Three Girls from School

His absolute disregard of her threat to end her own miserable life made Annie at once furious and also strangely subdued. She sat back in her corner like a little wild creature caught in a trap. There was nothing whatever to be done but to submit. To submit as she was now doing was indeed new to Annie Brooke. Her head was in a whirl; but by-and-by, to her own relief, she also slept, and so part of the miserable journey was got through.

It was late on the following afternoon when Annie and John Saxon found themselves driving in the gig to Rashleigh Rectory. They had to pass through the little village, and Annie looked with a sort of terror at Dawson’s shop. She wondered if the matter of the cheque would ever be brought up against her. So occupied was she with herself and with all the dreadful things she had done that she could scarcely think of her dying old uncle at all.

The memory of a text, too, which she had learned as a child began to be present with her. Her head was aching, and the text, with its well-known words, tormented her.

”‘Be sure your sin will find you out. Be sure – your sin – will find you out,’” murmured Annie in too low a tone for Saxon to hear.

They had been met at the railway station with the information that Mr Brooke was still alive, and Saxon uttered a sigh of relief. Then his journey had not been in vain. Then the old man would be gratified. The greatest longing and wish of his life would be fulfilled. The darling of his heart would be with him at the end.

John Saxon turned and looked at the girl. She was crouching up in the gig. She felt cold, for the evenings were turning a little chill. She had wrapped an old cloak, which Mrs Shelf had sent, around her slim figure.

Her small, fair face peeped out from beneath the shelter of the cloak. Her eyes had a terrified light in them. Saxon felt that, for Mr Brooke’s sake, Annie must not enter the Rectory in her present state of wild revolt and rebellion.

He suddenly turned down a shady lane which did not lead direct to the Rectory. His action awoke no sort of notice in Annie’s mind. Her uncle was alive; he probably was not so very bad after all. This was a plot of John Saxon’s – a plot to destroy her happiness. But for John, how different would be her life now!

They drove down about a hundred yards of the lane, and then the young man pulled the horse up and drew the gig towards the side of the road. This fact woke Annie from the sort of trance into which she had sunk, and she turned and looked at him.

“Why are you stopping?” she asked.

“Because I must speak to you, Annie,” was her cousin’s response.

“Have you anything fresh to say? Is there anything fresh to say?”

“There is something that must be said,” replied John Saxon. “You cannot, Annie, enter the Rectory and meet Mrs Shelf, and, above all things, go into that chamber where your dear uncle is waiting for the Angel of Death to fetch him away to God, looking as you are doing now. You are, I well know, in a state of great mental misery. You have done wrong – how wrong, it is not for me to decide. I know of some of your shortcomings, but this is no hour for me to speak of them. All I can say at the present moment is this: that you are very young, and you are motherless, and – you are about, little Annie, to be fatherless. You are on the very eve of losing the noblest and best father that girl ever possessed. Your uncle has stood in the place of a father to you. You never appreciated him; you never understood him. He was so high above you that you could never even catch a glimpse of the goodness of his soul. But I cannot believe in the possibility of any one being quite without heart or quite without some sense of honour; and I should be slow, very slow, to believe it of you.

“Now, there is one last thing which you have got to do for your uncle Maurice, and I have brought you down here to tell you what that last thing is.”

Annie was silent. She shrank a little more into the shelter of the rough old cloak, and moved farther from her cousin.

“You must do it Annie,” he said, speaking in a decided voice; “you must on no account whatever fail at this supreme juncture.”

“Well?” said Annie when he paused.

“Your uncle is expecting you. God has kept him alive in order that he may see your face again. To him your face is as that of an angel. To him those blue eyes of yours are as innocent as those of a little child. To him you are the spotless darling, undefiled, uninjured by the world, whom he has nurtured and loved for your father’s sake and for your own. You must on no account, Annie, open his eyes to the truth with regard to you now. It is your duty to keep up the illusion as far as he is concerned. I have taken all this trouble to bring you to his bedside in order that he may have his last wish gratified, and you must not fail me. Perhaps your uncle’s prayers may be answered; and God, who can do all things, will change your heart.

“Now, remember, Annie, you have to forget yourself to-night and to think only of the dying old man. Promise me, promise me that you will do so.”

“You have spoken very strangely, Cousin John,” said Annie after a very long pause. “I – I will do – my – best I am very bad – but – I will do – my best.”

The next instant Annie’s icy-cold little hand was clasped in that of John Saxon.

“You have to believe two things,” he said. “A great man who was as your father, whom God is taking to Himself. That man loves you with all his heart and soul and strength. When he dies, there is another man, unworthy, unfit truly, to stand in his shoes, but nevertheless who will not forsake you. Now let us get back to the Rectory.”

There was a feeling of peace in the old house, a wonderful calm, a strange sense of aloofness as though the ordinary things of life had been put away and everyday matters were of no account. The fact was this: that for several days now, for long days and long nights, the beautiful Angel of Death had been brooding over the place; and the people who lived in the old Rectory had recognised the fact and had arranged their own lives accordingly.

Money did not matter at all in the shadow of that Presence; nor did greatness – worldly greatness, that is – nor ambition, nor mere pleasure; and, above all things, self-love was abhorrent in that little home of peace, for the Angel of Death brooding there brought with him the very essence of peace.

