannered enough, I thought.”

“Look at ’er with young Spiller. I don’t call that pleasant.”

“Perhaps he’s offended her,” Mrs. Walker returned comfortably. “Young men nowadays are very free, I fancy. When I was young—”

“Nonsense. Why, most girls like a bit of chaff. I’ve no patience with stuck-up rubbish like that.”

“Now, you girls and boys,” called Mr. Jenkins’s voice, drowning the buzz of talk and laughter, and clatter of plates, “what do you say to kiss-in-the-ring! There’ll be just time for a good game before supper, eh, missus?”

Some of the girls furtively tossed their heads. “So common,” one or two murmured.