Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books txt] 📗
- Author: L. T. Meade
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“I’m sleepy,” responded Maggie, who seemed by no means put out by this tirade on the part of her mother. “I’ll go up to bed if you don’t mind, mother. No, I said afore as I wasn’t hungry.”
She left the room, crept up the step-ladder to the loft, where the family slept, and opening the tiny dormer window, put her elbows on the sill and gazed out on the gathering gloom which was settling on the moor.
The news of the calamity which had befallen Polly had reached Maggie’s ears. Maggie thought only of Polly in this trouble; it was Polly’s baby who was lost, it was Polly whose heart would be broken. She did not consider the others in the matter. It was Polly, the Polly whom she so devotedly loved, who filled her whole horizon. When the news was told her she scarcely said a word; a heavy, “Eh!—you don’t say!” dropped from her lips. Even George, who was her informer, wondered if she had really taken in the extent of the catastrophe; then she had turned on her heel and walked down to her mother’s cottage.
She was not all thoughtless and all indifferent, however. While she looked so stoical and heavy she was patiently working out an idea, and was nerving herself for an act of heroism.
Now as she leant her elbows on the sill by the open window, cold Fear came and stood by her side. She was awfully frightened, but her resolve did not falter. She meant to slip away in the dusk and walk across Peg-Top Moor to the hermit’s hut. An instinct, which she did not try either to explain away or prove, led her to feel sure that she should find Polly’s baby in the hermit’s hut. She would herself, unaided and alone, bring little Pearl back to her sister.
It would have been quite possible for Maggie to have imparted her ideas to George, to her mother, or to some of the neighbors. There was not a person in the village who would not go to the rescue of the Doctor’s child. Maggie might have accompanied a multitude, had she so willed it, to the hermit’s hut. But then the honor and glory would not have been hers; a little reflection of it might shine upon her, but she would not bask, as she now hoped to do, in its full rays.
She determined to go across the lonely moor which she so dreaded alone, for she alone must bring back Pearl to Polly.
Shortly before the moon arose, and long after sunset, Maggie crept down the attic stairs, unlatched the house door, and stepped out into the quiet village street. Her fear was that some neighbors would see her, and either insist on accompanying her on her errand, or bring her home. The village, however, was very quiet that night, and at nine[Pg 116] o’clock, when Maggie started on her search, there were very few people out.
She came quickly to the top of the small street, crossed a field, squeezed through a gap in the hedge, and found herself on the borders of Peg-Top Moor. The moon was bright by this time, and there was no fear of Maggie not seeing. She stepped over the ground briskly, a solitary little figure with a long shadow ever stalking before her, and a beating, defiant heart in her breast. She had quite determined that whatever agony she went through, her fears should not conquer her; she would fight them down with a strong hand, she would go forward on her road, come what might.
Maggie was an ignorant little cottager, and there were many folk-lore tales abroad with regard to the moor which might have frightened a stouter heart than hers. She believed fully in the ghost who was to be seen when the moon was at the full, pacing slowly up and down, through that plantation of trees at her right; she had unswerving faith in the bogey who uttered terrific cries, and terrified the people who were brave enough to walk at night through Deadman’s Glen. But she believed more fully still in Polly, in Polly’s love and despair, and in the sacredness of the errand which she was now undertaking to deliver her from her trouble.
From Mrs. Ricketts’ cottage to the hermit’s hut there lay a stretch of moorland covering some miles in extent, and Maggie knew that the lonely journey she was taking could not come to a speedy end.
She knew, however, that she had got on the right track and that by putting one foot up and one foot down, as the children do who want to reach London town, she also at last would come to her destination.
The moon shone brightly, and the little maid, her shadow always going before her, stepped along bravely.
Now and then that same shadow seemed to assume gigantic and unearthly proportions, but at other times it wore a friendly aspect, and somewhat comforted the young traveler.
“It’s more or less part of me,” quoth Maggie, “and I must say as I’m glad I have it, it’s better nor nought; but oh ain’t the moon fearsome, and don’t my heart a-flutter, and a pit-a-pat! I’m quite sure now, yes, I’m quite gospel sure that ef I was to meet the wife of Micah Jones, I’d fall flat down dead at her feet. Oh, how fearsome is this moor! Well, ef I gets hold of Miss Pearl I’ll never set foot an it again. No, not even for a picnic, and the grandest seat at the feast, and the best of the victuals.”
The moon shone on, and presently the interminable walk came to a conclusion. Maggie reached the hermit’s hut, listened with painful intentness for the baying of some angry dogs, pressed her nose against the one pane of glass in the one tiny window, saw nothing, heard nothing, finally lifted the latch, and went in.
It was perfectly dark inside the hut, for the little window, through which the moon might have shone, was well shrouded with a piece of old rug. It was perfectly dark, and Maggie, although she had stumbled a good deal in lifting the latch, and having to descend a step without knowing it, had all but tumbled headlong into the tiny abode, had evoked no answering sound or stir of any sort.
