The Story of Jessie Part 9

"Don't make that row," he shouted roughly to the child, "nice way that to carry on when your dear grandmother is ill! Do you want to make her worse! Be quiet, can't you, and be quick. I've got no time to waste."

Jessie subsided into silence, a little moan alone escaping her as she clung to her grandmother.

"It's simple enough," he went on, turning to Mrs. Dawson, "I want my daughter, and I've come to fetch her. You've had her for five years, and now I want her for five--or fifteen, or fifty," he added, "just as it suits me."

"You can't--you've no right--you deserted her. She is ours."

"That's just where you make a mistake, old lady," he sneered, his face lighting up with an ugly mocking smile. "She is mine, not yours, and I've every right to her. I didn't desert her, and you can't prove I did, and I guess if we went to law about it, it would be you that would be in the dock for stealing her, or receiving stolen goods, so to speak, from her mother, who stole her."

"You knew where she was!" gasped Mrs. Dawson, stunned by this new aspect of affairs. "You knew poor Lizzie had sent her here--you know you did."

"Prove it," he said tauntingly. "That's all! Prove it!"

Then suddenly remembering that time was flying, he changed his tone.

"Well, anyhow, you can settle all that to your liking later on, I can't stay to argue now. I've married again, and my wife keeps a lodging-house, and wants some one to help her, some one strong and healthy, like Jessie here, and I've come for her. I didn't see the fun of paying a girl, when we could get a better one for nothing; and I came for her to-day because I thought it would be nice and quiet, not too many about, and not too many leave-takings. Now, Jess, say good-bye to your granny, I want to be off before the old man gets back, so as to spare him the pain," with a cruel laugh.

Was there no one to help them! No one to appeal to! Jessie and her grandmother looked at each other despairingly. They could think of no one within a mile or two, except Mrs. Maddock and her little maid, and how could they reach them, and what could they do to help if they did! A deep, hopeless despair settled on both of them.

"If you've anything you wants to bring along with you," said her father curtly, "look sharp and get it. I don't s'pose it's more than I can carry."

Jessie was too stunned to know quite what she was doing. In her room she had a big old-fas.h.i.+oned carpet bag that her grandfather had once given her because she so admired the flowers on its sides, and into this she thrust some of her clothes without in the least realizing what she was doing. When, though, she came to her little shelf of books, to a box Miss Grace had given her, a work-basket her grandfather and grandmother had bought her on her birthday, and a picture which had been Miss Barley's present, she stayed her hand.

She would not take any of her treasures to be knocked about perhaps in a busy lodging-house. She would leave them here, they would seem like a link between her and home--for no other place would ever be "home" to her, she knew.

She took her little Prayer-book, the one that had been her mother's, granny had given it to her on her eighth birthday, and she treasured it dearly; it had her mother's name and her own written in it, and that seemed always to draw them nearer and form a little link between.

It was all soon over, and Jessie, without daring to look around her beloved little room again, crept away back to her granny, her eyes blinded with tears.

"Granny, you'll 'tend to my rose for me, won't you," she whispered in a choked voice, "till I come home again, and--and kiss granp for me, and--oh, granny, granny, what shall I do, I can't go away! I can't!

I can't! I think I shall die if--"

Perhaps mercifully, her father cut the leave-taking short. No good could be done, not a fraction of their misery lessened by prolonging it, and before Jessie had finished sobbing out her last words, he had picked her up and carried her down-stairs and out of the house.

"This way," he said, when he put her down in the road. "I like seclusion when I take a walk. There's a station I prefer to Springbrook, it's one I used to favour a good bit," with a meaning little laugh, "and if I haven't forgot my way all these years, and they haven't altered the face of the country, the shortest cut to it lies through these very fields, so step out and put your best foot foremost."

CHAPTER VII.

THE JOURNEY AND THE ARRIVAL.

Harry Lang's "short cut" to the next station meant a good two hours of heavy walking, sometimes over rough uneven ground, sometimes through a little coppice, or along a quiet lane, all of them unknown to Jessie. For this very reason, perhaps, the way seemed even longer than it really was, but to the poor exhausted child it seemed endless. Her head ached distractingly, her back and legs ached, and her feet had almost refused to do her bidding long before she reached the station.

Her father noticed that she lagged, but it never occurred to him that the real reason was that she was exhausted--at least it did not occur to him until, when they at last reached the refreshment room, Jessie dropped like a stone upon the floor.

"What are you doing?" he snapped crossly, "get up! Can't you see where you are going?"

But Jessie neither saw, nor heard, nor moved. The kindly-faced woman behind the counter first leaned out over it to look at her, then came around.

"Why, she's in a dead faint," she cried, lifting the limp little hand; "has she walked far? She looks dead beat."

