CHAPTER XXXII.
NELLO’S RESCUE.
THE house was very still in the afternoon languor—all its life suspended. Between the sick-room, in which all the interest of the family existence was absorbed, and the servants’ part of the house, in which life went on cheerfully enough under all circumstances, but without any intrusion into the still world above-stairs, there was nothing going on. Little Lilias went up into her own room, and down all the long staircases and passages, without meeting or seeing any one. Martuccia was in the old hall, tranquilly knitting and waiting for her young lady’s return; but the house was empty of all sound or presence, nobody visible. It was like the enchanted palace through which the young prince walks, meeting no one, until he reaches the one chamber in which the secret lies. This idea passed through the mind of Lilias, pre-occupied as she was. Any one might come in—might pass from room to room, finding all deserted, until he had penetrated to the dim centre of the family life where death was hovering. She went down the oak staircase with her light foot, a little tremulous, but inspired with resolution. It was the afternoon of Nello’s last day at school. He had not quite made up his mind, or been driven by childish misery, to the determination of running away when his sister set out to succour him. Had he waited, Lilias no doubt would have arrived in time to introduce a new element into the matter; but what could the little girl’s arrival have effected? Who would have given any importance to that? They would have taken Lilias in, and made a little prisoner of her, and sent her back. As it was, neither knew anything of what the other was doing. Lilias had opened her most secret place, a little old-fashioned wooden box, in which she kept some special relics, little trinkets, half toys, half ornaments, which she had brought with her, and the remains of the money which her father had given her when he sent the little party away. There had been something over when they arrived, and Lilias had guarded it carefully. She took it out now, and put the purse containing it within the bodice of her dress—the safest place. It might be wanted for Nello. He had the best right to everything; and if he was in trouble—— Lilias did not try to think what kind of trouble the little boy could be in. She took her little store, and went away with her heart beating high. This time she would herself do it; she would not trust to any one. Mr. Geoff had undertaken to deliver her father, and stopped her; but he had not done it. Already a long time had elapsed, and nothing had happened. She would not trust to Mr. Geoff or any one this time. If old ’Lizabeth had not gone away before Lilias returned to the hall, she had thoughts of asking the old woman to go with her; and even a weak inclination to take Martuccia as a companion and support had crossed her mind. Martuccia would have been useless, but she would have made all the difference between a feasible expedition and an impossible one; but perhaps it was for this very reason that Lilias rejected the idea. No; this time she would be kept back by no advice. She would go to Nello’s aid by herself. He should owe his deliverance to no one but his sister. Who could understand him so well—know so well what he must want? And it was to her that papa had intrusted Nello. She made dismal pictures to herself of her little brother in trouble. What could “in trouble” mean? She thought of him as out in the cold, out in the rain, crying, with no place to go to; lost in a strange country, or perhaps ill with a fever, and nobody to sit by him, nobody to give him a drink when he wanted it, and tell him stories. What other kind of trouble was possible? That he might not be able to learn his lessons without her to help him, and that he might perhaps be whipped—could such an atrocity be?—just gleamed across the child’s thoughts; but it made her heart beat so with rage and indignation, and her cheeks burn with such a flush, that she thrust the idea aside; but so long as he was unhappy, so long as he wanted her, was not that enough? She buttoned her little coat with a stout but trembling heart, and took a shawl over her arm (was not that how travellers always provided themselves?) and, with her sovereign in her hand for immediate expenditure, and her purse in her bosom, went down the silent stairs. How still, how deserted it seemed! Mr. Pen came out from the library door when he heard the step, to see who it was, but took no notice of her except a momentary glance of disappointment. Thus she went out of the house brave and resolute, yet with a tremor of the unknown in her breast.
