World of Girls: The Story of a School — Chapters 45-48

CHAPTER XLV. TIGER.

It was still very, very early in the morning, and the gypsy folk, tired from their march on the preceding day, slept.

There stood the conical, queer-shaped tents, four in number; at a little distance off grazed the donkeys and a couple of rough mules; at the door of the tents lay stretched out in profound repose two or three dogs.

Annie dreaded the barking of the dogs, although she guessed that if they set up a noise, and a gypsy wife or man put out their heads in consequence, they would only desire the gypsy child to lie down and keep quiet.

She stood still for a moment--she was very anxious to prowl around the place and examine the ground while the gypsies still slept, but the watchful dogs deterred her.

She stood perfectly quiet behind the hedgerow, thinking hard.

Should she trust to a charm she knew she possessed, and venture into the encampment?

Annie had almost as great a fascination over dogs and cats as she had over children.

As a little child going to visit with her mother at strange houses, the watch-dogs never barked at her; on the contrary, they yielded to the charm which seemed to come from her little fingers as she patted their great heads.

Slowly their tails would move backward and forward as she patted them, and even the most ferocious would look at her with affection.

Annie wondered if the gypsy dogs would now allow her to approach without barking.

She felt that the chances were in her favor; she was dressed in gypsy garments, there would be nothing strange in her appearance, and if she could get near one of the dogs she knew that she could exercise the magic of her touch.

Her object, then, was to approach one of the tents very, very quietly--so softly that even the dog's ears should not detect the light footfall.

If she could approach close enough to put her hand on the dog's neck all would be well.

She pulled off the gypsy maid's rough shoes, hid them in the grass where she could find them again, and came gingerly step by step, nearer and nearer the principal tent.

At its entrance lay a ferocious-looking half-bred bull-dog.

Annie possessed that necessary accompaniment to courage--great outward calm; the greater the danger, the more cool and self-possessed did she become.

She was within a step or two of the tent when she trod accidentally on a small twig; it cracked, giving her foot a sharp pain, and very slight as the sound was, causing the bull-dog to awake.

He raised his wicked face, saw the figure like his own people, and yet unlike, but a step or two away, and, uttering a low growl, sprang forward.

In the ordinary course of things this growl would have risen in volume and would have terminated in a volley of barking; but Annie was prepared: she went down on her knees, held out her arms, said, "Poor fellow!"

in her own seductive voice, and the bull-dog fawned at her feet.

He licked one of her hands while she patted him gently with the other.

"Come, poor fellow," she said then in a gentle tone, and Annie and the dog began to perambulate round the tents.

The other dogs raised sleepy eyes, but seeing Tiger and the girl together, took no notice whatever, except by a thwack or two of their stumpy tails.

Annie was now looking not only at the tents, but for something else which Zillah, her nurse, had told her might be found near to many gypsy encampments.

This was a small subterranean passage, which generally led into a long-disused underground Danish fort.

Zillah had told her what uses the gypsies liked to make of these underground passages, and how they often chose those which had two entrances.

She told her that in this way they eluded the police, and were enabled successfully to hide the goods which they stole.

She had also described to her their great ingenuity in hiding the entrances to these underground retreats.

Annie's idea now was that little Nan was hidden in one of these vaults, and she determined first to make sure of its existence, and then to venture herself into this underground region in search of the lost child.

She had made a decided conquest in the person of Tiger, who followed her round and round the tents, and when the gypsies at last began to stir, and Annie crept into the hedgerow, the dog crouched by her side.

Tiger was the favorite dog of the camp, and presently one of the men called to him; he rose unwillingly, looked back with longing eyes at Annie, and trotted off, to return in the space of about five minutes with a great hunch of broken bread in his mouth.

This was his breakfast, and he meant to share it with his new friend.

Annie was too hungry to be fastidious, and she also knew the necessity of keeping up her strength.

She crept still farther under the hedge, and the dog and girl shared the broken bread between them.

Presently the tents were all astir; the gypsy children began to swarm about, the women lit fires in the open air, and the smell of very appetizing breakfasts filled the atmosphere.

The men also lounged into view, standing lazily at the doors of their tents, and smoking great pipes of tobacco.

Annie lay quiet.

She could see from her hiding-place without being seen.

Suddenly--and her eyes began to dilate, and she found her heart beating strangely--she laid her hand on Tiger, who was quivering all over.

"Stay with me, dear dog," she said.

There was a great commotion and excitement in the gypsy camp; the children screamed and ran into the tents, the women paused in their preparation for breakfast, the men took their short pipes out of their mouths; every dog, with the exception of Tiger, barked ferociously.