Harry Lang muttered something about "just a mile or so," but he did not enlarge on the subject, and he seemed so morose and surly that no one felt drawn to say more to him than they could help. The woman lifted Jessie up, and laid her gently on a couch, but she had bathed her brow and her hands, and held smelling-salts under her nose for quite a long while before she showed any signs of life, and Harry Lang had wished himself miles away, and regretted his day's work many times before Jessie with a deep, deep sigh at last opened her eyes.

For a moment she looked about her uncomprehendingly; then, as realization came to her, the woman bending over her heard her moan despairingly.

"Is she ill?" she asked.

"No," said Harry Lang curtly, "only a bit tired and upset at having to leave the folks that brought her up. Maybe she's hungry; we've walked a good step to get here, and we haven't had a bite of anything. I'm hungry myself, so I dare say she is. Hungry, Jessie?"

"I want to go home, I must--I must. Oh, let me go," moaned Jessie wildly, looking up at him beseechingly; but at sight of his face she shrank back frightened, and the words died on her lips.

"You are going home as fast as I can take you," he said roughly; "if you'd sent word, I dare say they'd have got a special," he added, with a sarcastic laugh.

"I'll give her something to eat," said the woman, without a smile at his joke. "I dare say she'll feel better then. She looks to me dead beat," and she laid Jessie gently back, and went behind the counter and poured her out a basin of soup from some that was being kept hot there. To Jessie, who had had no food since breakfast-time, the soup brought new life. She took it all, and a large slice of bread with it, to the great satisfaction of her new friend, who watched delightedly the colour coming back to the poor little white face.

"Where do you want to get to, to-night?" she asked, turning to Harry Lang.

"London."

"Um! The next train that stops here doesn't come in till 10.15.

It is a long time for her to wait, and late for her to get home."

"'Tisn't going to kill her," answered Jessie's father shortly.

"Everybody has got something to put up with sometimes. She is lucky not to have to walk all the way." He hated to be asked questions, and grew cross at being obliged to answer them.

"It's my opinion she'd never reach the other end if she had to do that," said the woman curtly. Then, turning to Jessie, she said gently, "If you lie back again, dear, maybe you'll be able to sleep, and that will rest you, and help to pa.s.s the time too."

Jessie, only too glad to obey, and not to have to move her aching body again, nestled back on the hard cus.h.i.+ons, and turning her face away from the light, shut her eyes, and soon was miles away from her present surroundings and her miseries, in a deep dreamless sleep, and she knew nothing more until she was wakened suddenly by a tremendous rumbling and shaking, puffing and roaring, close at hand, which made her start up in a terrible panic of alarm.

For a moment she did not realize where she was or what had happened; her brain was dazed, her eyes full of sleep. Then her father came in, and seizing her by the arm hurried her out of the room and across the platform to the brightly-lighted train drawn up there. He gave her no time for farewells to the kind-hearted woman who had helped her so much, nor did he thank her himself. Poor Jessie could only look back over her shoulder and try to thank her with her eyes and smiles.

"Thank you very much," she called out, her voice sounding very weak and small in the midst of all the uproar; but the grat.i.tude on her face and in her eyes spoke more than words.

"I've thought dozens of times of that poor little child," the woman remarked next day to one of the porters; "the man looked so cruel and horrid, and the child so frightened. I should like to know the truth about them. I am sure he was unkind to her."

Once inside the railway carriage, Jessie's father put her to sit in the corner by the window, and seated himself next to her. He was so anxious that no one should speak to her that he even gave up the comfortable corner seat himself, and sat bolt upright beside her, a bit of self-denial which did not improve his temper, which was at no time a sweet one; and when at last Waterloo was reached, it was with no gentle hand that he shook and roused her from the kindly sleep which had fallen on her again, and blotted for the time all her woes from her memory.

With a shock Jessie started to her feet, staring about her with wide, dazed, sleep-filled eyes. "Wake up, can't you? I can't stay here all night while you has your sleep out!"

No one else ever spoke to her in that tone and manner. In a moment poor Jessie's eyes and brain were as wide awake and alert as fear could force them. That dreaded voice would rouse her from the sleep of death almost, she thought. Shaking with cold and dread, she followed him along the lighted platform, and out into the gloom and squalor of the streets.

A heavy rain was coming down in sheets, driven in their faces by a cold, gusty wind. It hit the pavement and splashed up against her cold little legs and ankles until they were soaked through; it beat on her face until she was nearly blinded; and, bewildered by the bright lights, and the deep shadows, and the glitter of the wet streets in the light of the lamps, she would soon have been lost indeed, had her father not caught her by the hand.

On they went, and on and on, an endless distance it seemed to Jessie.

Her father never once spoke to her, and she was afraid to speak to him. At last, though, she summoned up courage. "Where are we going, father?"

"Home."

"Are we nearly there?"