Morag Part 18

"Oh, didn't you see, Matty? I'm afraid it must be awfully hurt. It fell from such a height--the fairy, I mean. Didn't you hear it cry? it sounded so dreadful when we were al' so happy. I never dreamt they could feel."

Lady Matilda showed a row of pearly teeth as she replied, "Why, yes, of course. How odd you are, Blanche. Didn't you know they are poor children, who do all this for money? I should think they must be quite used to falling by this time."

Blanche was horror-struck. She tried to avert her eyes from the stage, but, in spite of herself, she felt her glance riveted on the hovering fairies, not in delight now, but in terror, lest another of them should fall.

"Little girls who do it for bread," Blanche repeated to herself, as she leant back on her seat, and covered her face with her hands. And as she sat thus, her thoughts went slipping back to the Highland glen. She remembered the elfish-looking little form that gazed in upon her at the window of the old castle, on that autumn morning; and she shuddered to think how, under other circ.u.mstances, her friend Morag might have been such a victim. Then she began to think of the poor fairy; she wondered whether she was dreadfully hurt, and resolved that she should beg Miss Prosser to make inquiries before they left the theatre.

It was with a feeling of relief that she saw the curtain drop at last, and the people begin to move away. Then she made an eager appeal that they should go and ask after the child. The request seemed utterly outrageous when first presented to Miss Prosser's mind; but Blanche was so urgent that, at last, she consented to dispatch the maid to make inquiries behind the scenes. Then Blanche began to plead to be allowed to go, too. She was so very eager that her governess, at last, after many injunctions to the maid, gave a reluctant consent, arranging that she should wait in the box with the little Lady Matilda, who seemed to view her impetuous cousin's movements with unfeigned astonishment, not unmixed with annoyance.

Blanche was all trembling with excitement when the maid took her hand, and they began to thread their way through the corridors, which were getting emptied now. Presently they met a man who was putting out the lights, and the maid stopped to ask where they could go to inquire after the hurt fairy. Having got directions how to proceed, they went on through narrower and less luxurious pa.s.sages--so dark and dingy-looking that Blanche began to feel afraid, and grasped her maid's hand more tightly. They came at last to a room, the door of which stood half open.

They were hesitating whether this was the room to which they had been directed, when they heard a thin, feeble voice within, moaning, as if in pain.

"That's the fairy, I'm sure, Grant," whispered Blanche, eagerly. "Do just peep in and see."

The maid pushed open the door and walked a few steps forward. On the floor stood a paraffine lamp which shed a dim light throughout the room, showing a heap of matting in the corner, where a poor, emaciated child lay. Gleaming through the half darkness, Blanche could distinguish a pale, sharp, unchildlike face, that rested on a thin shrivelled hand.

A wretched mud-colored rag seemed to be her sole garment; and, at her side, there stood a pair of big boots, or what served for them, but they seemed almost detached pieces of leather now; besides being of a considerably larger size than the wearer would require. Lying on a table, in another corner of the room, was the gauzy fairy gear, at which Blanche glanced sadly, thinking it contrasted strangely with the wretched rags for which it had been exchanged.

On hearing the sound of footsteps, the child started up, and looked wildly round, as she exclaimed, "O mother! you'll not beat me this time!

I'm so bad--it's my leg! Tim said he never saw nothing like the fall I got! Oh, my! it hurts awful!" and the child began to writhe in pain.

"It is not your mother--poor thing! But I daresay your mother will be here before long," said the maid, in a compa.s.sionate tone, as she stooped down to look at the child.

In a moment, Blanche was kneeling beside the heap of matting, her pretty blue opera cloak falling on the grimy floor as she took the child's little black fingers in her hands, saying, eagerly, "O poor, poor fairy!--little girl, I mean," she added, for she could not yet divest herself of the idea of the gauzy wings and woven spangles,--"what a dreadful fall you had. I'm afraid you must be very much hurt!"

The child drew her hand away, and looked sharply at Blanche. Presently she nodded, saying, "I know; you're the pretty little girl what looked so pleased at the pantomime. We noticed you--Tim and me. Tim's the boy what hangs the lamps, you know. He's gone to fetch mother; but she aren't a-comin' yet. Drinkin' again, most likely--she's always at it."

Just then a loud-voiced, boisterous woman came staggering into the room.

"Well, young 'un, so you've been and gone and done it again! Didn't I tell you to mind your feet, you little idiot!" and the woman, stooping down, seized the child and shook her roughly.