Tiger and Annie alone were motionless.

The cause of all this uproar was a body of police, about six in number, who came boldly into the field, and demanded instantly to search the tents.

"We want a woman who calls herself Mother Rachel," they said.

"She belongs to this encampment.

We know her; let her come forward at once; we wish to question her."

The men stood about; the women came near; the children crept out of their tents, placing their fingers to their frightened lips, and staring at the men who represented those horrors to their unsophisticated minds called Law and Order.

"We must search the tents.

We won't stir from the spot until we have had an interview with Mother Rachel," said the principal member of the police force.

The men answered respectfully that the gypsy mother was not yet up; but if the gentlemen would wait a moment she would soon come and speak to them.

The officers expressed their willingness to wait, and collected round the tents.

Just at this instant, under the hedgerow, Tiger raised his head.

Annie's watchful eyes accompanied the dog's. He was gazing after a tiny gypsy maid who was skulking along the hedge, and who presently disappeared through a very small opening into the neighboring field.

Quick as thought Annie, holding Tiger's collar, darted after her.

The little maid heard the footsteps; but seeing another gypsy girl, and their own dog, Tiger, she took no further notice, but ran openly and very swiftly across the field until she came to a broken wall.

Here she tugged and tugged at some loose stones, managed to push one away, and then called down into the ground: "Mother Rachel!"

"Come, Tiger," said Annie.

She flew to a hedge not far off, and once more the dog and she hid themselves.

The small girl was too excited to notice either their coming or going; she went on calling anxiously into the ground: "Mother Rachel!

Mother Rachel!"

Presently a black head and a pair of brawny shoulders appeared, and the tall woman whose face and figure Annie knew so well stepped up out of the ground, pushed back the stones into their place, and, taking the gypsy child into her arms, ran swiftly across the field in the direction of the tents.

CHAPTER XLVI. FOR LOVE OF NAN.

Now was Annie's time.

"Tiger," she said, for she had heard the men calling the dog's name, "I want to go right down into that hole in the ground, and you are to come with me.

Don't let us lose a moment, good dog."

The dog wagged his tail, capered about in front of Annie, and then with a wonderful shrewdness ran before her to the broken wall, where he stood with his head bent downward and his eyes fixed on the ground.

Annie pulled and tugged at the loose stones; they were so heavy and cunningly arranged that she wondered how the little maid, who was smaller than herself, had managed to remove them.

She saw quickly, however, that they were arranged with a certain leverage, and that the largest stone, that which formed the real entrance to the underground passage, was balanced in its place in such a fashion that when she leaned on a certain portion of it, it moved aside, and allowed plenty of room for her to go down into the earth.

Very dark and dismal and uninviting did the rude steps, which led nobody knew where, appear.

For one moment Annie hesitated; but the thought of Nan hidden somewhere in this awful wretchedness nerved her courage.

"Go first, Tiger, please," she said, and the dog scampered down, sniffing the earth as he went.

Annie followed him, but she had scarcely got her head below the level of the ground before she found herself in total and absolute darkness; she had unwittingly touched the heavy stone, which had swung back into its place.

She heard Tiger sniffing below, and, calling him to keep by her side, she went very carefully down and down and down, until at last she knew by the increase of air that she must have come to the end of the narrow entrance passage.

She was now able to stand upright, and raising her hand, she tried in vain to find a roof.

The room where she stood, then, must be lofty.

She went forward in the utter darkness very, very slowly; suddenly her head again came in contact with the roof; she made a few steps farther on, and then found that to proceed at all she must go on her hands and knees.

She bent down and peered through the darkness.

"We'll go on, Tiger," she said, and, holding the dog's collar and clinging to him for protection, she crept along the narrow passage.

Suddenly she gave an exclamation of joy--at the other end of this gloomy passage was light--faint twilight surely, but still undoubted light, which came down from some chink in the outer world.

Annie came to the end of the passage, and, standing upright, found herself suddenly in a room;

a very small and miserable room certainly, but with the twilight shining through it, which revealed not only that it was a room, but a room which contained a heap of straw, a three-legged stool, and two or three cracked cups and saucers.

Here, then, was Mother Rachel's lair, and here she must look for Nan.

The darkness had been so intense that even the faint twilight of this little chamber had dazzled Annie's eyes for a moment; the next, however, her vision became clear.

She saw that the straw bed contained a bundle;

she went near--out of the wrapped-up bundle of shawls appeared the head of a child.

The child slept, and moaned in its slumbers.

