Three Girls from School

Towards morning Tilda crept into the other side of the bed and fell into profound slumber. Annie also slept and dreamed and awakened, and slept and dreamed again.

”‘Be sure your sin will find you out,’” she kept repeating under her breath; and then, all of a sudden, when she felt a little – just a little – calmer, a hand was laid on her shoulder, a great rough face bent over her, and a voice said:

“I say, missie, it’s time for you and me to be off.”

Annie looked up. The red-haired giant had entered the room and had summoned her. Trembling, shaking, her fever high, her throat almost too sore to allow her to speak, she rose from that horrible bed, tried to shake her tumbled clothes into some sort of order, took up her bag, and followed Sam downstairs. A minute or two later, to her infinite refreshment, they were both out of the house and in the open air. Sam was all alive and keen with interest but when they had walked a few steps he glanced at Annie and the expression of his face altered.

“You be – my word! – you be real bad!” he said.

“I am,” said Annie hoarsely. “I can scarcely speak. It is – my – sin, Sam – that has – found me out.”

“Your sin!” said Sam. “You be a hangel o’ light.”

Annie laid her little, white, burning hand on his.

“I can’t go to the docks,” she said. “I can’t go anywhere – except – except – oh, I must be quick! – oh, my senses will go! Everything swims before me. Sam, I must tell you the truth. Sam, hold me for a minute.”

He did so. The street in which they found themselves was quiet as yet. There were only a few passers-by, and these where hurrying off to their respective employments. Annie put her hand into the little pocket which contained her money. She took out her purse and gave Sam a five-pound note.

“Go,” she said, “to-day to Rashleigh, the place where your sister has been. Go to the Rectory and tell them that I – Annie Brooke – have found out – the truth of one text: ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ Tell them that from me, and be quick – be very quick. Go at once. But first of all take me to the nearest hospital.”

Before poor Sam could quite understand all Annie’s instructions the girl herself was quite delirious. There was nothing for it but to lift her into his strong arms and carry her to a large hospital in the neighbourhood of Islington. There she was instantly admitted, and, after a very brief delay, was conveyed to the fever ward.

Chapter Twenty Nine

From Darkness to Light

Late on that same evening Rover at the old Rectory thought it expedient to raise his voice in the extreme of exasperation and anger. A stranger of the sort that ought not to be seen about the Rectory gardens was daring to approach the back-door right through Rover’s special territory. Luckily for the red-haired giant, Rover could not get at him beyond the limit of his chain. The giant knocked at the back-door, and presently a timid-looking woman, who had been called in to help to nurse Mrs Shelf, opened the door about an inch.

“Now what is up?” she said. “You get out of this; you are a stranger here, and we don’t want parties of your sort about.”

“I ha’ come,” said Sam, “with a message from one as calls herself Annie.”

Mrs Shelf was still lying on the sofa in the kitchen. She was feeling far too weak and shaky to rise; but at the name strength seemed to come into her like magic. She tottered off her sofa and approached the door.

“Whoever you are, come right in,” she said.

Sam entered and stood gloomily leaning up against the dresser.

“What is your message?” said Mrs Shelf. “Do tell me quickly! Do you know where Annie Brooke is?”

“In the Great Northern Hospital,” said Sam Freeman, “where I left her this mornin’. She said I was to come here and say – that her sin had found her out. She guv me five pounds to come and give the message. It’s a sight too much money. I tuk a third-class ticket down, and ’ere’s the change.” He put three sovereigns and a pile of silver on the table. “I tuk a return ticket,” he said. “I’ll be off, arter givin’ my message.”

“But tell us everything,” said Mrs Shelf. “Why, we are just mad to know. Whatever do you mean?”

Thus abjured, Sam did tell what little he knew. Annie had come back with his sister and a friend of hers to their house the night before, and she had wanted him to help her, and he had arranged to do it. But in the morning she was taken bad – very bad – and lost her head, only first of all she was able to give him more than enough money to come to Rashleigh, and a message which he was to convey to the old folks at the Rectory.

“Can’t make ’ead nor tail on it,” said the giant; “for if ever there was a beautiful, ’eavenly creature, it were her. Why, I tak her in these arms to the ’ospital. Oh, she’s like to die!” he continued. “You’d best go to Annie if ever you want to see her again.”

“And so I will – and this night, too,” said Mrs Shelf. “I’ll go right along back with you; but first of all I must send a telegraphic message to Mr John Saxon.”