"Oh, mother, mother, don't! I couldn't help it, noways--my head got so giddy. Oh, I'm so bad!" the weak voice wailed out; and presently the little face got more pale and pinched than before, and the poor fairy fainted away.

"You've killed her, you have--you cruel, cruel woman! How dare you speak so?" said Blanche, quivering with indignation, as she sprang to her feet from beside the matting where she had been kneeling, and almost sprang at the half-tipsy woman.

"Ho, ho! pretty bird; and who may you be? and what's your business, I'd like to know, a-comin' between me and my brat!" shouted the woman, folding her arms, and glaring at the little girl.

The maid stepped forward immediately, and said, in a quiet, firm tone, "Come, Miss Clifford, we must go at once." And then turning to the woman, she added, "We merely came to make inquiries after the poor child. We saw her get a dreadful fall a short time ago. I fear she is very much hurt. I really think you will do well to look after your child," added Grant, as she took Blanche's hand, and prepared to go. She glanced at the poor fairy, who was still lying unconscious, and discovering a jug of water standing near, the maid sprinkled some on the child's face and hands, and presently she began to show signs of returning consciousness.

"Now, Miss Clifford, we must really go at once," whispered the maid to the reluctant Blanche. "We've stayed much too long already. I don't know what Miss Prosser will think."

The woman still stood with folded arms gazing, open-mouthed, at the group. Grant again pointed to the poor little creature, reminding her that she should look after her child. And, at last, after a lingering, pitying glance at the poor little cowering fairy in her rags, Blanche suffered herself to be led away.

They found Miss Prosser in a state of great anxiety and considerable indignation at their delay. The maid explained the matter in a few prompt words, while Blanche stood by the little Lady Matilda graphically describing the sad, disenchanting scene which had followed her first visit to the gorgeous fairy pantomime.

And thus it happened that Miss Prosser's well-meant effort for the amus.e.m.e.nt of her little pupil, ended in Blanche Clifford getting a sorrowful glimpse behind the tinsel and the glitter, which only served to deepen the thoughtful shadow that had, of late, been stealing across her sunny, childish brow.

XIV.

_VISIT TO THE FAIRY._

BLANCHE'S temporary maid was a very silent woman, and was therefore regarded by her little mistress as an extremely dull, uninteresting attendant. She longed for Ellis's return to her post; forgetting all the pa.s.sages-at-arms which had taken place between them during her reign.

And especially since the evening at the pantomime, she wanted to have somebody to talk to about the poor fairy. Grant merely replied to her remarks in the briefest possible way; and Blanche decided that she was hard-hearted as well as uninteresting, for, if she were not, she could not fail to express her sympathy for the poor little girl who seemed in such pain, and had such a dreadful mother. The remembrance of the little pinched face quite haunted her. She went over the scene again and again in her mind; and wondered where her home was, and what would become of her. Miss Prosser a.s.sured her that she would certainly be taken to the hospital, and very well cared for; but still Blanche was not satisfied.

Whenever she went out to walk, she looked eagerly, among the faces in the crowd, for the face of the terrible mother, and she resolved that however dreadful she looked, she would go to her and inquire about her little girl.

She sometimes wondered, too, whether the poor fairy knew anything about that unseen Friend whom, in these last days, she had been learning to know and love. It would be such a comfort to speak to Him when her mother was so wicked and so cruel, Blanche thought, and she did not forget to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to make the poor, bruised fairy well again, and to soften her mother's hard heart.

One day, in particular, she had been thinking a great deal about the fairy; and, in the evening, after she was comfortably tucked into bed, her maid still lingered with the candle in her hand, as if she had something that she wanted to say.

"I've been to see a little girl, to-day, who has not such a comfortable bed as you have, Miss Clifford, though her poor little bones need it sore enough."

"Ah! have you, Grant?" replied Blanche, sitting up in bed, in a listening att.i.tude. "Do tell me about her. Who is she, and how did you come to know her? Is she as poor and pinched-looking as the fairy, do you think?"

"She is the fairy, Miss Blanche--the poor little thing we saw at the pantomime."

"O Grant, you don't mean to say so! Have you really found her out? I'm so very, very glad. It's what I've been longing to do. Where does she live, and was she very much hurt? You must take me to see her; indeed you must, Grant. Do tell me all about it before you go."

The maid then narrated how, the day before, she chanced to meet the terrible mother, in company with another woman, somewhat less tipsy than she, and able to give Grant the information she required concerning the poor child, who, from her account, was still very ill and very dest.i.tute. Grant went immediately, in the mother's absence, and saw the little girl in her wretched home. Her leg appeared to have been very badly hurt; the doctor, whom a kind neighbor had once brought to see her, said that she would always be lame, and the child's chief regret seemed to be that she would never be able to act at the pantomime any more.

