Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books txt] 📗
- Author: L. T. Meade
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“It was this way, dear: she came into the room, and took baby into her arms, and asked for some dinner. She didn’t seem no way taken with baby at first, but when I told her how much you loved our little Miss Pearl, she asked me to give her to her quite greedy-like, and ordered me to fetch some dinner for herself, for she was starving, she said. I offered that Alice should bring it; but no, she was all that I should choose something as would tempt her appetite, and she coaxed with that pretty way she have, and I went down to the kitchen myself to please her. I’ll never forgive myself, never, to the longest day I live. I wasn’t ten minutes gone, but when I come back with a nice little tray of curry, and some custard pie, Miss Flower and the baby were away. That’s all—they hasn’t been seen since.”[Pg 111]
“How long ago is that, Nurse?”
“I couldn’t rightly tell you, dearie—maybe two hours back. I ran all round the moor anywhere near, and so did every servant in the house, but since the Doctor come in they has done the thing properly. Now where are you going, Miss Polly, love?”
“To my father. I wish this horrid noise wouldn’t go on in my head. Don’t worry me, Nurse. I know it was my fault. I wouldn’t listen to the warning, and I would provoke her, but don’t scold me now until I have done my work.”
Polly rushed downstairs.
“Where’s father?” she asked of Bunny, who was sobbing violently, and clinging in a frantic manner to Firefly’s skirts.
“I—I don’t know. He’s out.”
“He’s away on the moor,” said Fly. “Polly, are you really anxious about baby Pearl?”
“I have no time to be anxious,” said Polly. “I must find her first. I’ll tell you then if I’m anxious. Where’s Nell, where are the twins?”
“On the moor; they all went out with father.”
“Which moor, the South or Peg-Top?”
“I think the South moor.”
“All right, I’m going out too. What’s the matter, Fly? Oh, you’re not to come.”
“Please, please, it’s so horrid in the house, and Bunny does make my dress so soppy with crying into it.”
“You’re not to come. You are to stay here and do your best, your very best, for father and the others when they come home. If they don’t meet me, say I’ve gone to look for baby and for Flower. I’ll come back when I’ve found them. If they find baby and Flower, they might ask to have the church bells rung, then I’ll know. Don’t stare at me like that, Fly; it was my fault, so I must search until I find them.”
Polly ran out of the house and down the lawn. Once again she was out on the moor. The great solitary commons stretched to right and left; they were everywhere, they filled the whole horizon, except just where Sleepy Hollow lay, with its belt of trees, its cultivated gardens, and just beyond the little village and the church with the square, gray tower. There was a great lump in Polly’s throat, and a mist before her eyes. The dreadful beating was still going on in her heart, and the surging, ceaseless waves of sound in her ears.
Suddenly she fell on her knees.
“Please, God, give me back little Pearl. Please, God, save little Pearl. I don’t want anything else; I don’t even want father to forgive me, if You will save little Pearl.”
Most earnest prayers bring a sense of comfort, and Polly did not feel quite so lonely when she stood again on her feet, with the bracken and the fern all round her.
She tried hard now to collect her thoughts; she made a valiant effort to feel calm and reasonable.[Pg 112]
“I can do nothing if I get so excited,” she said to herself. “I must just fight with my anxious spirit. My heart must stay quiet, for my brain has got to work now. Let me see! where has Flower taken baby? Father and Nell and the others are all searching the South moor, so I will go on to Peg-Top. I will walk slowly, and I will look behind every clump of trees, and I will call Flower’s name now and then; for I am sure, I am quite, quite sure that, however dreadful her passion may have been, if Flower is the least like me, she will be dreadfully sorry by now—dreadfully sorry and dreadfully frightened—so if she hears me calling she will be sure to answer. Oh, dear! oh, dear! here is my heart speaking again, and my head is in a whirl, and the noises are coming back into my ears. Oh! how fearfully I hate Flower! How could she, how could she have taken our darling little baby away? And yet—and yet I think I’d forgive Flower; I think I’d try to love her; I think I’d even tell her that I was the one who had done most wrong; I think I’d even go on my knees and beg Flower’s pardon, if only I could hold baby to my heart again!”
By this time Polly was crying bitterly. These tears did the poor child good, relieving the pressure on her brain, and enabling her to think calmly and coherently. While this tempest of grief, however, effected these good results, it certainly did not improve her powers of observation; the fast-flowing tears blinded her eyes, and she stumbled along, completely forgetting the dangerous and uneven character of the ground over which she walked.
It was now growing dusk, and the dim light also added to poor Polly’s dangers. Peg-Top Moor had many tracks leading in all directions. Polly knew several of these, and where they led, but she had now left all the beaten paths, and the consequence was that she presently found herself uttering a sharp and frightened cry, and discovered that she had fallen down a fairly steep descent. She was slightly stunned by her fall, and for a moment or two did not attempt to move. Then a dull pain in her ankle caused her to put her hand to it, and to struggle giddily to a sitting position.
“I’ll be able to stand in a minute,” she said to herself; and she pressed her hand to her forehead, and struggled bravely against the surging, waving sounds which had returned to her head.
“I can’t sit here!” she murmured; and she tried to get to her feet.
