The Argosy

"Miss Janet Hope,

To the care of Lady Chillington,

Deepley Walls, near Eastbury,

Midlandshire."

"There, miss, I'm sure that will do famously," said Chirper, the overworked, oldish young person whose duty it was to attend to the innumerable wants of the young lady boarders of Park Hill Seminary. She had just written out, in a large sprawling hand, a card as above which card was presently to be nailed on to the one small box that held the whole of my worldly belongings.

"And I think, miss," added Chirper, meditatively, as she held out the card at arm's length, and gazed at it admiringly, "that if I was to write out another card similar, and tie it round your arm, it would, mayhap, help you in getting safe to your journey's end."

I, a girl of twelve, was the Janet Hope indicated above, and I had been looking over Chirper's shoulder with wondering eyes while she addressed the card.

"But who is Lady Chillington, and where is Deepley Walls, and what have I to do with either, Chirper, please?" I asked.

"If there is one thing in little girls more hateful than another, it is curiosity," answered Chirper, with her mouth half-full of nails. "Curiosity has been the bane of many of our sex. Witness Bluebeard's unhappy wife. If you want to know more, you must ask Mrs. Whitehead. I have my instructions and I act on them."

Meeting Mrs. Whitehead half-an-hour later, as she was coming down the stone corridor that led from the refectory, I did ask that lady precisely the same questions that I had put to Chirper. Her frosty glance, filled with a cold surprise, smote me even through her spectacles; and I shrank a little, abashed at my own boldness.

"The habit of asking questions elsewhere than in the class-room should not be encouraged in young ladies," said Mrs. Whitehead, with a sort of prim severity. "The other young ladies are gone home; you are about to follow their example."

"But, Mrs. Whitehead-madam," I pleaded, "I never had any other home than Park Hill."

"More questioning, Miss Hope? Fie! Fie!"

And with a lean finger uplifted in menacing reproval, Mrs. Whitehead sailed on her way, nor deigned me another word.

I stole out into the playground, wondering, wretched, and yet smitten through with faint delicious thrillings of a new-found happiness such as I had often dreamed of, but had scarcely dared hope ever to realise. I, Janet Hope, going home! It was almost too incredible for belief. I wandered about like one mazed-like one who, stepping suddenly out of darkness into sunshine, is dazzled by an intolerable brightness whichever way he turns his eyes. And yet I was wretched: for was not Miss Chinfeather dead? And that, too, was a fact almost too incredible for belief.

As I wandered, this autumn morning, up and down the solitary playground, I went back in memory as far as memory would carry me, but only to find that Miss Chinfeather and Park Hill Seminary blocked up the way. Beyond them lay darkness and mystery. Any events in my child's life that might have happened before my arrival at Park Hill had for me no authentic existence. I had been part and parcel of Miss Chinfeather and the Seminary for so long a time that I could not dissociate myself from them even in thought. Other pupils had had holidays, and letters, and presents, and dear ones at home of whom they often talked; but for me there had been none of these things. I knew that I had been placed at Park Hill when a very little girl by some, to me, mysterious and unknown person, but further than that I knew nothing. The mistress of Park Hill had not treated me in any way differently from her other pupils; but had not the bills contracted on my account been punctually paid by somebody, I am afraid that the even-handed justice on which she prided herself-which, in conjunction with her aquiline nose and a certain antique severity of deportment, caused her to be known amongst us girls as The Roman Matron-would have been somewhat ruffled, and that sentence of expulsion from those classic walls would have been promptly pronounced and as promptly carried into effect.

Happily no such necessity had ever arisen; and now the Roman Matron lay dead in the little corner room on the second floor, and had done with pupils, and half yearly accounts, and antique deportment for ever.

In losing Miss Chinfeather I felt as though the corner-stone of my life had been rent away. She was too cold, she was altogether too far removed for me to regard her with love, or even with that modified feeling which we call affection. But then no such demonstration was looked for by Miss Chinfeather. It was a weakness above which she rose superior. But if my child's love was a gift which she would have despised, she looked for and claimed my obedience-the resignation of my will to hers, the absorption of my individuality in her own, the gradual elimination from my life of all its colour and freshness. She strove earnestly, and with infinite patience, to change me from a dreamy, passionate child-a child full of strange wild moods, capricious, and yet easily touched either to laughter or tears-into a prim and elegant young lady, colourless and formal, and of the most orthodox boarding-school pattern; and if she did not quite succeed in the attempt, the fault, such as it was, must be set down to my obstinate disposition and not to any lack of effort on the part of Miss Chinfeather. And now this powerful influence had vanished from my life, from the world itself, as swiftly and silently as a snowflake in the sun. The grasp of the hard but not unkindly hand, that had held me so firmly in the narrow groove in which it wished me to move, had been suddenly relaxed, and everything around me seemed tottering to its fall. Three nights ago Miss Chinfeather had retired to rest, as well, to all appearance, and as cheerful as ever she had been; next morning she had been found dead in bed. This was what they told us pupils; but so great was the awe in which I held the mistress of Park Hill Seminary that I could not conceive of Death even as venturing to behave disrespectfully towards her. I pictured him in my girlish fancy as knocking at her chamber door in the middle of the night, and after apologising for the interruption, asking whether she was ready to accompany him. Then would she who was thus addressed arise, and wrap an ample robe about her, and place her hand with solemn sweetness in that of the Great Captain, and the two would pass out together into the starlit night, and Miss Chinfeather would be seen of mortal eyes nevermore.