Blanche listened eagerly to all the information Grant had to give, and before she went to sleep that night was plotting and planning how she could accomplish a visit to the fairy's home.

Next day, when Miss Prosser announced that she would dine out in the evening, and had made arrangements for Grant to sit in the schoolroom with her pupil, Blanche looked upon the circ.u.mstance as the most delightful opportunity for carrying out her plan. Her governess very rarely made engagements for the evening, or left her pupil to her own devices; so it seemed to Blanche the rarest piece of good luck that she should be going out to-night. She knew very well that Miss Prosser would not give her sanction to a visit to the wretched little girl; and though Blanche felt doubtful whether she was doing right in thus taking advantage of her governess' absence, she was so bent upon seeing the fairy again, that she tried only to look at her own side of the question.

She did not divulge her plan to Grant till Miss Prosser was fairly gone, and then she brought all her coaxing artillery to bear on the maid, who at last reluctantly yielded to her self-willed little mistress.

It was quite a new experience for Blanche to find herself out walking after dark. As she linked her arm into her maid's, and they began to thread their way along the lamp-lit streets, Blanche felt somewhat of the feeling of adventure which she had on that autumn morning at Glen Eagle, when she found herself alone in the fir-forest. And there was a strange resemblance between the occasions in another way, though Blanche did not know it. On that morning she went, unconscious of it though she was, to bring life and love and hope into the heart of the lonely little maiden who leant against one of the old fir-trees. And, to-night, she was going on a similar mission--not along the pleasant roads of Stratheagle in a sunshiny morning, but through a dreary November drizzle to a wretched haunt of misery, where a poor little desolate heart sorely needed some ministry of love.

Strange to say, the wretched cellar in the narrow court was not so far distant from Mr. Clifford's stately mansion as might have been expected, so Blanche and her guide were not long in reaching the fairy's home.

After going down a flight of steps, Grant led the way to a dreary room.

Opening the door quietly, Blanche peeped cautiously in. The poor child lay on a heap of straw. When the door opened, she raised her head and eagerly scanned the visitors. Evidently recognizing Blanche, she fixed her sharp, unchildlike eyes on her, saying, in her shrill voice, "Have you been to it again? Aren't it a pretty pantomime? You seemed much 'appier than that t'other 'un. _We_ noticed you. I wish I was there,--I do. It's wery dull a-lyin' here. Tim's never looked near, neither."

Then, turning to the maid, she said, in her sharp, querulous tone, "Well, s'pose you've brought me a bit of somethink to eat. You said you would, mind!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Morag.]

Blanche felt rather repulsed, but she hastened to uncover a dish of fruit which Grant had placed upon a stool near her, and handed some to the little girl, who seized it eagerly, saying, "I haven't tasted nothink since last night--seen n.o.body--she's been at it again, drinkin'

dreadful. And what made a pretty, fine lady like you come to see me?"

she asked, turning to survey Blanche more closely when her hunger was somewhat appeased. "'Ave you got anythink else for 'un?"

"O poor fairy! I'm so sorry for you, I came to see you because I was. I have thought so much about you since that evening at the pantomime, and I was so very glad when Grant told me she had found your home," said Blanche, kneeling down beside the child and taking the little thin fingers into her hand. The little girl glanced rather suspiciously at Blanche, who, while Grant went to unfold a warm blanket she had brought, came closer and whispered in a low, nervous tone, "And I came to see you besides, fairy, because I wanted so very much to tell you about a good Lord Jesus, who, I'm sure, loves you, and will be very kind to you.

Indeed it's only quite lately I've come really to know Him, myself. But I'm sure He loves you very much even now, and would be such a kind Friend for you to have."

"Don't b'lieve it," replied the fairy, as she drew her hand away, which Blanche had been stroking. "We see lots on 'em--Tim and me--at the pantomime. Most likely seed this 'un. They never give us a fardin, though we sometimes beg for somethink when they're a-comin' out of the play. But we're forbid to, you know," she added, nodding and winking as she glanced at Blanche's earnest face.

"Oh! but indeed, fairy, you are quite mistaken. You couldn't possibly see him at the pantomime. He is not to be seen anywhere at all in the world now. But though we can't see Him, He lives still, and hears us when we speak to Him and loves us so much,--indeed He does."