Lilias knew what to do: to walk to Pennington, where the railway station was, and then to take a ticket, and to get into a railway carriage. The walk along the highroad was long, but it was not so overwhelming as that early expedition she had made all alone up into the hills when she had met Geoff. How glad she had been to meet him, and to hear from him that she need go no further! Lilias had not ceased to believe in Mr. Geoff, but nothing had been done, and her heart was sick of the waiting. She did not want to meet him now; her little heart gave a jump when she saw any one riding towards her; but it was certain she did not want to meet Geoff, to have her mission again taken out of her hands. Nothing was more likely than that she should meet him, and her eyes travelled along the dusty line of road, somewhat wistfully looking out—in hopes not to see him—which much resembled the hope of seeing him, though it was differently expressed. And now and then a cloud of dust would rise—now and then a horseman would appear far off, skimming lightly over the long line of road, which it took Lilias so much time to get over. Once a beautiful carriage dashed past her, with the beautiful lady in it whom she had once seen, and who had kissed and cried over Nello without taking much notice of Lilias. Could it be that the beautiful lady had heard too that he was in trouble? Lilias mended her pace and pushed on. What fancies she met with as she plodded along the road! It was a long dusty highway, running for a little while in sight of the lake, then turning through the village, then striking across the country up and down, as even a highroad is obliged to do in the north country, where there is nothing but heights and hollows. It seemed to stretch into infinity before Lilias, mounting one brae after another, showing in a long level line here and there; appearing on the other side of that clump of trees, beyond that far-off farmhouse, looking as if it led without pause back to the end of the world. Lilias wove one dream after another as she went along from landmark to landmark. How vivid they were! So real, that the child seemed to enact every scene in them as they floated through her mind; far more real than the actual events of her life. She saw herself arriving at a great spacious place, which was Nello’s school—undefined, yet lofty and wide and splendid, with marble pillars, and great colonnades and halls. She saw people coming to gaze and wonder at the little girl—the little wandering princess—who had come to seek her brother. “The girl looked at them all, and said, ‘Take me to Nello.’ The girl turned round upon them, and her lip curled with scorn.” (Lilias suited the action to the word; and her innocent lip did curl, with what version of fine disdain it could execute.) “What did she care for all they could do for her? ‘It is my brother I want,’ she said.” This was how she carried on her parable. Perhaps her own little figure was too much in the front of all these visions. Perhaps her own fine indifference to all blandishments and devotion to Nello was the chief principle made apparent. This was how it ran on, however, accompanying and shortening the way. She made long dialogues between herself and the master, between herself and Nello. How he clung to her; how glad he was that she had come. “It is Lily; I knew Lily would come,” she made him say. He would not be surprised; he would know that this was the most natural thing. If they had locked her up in prison to keep her away from him, what would it have mattered? Lilias would have found a way to go to him when Nello was in trouble; and Nello knew that as well as she.
She was very tired, however, and it was dark when she arrived at Pennington. Lilias put on her grand air, but it was rather difficult to impose upon the station-master and porters. They all wanted to be very kind, to take care of her, and arrange everything for the little traveller. The station-master called her “my dear,” and wanted Lilias to go to his house, where his wife would take care of her till the morning. “You are too little to travel by the night train,” he said; and the porters were eloquent on the wickedness of sending a little lady like this by herself. “I am going to my brother, who is ill,” Lilias said, with dignity. “And have you no mamma to go to him, my little miss?” said the porter, friendly, yet respectful. They were all very kind. No one knew her, and they asked many questions to find out who she was. They said to each other it was well seen she had no mother, and made Lilias’s heart swell so, that she forgave them for treating her as a child, rather than as the little princess she had dreamed of being. Finally, they arranged for her that she should travel to the great junction where Nello had met Bampfylde at once—and that the guard should take care of her, and put her in the night train, which arrived at a very early hour in the morning at the station she wanted to go to. All this was arranged for her with the kindest care by these rough men. They installed her in the little waiting-room till the train should go. They came and fetched her when it was going, and placed her in her corner. “Poor little lady!” they said. Lilias was half-humiliated, half-pleased by all these attentions. She submitted to them, not able to be anything but grateful to the men who were so kind to her, yet feeling uneasily that it was not in this homely way that she meant them to be kind. They did not look up to her, but looked down upon her with compassionate tenderness, as upon a motherless little girl—a child who recalled children of their own. Just so the good woman looked upon her who got into the train along with her. “All that way, and all alone, my poor little thing?” the woman said. It hurt Lilias’s pride to be called a poor little thing, but yet it was pleasant to have some one to creep close to. The world did not seem to be as it is represented in books, for nobody was unkind. Lilias was very glad to sit close to her new acquaintance, feeling comfort unspeakable in the breadth of the honest shoulder against which she leant as she travelled on in the dark. Those breadths of country which Nello had watched flying past the window were almost invisible now. Now and then a darker gloom in the air showed where the hills were high over the railway in a deep cutting. Sometimes there would be gleams of light visible here and there, which showed a village. Her companion dropped into a doze, but Lilias, leaning against her, was far too much excited for sleep. She watched the moon come out and shine over the breadth of country, reflecting itself in the little streams, and turning the houses to silver. It was late then, quite late, for the moon was on the wane. And the train was slow, stopping at every station, creeping (though when it was in motion it seemed to fly) across the plains and valleys. It was midnight when they got to the junction, and Lilias, with her great eyes more wide awake than ever, was handed out. There were only a few lights burning, and the place looked miserable and deserted, the cold wind sweeping through it, and the two or three people who got out, and the two porters who received them, looking like ghosts in the imperfect light. The guard, who lived there, was very kind to the little girl before he went off to his house. He wanted to take her with him to make her comfortable till the morning, but Lilias could not be persuaded to wait. At last he established her in a corner, the least chilly possible, wrapping her shawl round her feet.