Such was the picture that had haunted my brain for two days and as many nights, while I wandered forlorn through house and playground, or lay awake on my little bed. I had said farewell to one pupil after another till all were gone, and the riddle which I had been putting to myself continually for the last forty-eight hours had now been solved for me by Mrs. Whitehead, and I had been told that I too was going home.

"To the care of Lady Chillington, Deepley Walls, Midlandshire." The words repeated themselves again and again in my brain, and became a greater puzzle with every repetition. I had never to my knowledge heard of either the person or the place. I knew nothing of one or the other. I only knew that my heart thrilled strangely at the mention of the word Home; that unbidden tears started to my eyes at the thought that perhaps-only perhaps-in that as yet unknown place there might be someone who would love me just a little. "Father-Mother." I spoke the words, but they sounded unreal to me, and as if uttered by another. I spoke them again, holding out my arms and crying aloud. All my heart seemed to go out in the cry, but only the hollow winds answered me as they piped mournfully through the yellowing leaves, a throng of which went rustling down the walk as though stirred by the footsteps of a ghost. Then my eyes grew blind with tears and I wept silently for a time as if my heart would break.

But tears were a forbidden luxury at Park Hill, and when, a little later on, I heard Chirper calling me by name, I made haste to dry my eyes and compose my features. She scanned me narrowly as I ran up to her. "You dear, soft-hearted little thing!" she said. And with that she stooped suddenly and gave me a hearty kiss, that might have been heard a dozen yards away. I was about to fling my arms round her neck, but she stopped me, saying, "That will do, dear. Mrs. Whitehead is waiting for us at the door."

Mrs. Whitehead was watching us through the glass door which led into the playground. "The coach will be here in half-an-hour, Miss Hope," she said; "so that you have not much time for your preparations."

I stood like one stunned for a moment or two. Then I said: "If you please, Mrs. Whitehead, may I see Miss Chinfeather before I go?"

Her thin, straight lips quivered slightly, but in her eyes I read only cold disapproval of my request. "Really," she said, "what a singular child you must be. I scarcely know what to say."

"Oh, if you please!" I urged. "Miss Chinfeather was always kind to me. I remember her as long as I can remember anything. To see her once more-for the last time. It would seem to me cruel to go away without."

"Follow me," she said, almost in a whisper. So I followed her softly up stairs into the little corner room where Miss Chinfeather lay in white and solemn state, grandly indifferent to all mundane matters. As I gazed, it seemed but an hour ago since I had heard those still lips conjugating the verb mourir for the behoof of poor ignorant me, and the words came back to me, and I could not help repeating them to myself as I looked: Je meurs, tu meurs, etc.

I bent over and kissed the marble-cold forehead and said farewell in my heart, and went downstairs without a word.

Half-an-hour later the district coach, a splendid vision, pulled up impetuously at the gates. I was ready to the moment. Mrs. Whitehead's frosty fingers touched mine for an instant; she imprinted a chill kiss on my cheek and looked relieved. "Good-bye, my dear Miss Hope, and God bless you," she said. "Strive to bear in mind through after life the lessons that have been instilled into you at Park Hill Seminary. Present my respectful compliments to Lady Chillington, and do not forget your catechism."

At this point the guard sounded an impatient summons on his bugle; Chirper picked up my box, seized me by the hand, and hurried with me to the coach. My luggage found a place on the roof; I was unceremoniously bundled inside; Chirper gave me another of her hearty kisses, and pressed a crooked sixpence into my hand "for luck," as she whispered. I am sure there was a real tear in her eye as she did so. Next moment we were off.

