Anxious Audrey Part 27

Her ruse answered perfectly.

"_You_ have _written_ a play!" Faith sat erect in her bed, all her tiredness, all her depression gone. "A real play! Oh, Audrey, do you mean it? How clever you are! Of course I'll go and take the children, to leave you here in peace to finish it. I don't care how shabby my clothes are!"

Audrey winced. She would have liked--or, rather, it would have been pleasant--if Faith--and all--could just have realised her self-sacrifice-- how much it cost her to stand aside, and give up so great a pleasure.

"Oh, I could----" she began, but, to her lasting joy, recovered herself in a moment, and never finished her sentence.

"Audrey, will you let me read it, some day?" Faith's eyes were full of appeal.

Audrey coloured. "Some day, perhaps," she said shyly. "Now I must go to bed."

"Thank you," said Faith simply. "Oh, Audrey, I _am_ so happy!"

She turned her pale face to the window, her eyes to the stars in the blue-black sky. "I am so happy that I feel I must get out and say my prayers again. A few minutes ago everything seemed black and dreary, but now----"

"I will say mine too," said Audrey gently, "before I go." And the two sisters knelt down side by side in the darkness, and said their prayers again together, 'because they were so happy,' with the happiness which comes of giving up something for one another.

The next morning Audrey got up early, and, going to the box-room, dragged out from their coverings her pretty green box and portmanteau. Then she went back to her room, and from her cupboards and drawers she collected a pair of house-shoes and a pair of boots, gloves, stockings, a soft grey cashmere dress that she had a little grown out of, and a Leghorn hat, which, she knew, had long filled Faith's heart with envy. All these she popped into the trunk.

"There is something towards going away," she said, as she dragged the boxes into Faith's bedroom; "the dress is as good as new, but I have grown so, and--and I will lend you my writing-case, and a nice hairbrush."

And before Faith had recovered herself sufficiently to speak, Audrey had darted away again and locked herself in her own room.

The sacrifice had cost her more than anyone would ever know. The thought of the lost holiday, and such a holiday, was hard to bear, and a great longing for the sea was tugging at her heart-strings until the pain of it was almost unendurable.

CHAPTER XIV.

Audrey finished her clean copy of her play and posted it on the very day the family departed for Ilfracombe. But she did not tell Faith so.

Faith must still believe that Audrey wanted nothing so much as a peaceful time at home for her work.

"And now I shall have to wait three whole weeks before I hear anything,"

she thought dolefully, as she hurried home from the post office and into the house by way of the back door, before any of the others were down.

She was rather surprised and disappointed that she felt none of the thrills and delight she had expected to feel when she at last sent off her first piece of work to try its fortune. Indeed, she felt nothing but a painful consciousness of its faults, which was very depressing.

And still more depressing was it to feel that she would not have Irene there to talk things over with, and get encouragement from. Those three long weeks of waiting she would have to live through alone, without anyone to confide her anxieties to, or to give her fresh hope.

Under the circ.u.mstances it was not easy, all things considered, to keep up a smiling face, and live up to the joyful excitement of the five travellers. And as she left the station with her father, after the train with its fluttering array of hands and handkerchiefs had glided away out of sight round the sunny curve, she had hard work to keep the tears out of her eyes, and the bitterness out of her heart.

Mr. Carlyle had to go and pay some calls in the village, so Audrey walked home alone; and very, very much alone she felt, after the lively companionship of the last month. The garden, when she reached it, wore a new air of desolation, and when she caught sight of one of Debby's dolls lying forgotten on the gra.s.s, she picked it up and hugged it sympathetically, out of pity for its loneliness. The silence in the house and out was just as oppressive. Audrey, still holding Debby's old doll, hurried through the silent hall and up the stairs to her room, and dropping on the seat by the window, she leaned her head over the ledge.

Now, at last, she might give way to her feelings and sob out some of the pent-up misery in her heart.

"But--mother--she will be expecting me." The thought came to her more swiftly than the tears forced their way through her lids. It was nearly lunch time too, and there was no one but herself to get it.

"Oh, dear," sighed Audrey, "there is not even time to be miserable!"

But that thought made her laugh, and she ran downstairs to Mary.

Mary had evidently shed a few tears, but she was already cheering herself up with plans for the homecoming.