Annie bent over it and said, "Thank God!"

in a tone of rapture, and then, stooping down, she passionately kissed the lips of little Nan.

Nan's skin had been dyed with the walnut-juice, her pretty, soft hair had been cut short, her dainty clothes had been changed for the most ragged gipsy garments, but still she was undoubtedly Nan, the child whom Annie had come to save.

From her uneasy slumbers the poor little one awoke with a cry of terror.

She could not recognize Annie's changed face, and clasped her hands before her eyes, and said piteously: "Me want to go home--go 'way, naughty woman, me want my Annie."

"Little darling!"

said Annie, in her sweetest tones.

The changed face had not appealed to Nan, but the old voice went straight to her baby heart;

she stopped crying and looked anxiously toward the entrance of the room.

"Tum in, Annie--me here, Annie--little Nan want 'oo."

Annie glanced around her in despair.

Suddenly her quick eyes lighted on a jug of water; she flew to it, and washed and laved her face.

"Coming, darling," she said, as she tried to remove the hateful dye.

She succeeded partly, and when she came back, to her great joy, the child recognized her.

"Now, little precious, we will get out of this as fast as we can," said Annie, and, clasping Nan tightly in her arms, she prepared to return by the way she had come.

Then and there, for the first time, there flashed across her memory the horrible fact that the stone door had swung back into its place, and that by no possible means could she open it.

She and Nan and Tiger were buried in a living tomb, and must either stay there and perish, or await the tender mercies of the cruel Mother Rachel.

Nan, with her arms tightly clasped round Annie's neck, began to cry fretfully.

She was impatient to get out of this dismal place; she was no longer oppressed by fears, for with the Annie whom she loved she felt absolutely safe; but she was hungry and cold and uncomfortable, and it seemed but a step, to little inexperienced Nan, from Annie's arms to her snug, cheerful nursery at Lavender House.

"Tum, Annie--tum home, Annie," she begged and, when Annie did not stir, she began to weep.

In truth, the poor, brave little girl was sadly puzzled, and her first gleam of returning hope lay in the remembrance of Zillah's words, that there were generally two entrances to these old underground forts.

Tiger, who seemed thoroughly at home in this little room, and had curled himself up comfortably on the heap of straw, had probably often been here before.

Perhaps Tiger knew the way to the second entrance.

Annie called him to her side.

"Tiger," she said, going down on her knees, and looking full into his ugly but intelligent face, "Nan and I want to go out of this."

Tiger wagged his stumpy tail.

"We are hungry, Tiger, and we want something to eat, and you'd like a bone, wouldn't you?"

Tiger's tail went with ferocious speed, and he licked Annie's hand.

"There's no use going back that way, dear dog," continued the girl, pointing with her arm in the direction they had come.

"The door is fastened, Tiger, and we can't get out.

We can't get out because the door is shut."

The dog's tail had ceased to wag; he took in the situation, for his whole expression showed dejection, and he drooped his head.

It was now quite evident to Annie that Tiger had been here before, and that on some other occasion in his life he had wanted to get out and could not because the door was shut.

"Now, Tiger," said Annie, speaking cheerfully, and rising to her feet, "we must get out.

Nan and I are hungry, and you want your bone.

Take us out the other way, good Tiger--the other way, dear dog."

She moved instantly toward the little passage; the dog followed her.

"The other way," she said, and she turned her back on the long narrow passage, and took a step or two into complete darkness.

The dog began to whine, caught hold of her dress, and tried to pull her back.

"Quite right, Tiger, we won't go that way," said Annie, instantly.

She returned into the dimly-lighted room.

"Find a way--find a way out, Tiger," she said.

The dog evidently understood her; he moved restlessly about the room.

Finally he got up on the bed, pulled and scratched and tore away the straw at the upper end, then, wagging his tail, flew to Annie's side.

She came back with him.

Beneath the straw was a tiny, tiny trap-door.

"Oh, Tiger!"

said the girl; she went down on her knees, and, finding she could not stir it, wondered if this also was kept in its place by a system of balancing.

She was right; after a very little pressing the door moved aside, and Annie saw four or five rudely carved steps.

"Come, Nan," she said joyfully, "Tiger has saved us; these steps must lead us out."

The dog, with a joyful whine, went down first, and Annie, clasping Nan tightly in her arms, followed him.

Four, five, six steps they went down;

then, to Annie's great joy, she found that the next step began to ascend.

Up and up she went, cheered by a welcome shaft of light.

Finally she, Nan, and the dog found themselves emerging into the open air, through a hole which might have been taken for a large rabbit burrow.