In vain the neighbour who had been put in charge of Mrs Shelf expostulated with her in regard to her madness in going to London.

“If this is madness,” was the sturdy woman’s reply, “I would rather be mad than sane. Is not his bit lamb in danger and suffering, and am I the one to keep away from her?”

Sam heard these words without understanding them, but felt immediately inclined to think that Mrs Shelf was a very good sort. Accordingly, that very same evening Mrs Shelf and Sam Freeman went up to London by the very train which had taken Annie the night before. When they reached London, however, Mrs Shelf bade her companion good-bye.

“I will never cease to thank you as long as I live,” she said; “and if our Annie, our bit lamb, gets better, you will hear from me.”

“I won’t wait for that ma’am,” said Sam. “I’ll call every day at the ’ospital to inquire. I can’t say no more; there’s naught I wouldn’t do for her, ma’am.”

He hurried away, his great shock head towering above most of his fellow-men. Mrs Shelf sighed heavily. At Paddington she got into a four-wheeler and drove straight to the hotel where she knew John Saxon was staying.

He was out. She sat down patiently to wait for him. It was past midnight before he returned. What was his amazement to see the worthy, homely face of Mrs Shelf as she rose from her seat in a corner of the hall of the hotel!

“I have no news for you,” he said. “My good soul, why did you come to town? Now this only adds to our complications. I have spent a fearful day, and have put detectives on poor Annie’s track, but up to the present we have heard nothing.”

“Then I have news for you, Mr John. You don’t suppose I’d come all the way to London for nothing.” And the good woman repeated the astounding intelligence which Sam Freeman had brought her.

“A message from the child herself,” she said; “and you can guess from its tone, sir, and the words she used, how bad our poor Annie must be. Oh, may God spare her, and save her life!”

“Spare her and change her!” murmured John Saxon. “With God all things are possible. I will go at once to the hospital,” he said.

“And you will take me with you, sir?”

“Yes, if you like; but I don’t think we can be admitted at this hour.”

“Oh, sir! I couldn’t stay away. We must at least have a good try. Haven’t I nursed her since she was a little thing – she, who all her days was really motherless?”

“All right,” said Saxon. “We will go at once.” The porter who answered their summons at the great hospital went away immediately to get news with regard to Annie Brooke. This was the reverse of reassuring. She was very ill, quite delirious, and could not possibly be seen until the following morning.

“Then I will wait here,” said Mrs Shelf, settling herself down determinedly. “You can’t put me, a woman of my years, into the street. I will go to her when the day breaks.”

When Saxon and Mrs Shelf were allowed to visit Annie she did not know them. Her delirium ran high, and for days and weeks she lay truly at the point of death. All that could be done for her was, however, done. She had special nurses and a private ward; and at long last there came a day when, in answer to anguished prayers and bitter sorrow, a girl crept slowly back from the shores of death and lay truly like the shadow of her former self high and dry above danger and on her way to recovery. Day after day, slowly, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, her strength returned, until at last there came an hour when she recognised her old friends. Then by degrees she returned to health and strength.

It was three months later, and all the events which make up this story seemed to have passed into a distant part of Annie Brooke’s life, when she and John Saxon had an earnest talk together.

Annie was well once more, but so changed that few would have known her for the laughing and almost beautiful girl of the early part of that same year. She had said very little of the past since her recovery, but on this occasion she made a clean breast of everything to John Saxon.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I knew at last what repentance meant when I passed into that awful state of delirium and when I felt myself face to face with an angry God. But I have got something in my nature, John, which makes me tremble for the future. I am very wicked still. What can I do with my life?”

Then John Saxon made a proposal to her. “Will you and Mrs Shelf and our friend Sam Freeman, who is an excellent fellow at heart and the very person for a colonist, take passage with me to Canada? You can start a new life there, Annie. You have enough money to buy a little land, and Sam Freeman is the very man to help you. I myself will stay near you for the first year, and you can start your Canadian life in the house of a cousin of mine, who, I know, will be only too glad to receive you. In a new country, dear,” continued her cousin, “one can have a clear horizon, a wider view, a better chance. Take up your cross bravely, Annie; never forget that you have sinned, but also that you have repented.”

“Do they know at the school?” she asked in a whisper.

“Yes, everything is known; Priscilla told the truth.”

“You won’t tell me what they said?”