She stood still for a moment in the complete darkness to recover breath, and to consider what she was to do. Strange to say, she did not feel at all frightened now; the shelter of the four walls gave her confidence. There were no dogs about, and Maggie felt pretty sure that the wife of Micah Jones was also absent, for if she were in the hut, and awake, she would be sure to say, “Who’s there?” quoth Maggie, to her own heart; “and ef she’s in the hut, and asleep, why it wouldn’t be like her not to snore.”
The little girl stood still for a full minute; during this time she was collecting her faculties, and that brain, which Polly was pleased to call so small, was revolving some practical schemes.
“Ef I could only lay my hand on a match, now,” she thought.
She suddenly remembered that in her mother’s cottage the match-box was generally placed behind a certain brick near the fireplace; it was a handy spot, both safe and dry, and Maggie, since her earliest days, had known that if there was such a luxury as a box of matches in the house, it would be found in this corner. She wondered if the wife of Micah Jones could also have adopted so excellent a practice. She stepped across the little hut, felt with her hands right and left, poked about all round the open fireplace, and at last, joy of joys, not only discovered a box with a few matches in it, but an end of candle besides.
In a moment she had struck a match, had applied it to the candle, and then, holding the flickering light high, looked around the little hut.
A girl, crouched up against the wall on some straw, was gazing at her with wide-open terrified eyes; the girl was perfectly still, not a muscle in her body moved, only her big frightened eyes gazed fixedly at Maggie. She wore no hat on her head; her long yellow hair lay in confusion over her shoulders; her feet were shoeless, and one arm was laid with a certain air of protection on a wee white bundle on the straw by her side.
“Who are you?” said Flower, at last. “Are you a ghost, or are you the daughter of the dreadful woman who lives in this hut? See! I had a long sleep. She put me to sleep,[Pg 118] I know she did; and while I was asleep she stole my purse and rings, and my hat and shoes. But that’s nothing, that’s nothing at all. While I was asleep, baby here died. I know she’s quite dead, she has not stirred nor moved for hours, at least it seems like hours. What are you staring at me in that rude way for, girl? I’m quite sure the baby, Polly’s little sister, is dead.”
Nobody could speak in a more utterly apathetic way than Flower. Her voice neither rose nor fell. She poured out her dreary words in a wailing monotone.
“I know that it’s my fault,” she added; “Polly’s little sister has died because of me.”
She still held her hand over the white bundle.
“I’m terrified, but not of you,” she added; “you may be a ghost, stealing in here in the dark; or you may be the daughter of that dreadful woman. But whoever you are, it’s all alike to me. I got into one of my passions. I promised my mother when she died that I’d never get into another, but I did, I got into one to-day. I was angry with Polly Maybright; I stole her little sister away, and now she’s dead. I am so terrified at what I have done that I never can be afraid of anything else. You need not stare so at me, girl; whoever you are I’m not afraid of you.”
Maggie had now found an old bottle to stick her candle into.
“I am Miss Polly’s little kitchen-maid, Maggie Ricketts,” she replied. “I ain’t a ghost, and I haven’t nothing to say to the wife of Micah Jones. As to the baby, let me look at it. You’re a very bad young lady, Miss Flower, but I has come to fetch away the baby, ef you please, so let me look at it this minute. Oh, my, how my legs do ache; that moor is heavy walking! Give me the baby, please, Miss Flower. It ain’t your baby, it’s Miss Polly’s.”
“So, you’re Maggie?” said Flower. There was a queer shake in her voice. “It was about you I was so angry. Yes, you may look at the baby; take it and look at it, but I don’t want to see it, not if it’s dead.”
Maggie instantly lifted the little white bundle into her arms, removed a portion of the shawl, and pressed her cheek against the cheek of the baby.
The little white cheek was cold, but not deadly cold, and some faint, faint breath still came from the slightly parted lips.
When Maggie had anything to do, no one could be less nervous and more practical.
“The baby ain’t dead at all,” she explained. “She’s took with a chill, and she’s very bad, but she ain’t dead. Mother has had heaps of babies, and I know what to do. Little Miss Pearl must have a hot bath this minute.”
“Oh, Maggie,” said Flower. “Oh, Maggie, Maggie!”
Her frozen indifference, her apathy, had departed. She rose from her recumbent position, pushed back her hair[Pg 119] and stood beside the other young girl, with eyes that glowed, and yet brimmed over with tears.
“Oh, what a load you have taken off my heart!” she exclaimed. “Oh, what a darling you are! Kiss me, Maggie, kiss me, dear, dear Maggie.”
“All right, Miss. You was angry with me afore, and now you’re a-hugging of me, and I don’t see no more sense in one than t’other. Ef you’ll hold the baby up warm to you, Miss, and breathe ag’in her cheek werry gentle-like, you’ll be a-doing more good than a-kissing of me. I must find sticks, and I must light up a fire, and I must do it this minute, or we won’t have no baby to talk about, nor fuss over.”
Maggie’s rough and practical words were perhaps the best possible tonic for Flower at this moment. She had been on
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