CHAPTER XLVII. RESCUED.

The girl, the child, and the dog found themselves in a comparatively strange country--Annie had completely lost her bearings.

She looked around her for some sign of the gypsies' encampment; but whether she had really gone a greater distance than she imagined in those underground vaults, or whether the tents were hidden in some hollow of the ground, she did not know; she was only conscious that she was in a strange country, that Nan was clinging to her and crying for her breakfast, and that Tiger was sniffing the air anxiously.

Annie guessed that Tiger could take them back to the camp, but this was by no means her wish.

When she emerged out of the underground passage she was conscious for the first time of a strange and unknown experience.

Absolute terror seized the brave child; she trembled from head to foot, her head ached violently, and the ground on which she stood seemed to reel, and the sky to turn round.

She sat down for a moment on the green grass.

What ailed her?

where was she?

how could she get home?

Nan's little piteous wail, "Me want my bekfas', me want my nursie, me want Hetty," almost irritated her.

"Oh, Nan," she said at last piteously, "have you not got your own Annie?

Oh, Nan, dear little Nan, Annie feels so ill!"

Nan had the biggest and softest of baby hearts--breakfast, nurse, Hetty, were all forgotten in the crowning desire to comfort Annie.

She climbed on her knee and stroked her face and kissed her lips.

"'Oo better now?"

she said in a tone of baby inquiry.

Annie roused herself with a great effort.

"Yes, darling," she said; "we will try and get home.

Come, Tiger.

Tiger, dear, I don't want to go back to the gypsies; take me the other way--take me to Oakley."

Tiger again sniffed the air, looked anxiously at Annie, and trotted on in front.

Little Nan in her ragged gypsy clothes walked sedately by Annie's side.

"Where 'oo s'oes?"

she said, pointing to the girl's bare feet.

"Gone, Nan--gone.

Never mind, I've got you.

My little treasure, my little love, you're safe at last."

As Annie tottered, rather than walked, down a narrow path which led directly through a field of standing corn, she was startled by the sudden apparition of a bright-eyed girl, who appeared so suddenly in her path that she might have been supposed to have risen out of the very ground.

The girl stared hard at Annie, fixed her eyes inquiringly on Nan and Tiger, and then turning on her heel, dashed up the path, went through a turnstile, across the road, and into a cottage.

"Mother," she exclaimed, "I said she warn't a real gypsy; she's a-coming back, and her face is all streaked like, and she has a little'un along with her, and a dawg, and the only one as is gypsy is the dawg.

Come and look at her, mother; oh, she is a fine take-in!"

The round-faced, good-humored looking mother, whose name was Mrs. Williams, had been washing and putting away the breakfast things when her daughter entered.

She now wiped her hands hastily and came to the cottage door.

"Cross the road, and come to the stile, mother," said the energetic Peggy--"oh, there she be a-creeping along--oh, ain't she a take-in?"

"'Sakes alive!"

ejaculated Mrs. Williams, "the girl is ill!

why, she can't keep herself steady!

There!

I knew she'd fall; ah!

poor little thing--poor little thing."

It did not take Mrs. Williams an instant to reach Annie's side; and in another moment she had lifted her in her strong arms and carried her into the cottage, Peggy lifting Nan and following in the rear, while Tiger walked by their sides.

CHAPTER XLVIII. DARK DAYS.

A whole week had passed, and there were no tidings whatever of little Nan or of Annie Forest.

No one at Lavender House had heard a word about them;

the police came and went, detectives even arrived from London, but there were no traces whatever of the missing children.

The midsummer holiday was now close at hand, but no one spoke of it or thought of it.

Mrs. Willis told the teachers that the prizes should be distributed, but she said she could invite no guests and could allow of no special festivities.

Miss Danesbury and Miss Good repeated her words to the schoolgirls, who answered without hesitation that they did not wish for feasting and merriment; they would rather the day passed unnoticed.

In truth, the fact that their baby was gone, that their favorite and prettiest and brightest schoolmate had also disappeared, caused such gloom, such distress, such apprehension that even the most thoughtless of those girls could scarcely have laughed or been merry.

School-hours were still kept after a fashion, but there was no life in the lessons.

In truth, it seemed as if the sun would never shine again at Lavender House.

Hester was ill; not very ill--she had no fever, she had no cold; she had, as the good doctor explained it, nothing at all wrong, except that her nervous system had got a shock.

"When the little one is found, Miss Hetty will be quite well again," said the good doctor; but the little one had not been found yet, and Hester had completely broken down.