"At first it seemed that melancholy and quiet, Miss Audrey, I felt I'd never be able to bear it, speshully when I remembered that Miss Irene wouldn't be coming back any more. It's like losing one of ourselves, isn't it, miss? And when I think of that dear baby gone so far,"--the tears welled up in Mary's eyes--"and there'll be no rompseying with her to-night before she goes to bed--well, I can't 'elp it. I may be silly, but I can't 'elp it, though there, she's happy enough, I daresay, with her little bucket and spade and all, and she won't miss us 'alf as much as we'll miss 'er!"

"Yes, baby will love it, Mary, they all will. We have got to cheer ourselves up by thinking of how happy they all are. And they will come back looking so well and strong. We shall get more accustomed to the quietness in a day or two, and the time will soon pa.s.s."

"Oh my, yes, miss! The time won't 'ang when once I begin to get my 'and in. It won't be long enough for all I'm going to do by time they come back. I am going to have their rooms as nice as nice can be; and I'm going to paint Master Tom's barrow, and I'm going to make a rabbit 'utch for Miss Debby and mend her dolls' pram----"

"But Mary, what about your holiday. You must have that while the house is so empty. I must speak to mother about it."

"Oh, I don't want any holiday, Miss Audrey." Mary's voice was quite decisive. "I mean, I don't want to go away. I haven't got any money to waste, and holidays do cost more'n they are worth. Leastways, mine do, for I'm so home-sick all the time, I'm only longing for them to be over.

It seems waste, doesn't it, miss?"

"It does," agreed Audrey gravely, "but I suppose you have the joy of coming back, and you appreciate home all the more for having been away."

"Well, miss, it seems rather a lot to pay, for only just that. And a lot to bear too, when you are 'appy enough already. What I do want to go to is our own treat, when it comes, and I'd like to go to the sea for a day."

"Well, I am sure you can, Mary. I will speak to mother and father about it."

Audrey was busily collecting the things for her mother's lunch-tray.

She had to make her an omelette, and she felt nervous about it, for hitherto Irene had helped her, and Mary was not capable of doing so.

As soon as it was ready she hurried upstairs with the tray. She had not seen her mother yet since they had all departed, and she had suddenly begun to wonder how she was bearing it.

"Of course I ought to have run in at once to see her," she thought remorsefully, "but I did feel miserable."

Mrs. Carlyle was lying propped up on her cushions with Debby's kittens beside her. "Well, darling," she said, looking up with a glad smile of welcome, "how did they all go off, I am longing to know. I have been picturing their enjoyment of everything they see and do on the journey, and their joy when they first catch sight of the sea."

"Oh dear," sighed Audrey, "everyone is thinking of their happiness.

I can only think how miserable it is without them; and I should have thought you would have felt it even more than I do, mother."

"Perhaps it is that I have had more experience, dear, I seem to live again my own first visit to the sea; and time does not seem so long to one when one is older either, and it pa.s.ses only too soon. I feel too full of grat.i.tude to feel miserable, I had been thinking for such a long time about a change of air for them, and worrying myself because it seemed absolutely out of the question. Then quite suddenly the way was opened and all was made possible without my help or interference. One could sing thanksgiving all day long one has so many blessings to be thankful for."

"I shouldn't have thought you felt that, mother, shut up here week after week as you are; with nothing to look out at but the garden and the road."

Audrey strolled over to the window, "and such a garden too!" she added sarcastically.

Mrs. Carlyle glanced out at it and sighed. "I often wish,"--she said, but did not finish her sentence.

"What do you often wish, mother?"

"I often long for the time when I shall be able to go out there again and help to keep it nice. If I ever am permitted to," she added in a lower tone.

"Well, at any rate I can," cried Audrey, with an effort to recover her spirits. Here was something more waiting for her to do. It was hard that her mother, having a garden to look on, should have only this neglected place with but one spot of brightness in it--the bed that Faith had made and Debby and Tom had sown with seeds.

Job Toms' herbaceous border was but a melancholy spectacle as yet. He had sown parsley and put in roots of mint and sage; and then, in Job's own way, had left the things to look after themselves, to grow or not to grow as they could or would.

Here was a task to set herself. She would get that bed, and Faith's too, as pretty as she could. Faith would be so delighted when she came home and saw it, and they would be able to vie with each other in keeping them nice, for mother's sake. If Jobey objected, well, he must go on objecting, and they would try and make him understand, without hurting his feelings, that a herbaceous border and a herb bed were not one and the same things.

Audrey's spirits went up with a bound.