Caroline Austin

“ It is horrible."
"I used to think just like that once, Harold," whispered Helen half-shyly. "I was dreadfully afraid of all sorts of things. I used to think after I had been naughty that perhaps I should go to sleep and wake up in hell. One day I told Cousin Mary—you don't know Cousin Mary, do you? It is so easy to talk to her; one can tell her anything. She thinks that dying will be only like going to sleep in the dark. We shall be a little frightened, perhaps, but we shall know all the time that nothing bad can really happen to us. ”

“ Helen was dimly conscious that she had said something wrong, and her relief was considerable when Harold, a lad of about twelve, who was seated beside her, looked up into her face with his merry blue eyes and said:
"I think our boys make a horrid noise, especially Jim Hunt. I saw you looking at him. You can hear his voice over everybody's. I don't sing at all when I sit by him."
"Harold, how wicked of you!" said his mother. "You don't deserve the privilege of sitting in the choir. Jim Hunt is an excellent boy, and his voice is most useful."
Agatha, her mother's echo, murmured, "How wicked!" ”

“ Helen's tone had been tragic, but there was a gleam of fun in Cousin Mary's eyes as she replied that brought a smile to the girl's face.
"Very tiresome," she said. "I hate lessons."
"They are a little wee bit trying sometimes, I grant. And yet we must learn them; must go on learning them all our lives."
Cousin Mary's face had grown grave again, and Helen began to think her the most perplexing person that she had ever met.
"Go on learning!" she repeated. "Grown-up people don't learn lessons." ”

“ Perhaps for all her faults and foibles Agatha was rather to be pitied than blamed, but Helen was scarcely likely to see them in that light, and she may be pardoned for experiencing a sensation of disgust on seeing Agatha enter the school-room and calmly sweep away some chips of wood and cardboard out of which Harold, with some wire and a few rough tools, was trying to construct what he called an organ. Harold had a taste for mechanics, and was always dreaming of inventions. ”

“ Desmond, raising herself and clinging to the girl's drenched skirts, "it is so terrible to be alone, and I am so weak. If any help came I might be passed over and forgotten. I cannot scream as some people do. Stay with me, Helen, stay with me."
Helen stood for a moment irresolute. If she remained here she must abandon all hope of finding her father, almost, it seemed to her, all hope of life. And the water was always mounting higher. She was not weak like her stepmother. If no other help was at hand she might climb with others into the rigging and wait for the aid that must surely come. ”

“ Harold's face, notwithstanding its rounded outlines, did bear a resemblance to his aunt's. She smiled.
"You may say what you like, John, but I can't believe that Harold and Helen can be good companions for one another. If she had taken a fancy even to Grace I should have made no objection."
"Let the children be," returned the colonel a little testily. "Helen looks better already for young companionship, and we cannot force children's likes and dislikes any more than we can our own."
"That, I suppose, you learnt from Mary Macleod," said Mrs. Desmond, the smile fading from her face. ”

“ Desmond was half-astonished at the bitterness of her own feelings, and felt the necessity of controlling herself. She looked up and saw Helen watching her from the open doorway with an expression of scarcely veiled triumph. It was the last straw. If the girl's face had expressed even fear or shrinking, Mrs. Desmond's better nature would have been touched; but there was something of insolence in her stepdaughter's defiant attitude that exasperated the usually self-controlled woman.
"Helen," she said, and her voice was hard, "you have been exceedingly clumsy: a clumsy woman is intolerable. ”

“ Desmond had kept her room all day, and Helen and Harold, having drunk tea in the school-room, with the colonel as their guest, were sitting under an apple-tree in the orchard. The setting sun flooded the fair June landscape, and threw a glory round their young heads, showing to their half-bewildered childish eyes strange visions and "lights that never were on sea or land."
"What do I wish for most!" repeated Harold. "To do something great, I think. What is the good of living if one is only to be just like everyone else. ”

“ But these comforting reflections did not prevent a wistful face, not unlike Helen's own, from peering out at him from amongst the dark shadows on the staircase, dimly lit by his solitary candle, a face that had looked up into his once and had whispered with failing voice, "Take care of the child and bring her safe to me." For our responsibilities are our own, and we cannot safely delegate them even to persons of angelic goodness. ”

“ That there was another side to Helen's character Miss Macleod knew. Such intense natures ever have their reverse side. She had her bad impulses as well as her good ones; and a fierce temper that it would need many years of patient effort to bring under control. There was a spice of recklessness in Helen, too, and an impatience of restraint. Hers was a nature that might harden and develop terrible possibilities for evil under adverse circumstances. All this Cousin Mary saw with painful distinctness as she watched the girl with ever-increasing interest. ”

“ These trials are often blessings in disguise."
"Nonsense!" said the colonel, with a quick glance at Helen. "Harold will live to trouble them yet. You see if he doesn't. And as for his being troublesome, it's my belief that parents like the tiresome children best."
Mrs. Desmond pursed up her thin lips, and glanced at Helen in her turn.
"You speak without knowledge, John," she returned coldly. "To love a child that is continually paining you is impossible. It is a piece of modern cant to say that it is. Of course one must do one's duty towards a troublesome child. ”

“ Harold's questioning blue eyes looked curiously into Helen's face, but it betrayed nothing. Helen was too deep-natured to wear her heart upon her sleeve. She knew quite well that Mrs. Desmond disliked the word mamma, considering it underbred; but the girl had told herself that she would call no stranger mother, and she kept her word.
"I suppose that I ought to have been with Grace all this time," she said, breaking silence. "Come along, Harold, and let us find her quickly."
"Never mind Grace. She never cares for anybody when she has a book, and she didn't want you to come at all. ”