She lay on her bed, saying little or nothing, eating scarcely anything, sleeping not at all.

All the girls were kind to her and each one in the school took turns in trying to comfort her; but no one could win a smile from Hester, and even Mrs. Willis failed utterly to reach or touch her heart.

Mr. Everard came once to see her, but he had scarcely spoken many words when Hester broke into an agony of weeping and begged him to go away.

He shook his head when he left her and said sadly to himself: "That girl has got something on her mind; she is grieving for more than the loss of her little sister."

The twentieth of June came at last, and the girls sat about in groups in the pleasant shady garden, and talked of the very sad breaking-up day they were to have on the morrow, and wondered if, when they returned to school again, Annie and little Nan would have been found.

Cecil Temple, Dora Russell, and one or two others were sitting together and whispering in low voices.

Mary Price joined them, and said anxiously: "I don't think the doctor is satisfied about Hester, Perhaps I ought not to have listened, but I heard him talking to Miss Danesbury just now; he said she must be got to sleep somehow, and she is to have a composing draught to-night."

"I wish poor Hetty would not turn away from us all," said Cecil; "I wish she would not quite give up hope; I do feel sure that Nan and Annie will be found yet."

"Have you been praying about it, Cecil?"

asked Mary, kneeling on the grass, laying her elbows on Cecil's knees and looking into her face.

"Do you say this because you have faith?"

"I have prayed and I have faith," replied Cecil in her simple, earnest way.

"Why, Dora, what is the matter?"

"Only that it's horrid to leave like this," said Dora; "I--I thought my last day at school would have been so different and somehow I am sorry I spoke so much against that poor little Annie."

Here Cecil suddenly rose from her seat, and going up to Dora, clasped her arms round her neck.

"Thank you, Dora," she said with fervor; "I love you for those words."

"Here comes Susy," remarked Mary Price.

"I really don't think _anything_ would move Susy; she's just as stolid and indifferent as ever.

Ah, Susy, here's a place for you--oh, what _is_ the matter with Phyllis?

see how she's rushing toward us!

Phyllis, my dear, don't break your neck."

Susan, with her usual nonchalance, seated herself by Dora Russell's side.

Phyllis burst excitedly into the group.

"I think," she exclaimed, "I really, really do think that news has come of Annie's father.

Nora said that Janet told her that a foreign letter came this morning to Mrs. Willis, and somebody saw Mrs. Willis talking to Miss Danesbury--oh, I forgot, only I know that the girls of the school are whispering the news that Mrs. Willis cried, and Miss Danesbury said, 'After waiting for him four years, and now, when he comes back, he won't find her!'

Oh dear, oh dear!

there is Danesbury.

Cecil, darling love, go to her, and find out the truth."

Cecil rose at once, went across the lawn, said a few words to Miss Danesbury, and came back to the other girls.

"It is true," she said sadly, "there came a letter this morning from Captain Forest; he will be at Lavender House in a week.

Miss Danesbury says it is a wonderful letter, and he has been shipwrecked, and on an island by himself for ever so long; but he is safe now, and will soon be in England.

Miss Danesbury says Mrs. Willis can scarcely speak about that letter; she is in great, great trouble, and Miss Danesbury confesses that they are all more anxious than they dare to admit about Annie and little Nan."

At this moment the sound of carriage wheels was heard on the drive, and Susan, peering forward to see who was arriving, remarked in her usual nonchalant manner: "Only the little Misses Bruce in their basket-carriage--what dull-looking women they are?"

Nobody commented, however, on her observation, and gradually the little group of girls sank into absolute silence.

From where they sat they could see the basket-carriage waiting at the front entrance--the little ladies had gone inside, all was perfect silence and stillness.

Suddenly on the stillness a sound broke--the sound of a girl running quickly; nearer and nearer came the steps, and the four or five who sat together under the oak-tree noticed the quick panting breath, and felt even before a word was uttered that evil tidings were coming to them.

They all started to their feet, however; they all uttered a cry of horror and distress when Hester herself broke into their midst.

She was supposed to be lying down in a darkened room, she was supposed to be very ill--what was she doing here?

"Hetty!"

exclaimed Cecil.

Hester pushed past her; she rushed up to Susan Drummond, and seized her arm.

"News has come!"

she panted; "news--news at last!

Nan is found!

--and Annie--they are both found--but Annie is dying.

Come, Susan, come this moment; we must both tell what we know now."

By her impetuosity, by the intense fire of her passion and agony, even Susan was electrified into leaving her seat and going with her.