I kept my eyes fixed on the Seminary as long as it remained in view, especially on the little corner room. It seemed to me that I must be a very wicked girl indeed, because I felt no real sorrow at quitting the place that had been my home for so many years. I could not feel anything but secretly glad, but furtively happy with a happiness which I felt ashamed of acknowledging even to myself. Miss Chinfeather's white and solemn face, as seen in her coffin, haunted my memory, but even of her I thought only with a sort of chastened regret. She had never touched my heart. There had been about her a bleakness of nature that effectually chilled any tender buds of liking or affection that might in the ordinary course of events have grown up and blossomed round her life. Therefore, in my child's heart there was no lasting sorrow for her death, no gracious memories of her that would stay with me, and smell sweet, long after she herself should be dust.

My eight miles' ride by coach was soon over. It ended at the railway station of the county town. The guard of the coach had, I suppose, received his secret instructions. Almost before I knew what had happened, I found myself in a first-class carriage, with a ticket for Eastbury in my hand, and committed to the care of another guard, he of the railway this time-a fiery-faced man, with immense red whiskers, who came and surveyed me as though I were some contraband article, but finished by nodding his head and saying with a smile, "I dessay we shall be good friends, miss, before we get to the end of our journey."

It was my first journey by rail, and the novelty of it filled me with wonder and delight. The train by which I travelled was a fast one, and after my first feeling of fright at the rapidity of the motion had merged into one of intense pleasure and exhilaration of mind, I could afford to look back on my recent coach experience with a sort of pitying superiority, as on a something that was altogether rococo and out of date. Already the rash of new ideas into my mind was so powerful that the old landmarks of my life seemed in danger of being swept clean away. Already it seemed days instead of only a brief hour or two since I had bidden Mrs. Whitehead farewell, and had taken my last look at Park Hill Seminary.

The red-faced guard was as good as his word; he and I became famous friends before I reached the end of my journey. At every station at which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on, and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached Eastbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on the little platform.

The one solitary fly of which the station could boast was laid under contribution. My little box was tossed on to its roof; I myself was shut up inside; the word was given, "To Deepley Walls;" the station was left behind, and away we went, jolting and rumbling along the quiet country lanes, and under over-arching trees, all aglow just now with autumn's swift-fading beauty. The afternoon was closing in, and the wind was rising, sweeping up with melancholy soughs from the dim wooded hollows where it had lain asleep till the sun went down; garnering up the fallen leaves like a cunning miser, wherever it could find a hiding-place for them, and then dying suddenly down, and seeming to hold its breath as if listening for the footsteps of the coming winter.

In the western sky hung a huge tumbled wrack of molten cloud like the ruins of some vast temple of the gods of eld. Chasmed buttresses, battlements overthrown; on the horizon a press of giants, shoulder against shoulder, climbing slowly to the rescue; in mid-sky a praying woman; farther afield a huge head, and a severed arm the fingers of which were clenched in menace: all these things I saw, and a score others, as the clouds changed from minute to minute in form and brightness, while the stars began to glow out like clusters of silver lilies in the eastern sky.

We kept jolting on for so long a time through the twilight lanes, and the evening darkened so rapidly, that I began to grow frightened. It was like being lifted out of a dungeon, when the old fly drew up with a jerk, and a shout of "House there!" and when I looked out and saw that we were close to the lodge entrance of some park.

Presently a woman, with a child in her arms, came out of the lodge and proceeded to open the gate for us. Said the driver-"How's Johnny to-night?"

The woman shouted something in reply, but I don't think the old fellow heard her.

"Ay, ay," he called out, "Johnny will be a famous young shaver one of these days;" and with that, he whipped up his horse, and away we went.

The drive up the avenue, for such at the time I judged it to be, and such it proved to be, did not occupy many minutes. The fly came to a stand, and the driver got down and opened the door. "Now, young lady, here you are," he said; and I found myself in front of the main entrance to Deepley Walls.

It was too dark by this time for me to discern more than the merest outline of the place. I saw that it was very large, and I noticed that not even one of its hundred windows showed the least glimmer of light. It loomed vast, dark and silent, as if deserted by every living thing.

The old driver gave a hearty pull at the bell, and the muffled clamour reached me where I stood. I was quaking with fears and apprehensions of that unknown future on whose threshold I was standing. Would Love or Hate open for me the doors of Deepley Walls? I was strung to such a pitch that it seemed impossible for any lesser passion to be handmaiden to my needs.

What I saw when the massive door was opened was an aged woman, dressed like a superior domestic, who, in sharp accents, demanded to know what we meant by disturbing a quiet family in that unseemly way. She was holding one hand over her eyes, and trying to make out our appearance through the gathering darkness. I stepped close up to her. "I am Miss Janet Hope, from Park Hill Seminary," I said, "and I wish to speak with Lady Chillington."

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