“ Bayden was not the only person who considered it a pity that the colonel's fancy had been taken by Harold.
"I could have endured Agatha, but why you choose to annoy me by having that rough boy continually here I cannot understand," observed Mrs. Desmond to her husband.
"My dear wife, why should Harold annoy you? He is scarcely ever in the house, and he can't do much harm in the garden."
"He is the most unsatisfactory of my sister's children. Everyone knows that he is a bad boy. Even Richard, who is a perfect idiot about his children, acknowledges that he can do nothing with Harold." ”

“ Desmond as an antagonist against whom she was justified in waging perpetual warfare, and she had told herself that, if her father was restored to her, her stepmother should have her loyal obedience. Thus determined, and relieved from the daily fret of Mrs. Desmond's constant rebukes, the bitterness had died out of Helen's heart; and now something in the elder woman's worn, aged appearance touched the girl's generous nature. ”

“ Husband and wife exchanged glances.
"Won't the young lady sit down?" asked Mrs. Hunt, after an instant's pause, dusting a chair for Helen with her apron.
"No, thank you," replied Helen, "we only came to see Jim, and we haven't much time."
"Let 'em go, then, if they wull," observed the man, answering his wife's unspoken question.
"He won't know you," said Mrs. Hunt, whose eyes were fixed on Helen's basket; "and it's no good giving him things he can't swallow. But if Master Harold and the young lady like to go upstairs they're welcome. He's lying in the room right atop of the stairs. ”

“ Bayden and Agatha had gone, and those two were left alone.
Grace shrugged her shoulders.
"It wouldn't have been any good," she said; "mother always takes Agatha's part. Besides, she and Harold are always quarrelling. It's just as often his fault as hers. I wish he was at school like the other boys. But come along out into the garden. We can take books with us and read."
Nothing loth, Helen agreed. They found a shady spot, and Grace, who liked nothing so much as reading, was soon deep in her book. But Helen was restless and ill at ease. ”

“ The very sight of it makes me feel ill."
"What an unlucky little girl it is!" said Colonel Desmond, patting Helen's shoulder as she turned silently away.
"And what a pity to see such a lovely shawl ruined!" ejaculated a lady who was sitting next to Mrs. Desmond, and who thought that that lady had displayed remarkable forbearance.
"What an unlucky little girl!" The words haunted Helen all day. They rang in her ears persistently. Was she unlucky? Would she always be unlucky? always doing things that hurt others? Would she never have a chance of showing that she was not really wicked? ”

“ Desmond, throwing herself on the sofa and bursting into real tears. "John, listen to me—"
But it was of no avail. Whether the colonel even heard his wife's last appeal seems doubtful. Without pausing or turning his head, he walked straight down-stairs and out into the street just as Helen had done before him.
Darkness was falling fast. The air had turned chilly, with a bite of the east in it. Fresh from the warm drawing-room, Colonel Desmond shivered as he looked round in every direction, trying in vain to discover some trace of the fugitive. ”

“ Helen, sitting a little apart from a merry group of fellow-passengers on the steamer's deck, was under the spell of this wonderful summer's night. There are certain phases in nature which seem to work upon highly-strung people until they experience a kind of spiritual quickening, some such quickening as we imagine may come to us after death. It was this influence that was upon Helen now. The day had passed pleasantly enough except for one incident. Mrs. Desmond had not found the voyage come up to her expectations. ”

“ Bayden had some qualms of conscience with regard to the lonely young stranger within their gates.
"Poor child!" he said, as he rose from his chair preparatory to starting on his usual afternoon potter in his parish, "we must be kind to her, Agatha. I daresay she has had a rough bringing up."
"She has had every advantage with my sister," snapped Mrs. Bayden. "She was exceedingly brusque at luncheon, and she ought, at least, to have learnt better manners by this time. Our choir isn't good enough for her, indeed! I only hope that her example won't make Harold naughtier than ever." ”

“ Upon the intervening time it is needless to dwell. Helen's feelings may be better imagined than described when, one day, without a word of warning, her father walked into the drawing-room of the pleasant, unruly household where she was temporarily located, and where she was, at that particular moment, engaged in teaching some untidy-looking children to sit monkey-wise upon the ground like her ayah, and, rather hastily unclasping the clinging arms which his little daughter had flung round his neck, he presented to her the gentle-looking lady who stood by his side as her new mother. ”

“ A grief to her father, who loved her; a terrible perplexity to her well-meaning though prejudiced stepmother. Not at all a terrible-looking little person, although Mrs. Desmond, amongst her most intimate friends, did occasionally lament her stepdaughter's unfortunate plainness. It was an interesting little face, with delicate though sharp features, and large, questioning, restless, blue-gray eyes; sad enough sometimes, but gleaming with fun and mischief on the least provocation. Helen's rough dark hair and her rather angular figure were Mrs. Desmond's despair ”

“ Desmond was rather a self-centred person, and she was quite unconscious that her remarks were not approving themselves to her listener.
"Really, Mary," she said, glancing up in some surprise at her companion's tone, "you don't mean to say that you have taken up with these new-fangled notions about education? A household that exists only for children is, in my opinion—"
She paused, becoming suddenly aware that Helen had entered the room, book in hand as usual, and was taking up her accustomed station on a straight-backed chair situated at a respectful distance from the fireplace. ”

“ And now Cousin Mary was gone, and the colonel, lying on the drawing-room sofa prostrate with a bad headache, was conscious of some qualms of conscience on Helen's account, not unmixed with feelings of relief at the departure of this keen-eyed guest.
"Your cousin is a very blunt woman," he said in rather a fretful tone to his wife, who was sitting beside him. "It is strange how well she got on with Helen. She seemed to like the child."
"Oh! it was merely a caprice and a spirit of opposition. Mary was always unlike other people," returned Mrs. Desmond. ”