There she was left alone, with one lamp to bear her company, the long lines running into darkness at either side of her, blackness taking refuge in the high roof of the station, above the watchlight of that one lamp. How strange it was to sit all alone, with the chill of the air and gloom of midnight all around her! Nobody was stirring in the deserted place. The one porter had withdrawn to some warm refuge, to re-appear when the train came. But little Lilias sat alone in her corner, sole inhabitant of the big, chilly, desolate place. How her heart jumped to her mouth! What tremors and terrors at first every sigh of the wind, every creak of the lamp, gave her. But at last she perceived that nothing was going to happen, and sat still, and did not trouble except when imagination suggested to her a stealthy step, or some one behind in the darkness. How dreary it was! The night wind sang a dismal cadence in the telegraph wires, the air coursed over the deserted platforms, the dark lines of way, and blew the flames of gas about even within the inclosure of the lamp. Just then Nello was creeping, stumbling, out of the window, making his way through the prickling hedge, standing alone eyeing the moon in the potato-field. Lilias could not even see the moon in her corner. Nothing was before her but the waning gleam of that solitary lamp.
At last the train came lumbering up through the darkness, and the porters re-appeared from corners where they had been attendant. One of them came, for Lily, kind as everybody had been, and put her into a carriage by herself, and showed her how she could lie down and make herself comfortable. “You’ll be there at five o’clock,” the porter said. “Lie down, little miss, and get a sleep.” Never in her life had Lilias been more wide awake, and there was no kind woman here with broad shoulders to lean upon and feel safe. The train swept through the night while she sat upright and gazed out with big, round, unslumbering eyes.
Lilias watched and waked through the night, counting out the hours of darkness, saying her prayers over and over, feeling herself lost in the long whirl of distance and gloom and confusing sound; but as the night began to tremble towards the dawning, she began to doze unawares, her eyes closing in spite of herself, and much against her will; and it was with a shiver that she woke up very wide awake, but feeling wretched, in consequence of her doze, at the little roadside station, one small house placed on the edge of a wide expanse of fields, chiefly pasture land, and with no character at all. A great belt of wood stretched to the right hand, to the left there was nothing but fields, and a long endless road dividing them, visible for miles with a little turn in it here and there, but nothing beside to break its monotony. Lilias clambered out of the carriage when she felt the jar and clang of the stoppage, and heard the name of the station drowsily called out. The man in charge of it gazed at her as though she had dropped from the clouds; he did not even see her till the train was in motion again, creaking and swinging away into the distance. To see her standing there with her great eyes gave him a thrill of strange sensation, almost of terror. Fatigue and excitement had made her face paler than usual, and had drawn great circles round her eyes. She looked like a ghost standing there in the faint grey of the dawn, cold and trembling, yet courageous as ever. “Mr. Swan’s? Oh yes, I can tell you the way to Mr. Swan’s; but you should have spoken sooner. They’ve been and carried off your luggage.” Lilias had not strength of mind to confess that she had no luggage, and indeed was too much confused and upset by her snatch of sleep to be sure what he was saying, and stumbled forth on the road, when he showed her how to go, half-dazed, and scarcely more than half-conscious. But the pinch of the keen morning air, and the sensation of strange stillness and loneliness, soon restored her to the use of her faculties. The benevolent railway man was loth to let her go. “It’s very early, and you’re very small,” he said. “You’re welcome to wait here, my little lady, till they send for you. Perhaps they did not expect you so early?” “Oh, it does not matter,” said Lilias. “Thank you; I am quite able to walk.” The man stood and watched her as she made her way in the faint light along the road. He dared not leave his post, or he would have gone with her out of sheer compassion. So young, and with such a pale little beautiful face, and all alone at such an hour of the morning, while it was still night! “It will be one of them boyses sisters,” he said to himself with singular discrimination. And then he recollected the pale little boy who had gone to Mr. Swan’s so short a time before. This gave clue to the mysterious little passenger, which set his mind at rest.