In vain!—a sharp agony brought her, trembling and almost fainting, once more to a sitting posture. What was she to do?—how was she now to find Flower and the baby? She was alone on the moor, unable to stir. Perhaps her ankle was broken; certainly, it was sprained very badly.
When the Maybrights returned home from their disastrous picnic at Troublous Times Castle, Maggie and George brought up the rear. In consequence of their being some little way behind the others, Maggie did not at once know of the fact of Flower’s disappearance with the baby. She was naturally a slow girl; ideas came to her at rare intervals; she even received startling and terrible news with a certain outward stolidity and calm. Still, Maggie was not an altogether purposeless and thoughtless maiden; thoughts occasionally drifted her way; ideas, when once born in her heart, were slow to die. When affection took root there it became a very sturdy plant. If there was any one in the world whom Maggie adored, it was her dear young mistress, Miss Polly Maybright. Often at night Maggie awoke, and thought, with feelings of almost worship, of this bright, impulsive young lady. How delightful that week had been when she and Polly had cooked, and housekeeped, and made cakes and puddings together! Would any one but Polly have forgiven her for taking that pound to save her mother’s furniture? Would any one in all the world, except that dear, warm-hearted, impulsive Polly, have promised to do without a winter jacket in order to return that money to the housekeeping fund? Maggie felt that, stupid as she knew herself to be, slow as she undoubtedly was, she could really do great things for Polly. In Polly’s cause her brain could awake, the inertia which more or less characterized her could depart. For Polly she could undoubtedly become a brave and active young person.
She was delighted with herself when she assisted Miss Maybright to descend from her bed-room window, and to escape with her on to the moor, but her delight and sense of triumph had not been proof against the solitude of the sad moor, against the hunger which was only to be satisfied with berries and spring water, and, above all, against the terrible apparition of the wife of Micah Jones. What Maggie went, through in the hermit’s hut, what terrors she experienced, were only known to Maggie’s own heart. When, however, Mrs. Ricketts got back her daughter from that terrible evening’s experience, she emphatically declared that “Mag were worse nor useless; that she seemed daft-like, and a’most silly, and that never, never to her dying day, would she allow Mag to set foot on them awful lonely commons again.”
Mrs. Ricketts, however, was not a particularly obstinate character, and when Polly’s bright face peeped round her door, and Polly eagerly, and almost curtly, demanded that Maggie should that very moment accompany her on a delightful picnic to Troublous Times Castle, and Maggie herself,[Pg 114] with sparkling eyes and burning cheeks, was all agog to go, and was now inclined to pooh-pooh the terrors she had endured in the hermit’s hut, there was nothing for Mrs. Ricketts to do but to forget her vow and send off the two young people with her blessing.
“Eh, but she’s a dear young lady,” she said, under her breath, apostrophizing Miss Maybright. “And Mag do set wonderful store by her, and no mistake. It ain’t every young lady as ’ud think of my Maggie when she’s going out pleasuring; but bless Miss Polly! she seems fairly took up with my poor gel.”
No face could look more radiant than Maggie’s when she started for the picnic, but, on the other hand, no young person could look more thoroughly sulky and downcast than she did on her return. Mrs. Ricketts was just dishing up some potatoes for supper when Maggie flung open the door of the tiny cottage, walked across the room, and flung herself on a little settle by the fire.
“You’re hungry, Mag,” said Mrs. Ricketts, without looking up.
“No, I bean’t,” replied Maggie, shortly.
“Eh, I suppose you got your fill of good things out with the young ladies and gentlemen. It ain’t your poor mother’s way to have a bit of luck like that, and you never thought, I suppose, of putting a slice or two of plum cake, or maybe the half of a chicken, in your pocket, as a bit of a relish for your mother’s supper. No, no, that ain’t your way, Mag; you’re all for self, and that I will say.”
“No, I ain’t mother. You has no call to talk so. How could I hide away chicken and plum cake, under Miss Polly’s nose, so to speak. I was setting nigh to Miss Polly, mother, jest about the very middle of the feast. I had a place of honor close up to Miss Polly, mother.”
“Eh, to be sure!” exclaimed Mrs. Ricketts.
She stopped dishing up the potatoes, wiped her brow, and turned to look at her daughter, with a slow expression of admiration in her gaze.
“Eh,” she continued, “you has a way about you, Mag, with all your contrariness. Miss Polly Maybright thinks a sight on you, Mag; seems to me as if maybe she’d adopt you, and turn you into a real lady. My word, I have read of such things in story-books.”
“You had better go on dishing up your supper, mother and not be talking nonsense like that. Miss Polly is a very good young lady, but she hasn’t no thought of folly of that sort. Eh, dear me,” continued Maggie, yawning prodigiously “I’m a bit tired, and no mistake.”
“That’s always the way,” responded Mrs. Ricketts. “Tired and not a word to say after your pleasuring; no talking about what happened, and what Miss Helen wore, and if Miss Firefly has got on her winter worsted stockings yet, and not a mention of them foreigners as we’re all dying to hear[Pg 115] of, and not a word of what victuals you ate, nor nothing. You’re a selfish girl, Maggie Ricketts, and that I
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