It was a curious fact that Annie Brooke, when she passed under the threshold and entered on what she expected to be the most awful time of her whole life, found that same peace immediately descend upon her. She lost all sense of fear, and every scrap of regret at having left the good and gay things of life at Zermatt.

She had not been five minutes in the house before she forgot Zermatt, and Mabel, and Lady Lushington. It is true, she thought of Priscilla, and Priscilla’s eyes seemed to haunt her. But even they, with their look of reproach, could not affect the queer peace that had fallen upon her.

Mrs Shelf kissed her warmly, not uttering a word of reproach, and Annie stepped with a light and fairy step, and crept to her own room and put on one of her little home dresses – a blue gingham which she often wore and which her uncle loved. She tripped downstairs again in a few minutes, and entered the kitchen and said to Mrs Shelf:

“Now I am ready.”

“Go in by yourself, darling,” said Mrs Shelf. “I won’t take you. He is in the old room; there is, no one with him. He knows you are here; he knew it the minute you stepped across the threshold. You couldn’t deceive him, bless you! Go to him all alone, dearie, and at once.”

So Annie went. A minute later she was seated by the old man’s bedside, and silently her little hand was laid on his. He just turned his head very slowly to look at her. They both felt themselves to be quite alone together except for the presence of the Angel of Death, who, brooding over the house, brooded more deeply over this sacred chamber, with wings held open, ready to spread themselves at any instant, and arms half extended to carry that saint of God to his home in the skies.

Mr Brooke had longed for Annie, had imagined her to be by his side in hours of delirium, had awakened to his usual senses a day or two before the end and had discovered her absence; had said no word of reproach with regard to his little Annie, but had missed her with a great heart-hunger. Now she was here. She was his own dear child. To the rest of the world Annie was at that moment a wicked, designing, double-faced, double-natured creature, but to Mr Brooke she was just his wee pet lamb, his darling; the treasure whom God had given him.

“You are back, my love,” he said when his very feeble voice could speak. “I missed you, my little one.”

“Yes, I am back,” said Annie, and she did that which comforted him most; she laid her head on the pillow beside him, and kissed his cheek, already cold with the dews which precede the moment when the great Angel of Death carries the soul he has released from its prison away.

“I am going to God,” said Mr Brooke. “It is a wonderful happiness that I am soon to be admitted into the presence of the King of Kings. There is no saying, Annie, what marvels will be revealed to me and what glories mine eyes shall look upon. I shall see in His good time the Saviour of the world. When I am ready for that sight of all sights, it will be given to me. But, my own little Annie, even in that moment of satisfaction, when I wake up after His likeness, I shall carry you, my child, in my heart of hearts. I shall look for you, my little one. You will come to me – not yet, my darling, for you are very young, but some day. Promise me, my dearest dear.”

Annie’s choked voice sounded low and faint.

“I cannot hear you, my sweetest. Say the word I want – say the word I want to take away with me.”

“What shall I say, Uncle Maurice?”

“Say ‘Yes’ – one word, my darling, that I may carry it with me into the great eternity of God.”

“Yes – oh, yes!” said Annie.

“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,” said the old man. Then the Angel of Death did open wide his glorious wings, and two bright spirits passed out of that room where one had come in.

Chapter Twenty Five

Very Dark Days

Mr Brooke’s death was followed by total collapse on Annie’s part. The time between the death and the funeral was passed by the girl in a sort of delirium, in which she was too restless to stay in bed, but too feverish to go out. On the day of the funeral itself, however, she did manage to follow her uncle to his last resting-place.

A pathetic little figure she looked in her deep mourning, with her pretty face very pale and her golden hair showing in strong relief against the sombre hue of her black dress.

Saxon and Annie were the only relations who followed the Rev. Maurice Brooke to the grave. Nevertheless the funeral was a large one, for the dead man had during a long lifetime made friends and not one single enemy. There was not a soul for miles round who did not know and love and mourn for the Rev. Maurice Brooke. All these friends, therefore, young and old, made a point of attending his funeral, and he himself might well have been there in spirit so near did his presence seem to lonely Annie as she stood close to the graveside and saw the coffin lowered to its last resting-place.

She and John Saxon then returned to the Rectory. Annie was better in health now, but very restless and miserable in spirit. Saxon was consistently kind to her. Her uncle’s will was read, which left her all that he possessed, but that all was exceedingly little, not even amounting to sufficient to pay for Annie’s school expenses at Mrs Lyttelton’s.

Saxon asked her what she would like to do with her future. Her reply was almost inaudible – that she had no future, and did not care what became of her. Saxon was too deeply sorry for her to say any harsh words just then. Indeed, her grief touched him unspeakably, and he almost reproached himself for blaming her so severely for not attending to his first letter.

It was two or three days after the funeral, and Saxon was making preparations to leave the old Rectory, where Annie herself could remain for a few weeks longer under the care of Mrs Shelf, when one morning he got a letter which startled him a good deal. Colour rose to his cheeks, and he looked across at Annie, who was pouring out tea.

“Do you know from whom I have just heard?” he said.

“No,” said Annie in a listless tone.