And Lilias went on along the darkling road. It was not possible to mistake the road—a long white streak upon the landscape, which was visible even in the dark; and it was not altogether dark now, but a ghostly, damp, autumnal glimmer of morning, before the sun-rising. The hedges had mists of gossamer over them, which would shine like rainbow webs when the sun rose. The fields glimmered colourless still, but growing every moment more perceptible in the chill dreariness of the season—not cold enough for frost, yet very cold. Everything was grey, the few shivering half-grown trees in the hedgerows, the sky all banked with clouds, the face of the half-seen landscape. There was one cottage by the roadside, and that was grey too, all shut up and asleep, the door closed, the windows all black. Little Lilias, the one moving atom in that great still landscape, felt afraid of it, and of herself, and the sound of her own steps, which seemed loud enough to wake a whole world of people. It seemed to Lilias that the kindly earth was dead, and she alone a little ghost, walking about its grave. None of her dreams, none of the poetry, nor anything out of her fairy lore could help her here. The reality was more than any dream. How still!—how very still it was!—how dark! and yet with that weird lightening which grew about her, making everything more visible moment by moment, as if by some strange magical clearing of her own tired eyes! She was so tired, so worn out; faint for want of food, though she was not hungry—and for want of rest, though she did not wish to go to sleep. Such an atom in all that great grey insensible universe, and yet the only thing alive!
No—not the only thing. Lilias’ heart contracted with a thrill, first of relief, then of fear, when she saw something else moving besides herself. It was in one of the great fields that stretched colourless and vast towards the horizon. Lilias could not tell what it was. It might be a spirit; it might be an enchanted creature bound by some spell to stay there among the ploughed furrows; it might be some mysterious wild beast, the legendary monster, of whose existence children are always ready to be convinced. She concealed herself behind a bush, and looked anxiously down the long brown furrow. It was something very little—not so big as a man—smaller even than herself; something that toiled along with difficulty, stumbling sometimes, and falling in the soft earth. By and by a faint breath of sound began to steal towards her—very faint, yet carried far on the absolute stillness of the morning. Some one who was in trouble—some one who was crying. Lilias’ bosom began to swell. She was very tired and confused herself; very lonely and frightened of the dead world, and of her own forlorn livingness in it. But the sound of the feeble crying brought her back to herself. Did she divine already who it was? She scrambled through a gap in the hedge, jumped across the ditch, and plunged too into the yielding, heavy soil of the ploughed furrow. She was not surprised. There did not seem to be anything wonderful in meeting her brother so. Had she not been sent to him because he was in trouble? It was natural that he should be here in the cold, dim morning, in the wild field, toiling along towards her, faintly crying in the last confusion and misery of childish weariness, his way lost, and his courage lost, and all his little bewildered faculties. She called out “Nello!”—cautiously, lest any one should hear—“Nello!” and then there was an outcry of amazement and joy—“Oh, Lily!” It was a half-shriek of incredulous happiness with which poor Nello, toiling through the field, weary, lost, forlorn, and afraid, heard the familiar sound of her voice. He was not so much surprised either. He did not think it was impossible, though nothing could have been more impossible to an elder mind. Children hold no such reckonings as we do with probability. He had been saying, “Oh, Lily! my Lily!” to himself—crying for her—and here she was! He had no doubt of it, made no question how she got there, but threw himself upon her with a great cry that thrilled the dim morning through and through, and made the sleep-bound world alive.
And they sat down together in the furrow, and clung to each other, and cried—for misery, but for happiness too. All seemed safe now they had found each other. The two forlorn creatures, after their sleepless, wintry night, felt a sudden beatitude creep over their little weary bodies and aching hearts. Two—how different that is from one! They held each other fast, and kissed, and were happy in the dark furrow, which seemed big enough and dark enough to furnish them both with a grave.