The Golden Scarecrow Part 20

"Oh," Mary whispered, "that would be stealing."

"Of course it wouldn't. n.o.body wants the old ring. No one ever looks at it. It's just for fun."

"No," said Mary, "I mustn't."

"Oh, yes, you must. You'll be very sorry if you don't. Dreadful things will happen. Alice----"

Mary cried softly, choking and spluttering and rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Well, you'd better go now. I'll be in the garden with Hortense to-morrow. You know, the same place. You'd better have it, that's all.

And don't go on crying, or your mother will think I made you. What's there to cry about? No one will eat you."

"It's stealing."

"I dare say it belongs to you, and, anyway, it will when your mother dies, so what _does_ it matter? You _are_ a baby!"

After Mary's departure Sarah sat for a long while alone in her nursery.

She thought to herself: "Mary will be going home now and she'll be snuffling to herself all the way back, and she won't tell the nurse anything, I know that. Now she's in the hall. She's upstairs now, having her things taken off. She's stopped crying, but her eyes and nose are red. She looks very ugly. She's gone to find Alice. She thinks something has happened to her. She begins to cry again when she sees her, and she begins to talk to her about it. Fancy talking to a cat...."

The room was swallowed in darkness, and when Hortense came in and found Sarah sitting alone there, she thought to herself that, in spite of the profits that she secured from her mistress she would find another situation. She did not speak to Sarah, and Sarah did not speak to her.

Once, during the night, Sarah woke up; she sat up in bed and stared into the darkness. Then she smiled to herself. As she lay down again she thought:

"Now I know that she will bring it."

The next day was very fine, and in the glittering garden by the fountain, Sarah sat with Hortense, and waited. Soon Mary and her nurse appeared. Sarah took Mary by the hand and they went away down the leaf-strewn path.

"Well!" said Sarah.

Mary quite silently felt in her pocket at the back of her short, green frock, produced the ring, gave it to Sarah, and, still without a word, turned back down the path and walked to her nurse. She stood there, clutching a doll in her hand, stared in front of her, and said nothing.

Sarah looked at the ring, smiled, and put it into her pocket.

At that instant the climax of the whole affair struck, like a blow from some one unseen, upon Sarah's consciousness. She should have been triumphant. She was not. Her one thought as she looked at the ring was that she wished Mary had not taken it. She had a strange feeling as though Mary, soft and heavy and fat, were hanging round her neck. She had "got" Mary for ever. She was suddenly conscious that she despised Mary, and had lost all interest in her. She didn't want the ring, nor did she ever wish to see Mary again.

She gazed about the garden, shrugged her thin, little, bony shoulders as though she were fifty at least, and felt tired and dull, as on the day after a party. She stood and looked at Mary and her nurse; when she saw them walk away she did not move, but stayed there, staring after them.

She was greatly disappointed; she did not feel any pleasure at having forced Mary to obey her, but would have liked to have smacked and bitten her, could these violent actions have driven her into speech. In some undetermined way Mary's silence had beaten Sarah. Mary was a stupid, silly little girl, and Sarah despised and scorned her, but, somehow, that was not enough; from all of this, it simply remained that Sarah would like now to forget her, and could not. What did the silly little thing mean by looking like that? "She'll go and hug her Alice and cry over it." If only she had cried in front of Sarah that would have been something.

Two days later Lady Charlotte was explaining to Sarah that so acute a financial crisis had arrived "as likely as not we shan't have a roof over our heads in a day or two."

"We'll take an organ and a monkey," said Sarah.

"At any rate," Lady Charlotte said, "when you grow up you'll be used to anything."

Mrs. Kitson, untidy, in dishevelled clothing, and great distress, was shown in.

"Dear Lady Charlotte, I must apologise--this absurd hour--but I--we--very unhappy about poor Mary. We can't think what's the matter with her. She's not slept for two nights--in a high fever, and cries and cries. The Doctor--Dr. Williamson--_really_ clever--says she's unhappy about something. We thought--scarlet fever--no spots--can't think--perhaps your little girl."

"Poor Mrs. Kitson. How tiresome for you. Do sit down. Perhaps Sarah----"

Sarah shook her head.

"She didn't say she'd a headache in the garden the other day."

Mrs. Kitson gazed appealingly at the little black figure in front of her.

"Do try and remember, dear. Perhaps she told you something."

"Nothing" said Sarah.

"She cries and cries," said Mrs. Kitson, about whose person little white strings and tapes seemed to be continually appearing and disappearing.

"Perhaps she's eaten something?" suggested Lady Charlotte.

When Mrs. Kitson had departed, Lady Charlotte turned to Sarah.

"What have you done to the poor child?" she said.

"Nothing," said Sarah. "I never want to see her again."

"Then you _have_ done something?" said Lady Charlotte.

"She's always crying," said Sarah, "and she calls her kitten Alice," as though that were explanation sufficient.

The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own dark room, Mary's will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and staring.

"I want to go home."

"Silly little thing," thought Sarah. "I wish I'd never played with her."

In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson's, and was shown into the wide, untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the place and disturbed everything.

Mrs. Kitson came in.

"_You_, dear?" she said.

Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: "_What_ a place! _What_ a woman! _What_ a fool!"

"Yes, I've come to explain about Mary."

"About Mary?"

"Yes. It's my fault that she's ill. I took a ring out of that little table there--the gold ring with the red stone--and I made her promise not to tell. It's because she thinks she ought to tell that she's ill."

"_You_ took it? _You_ stole it?" Before Mrs. Kitson's simple mind an awful picture was now revealed. Here, in this little girl, whom she had preferred as a companion for her beloved Mary, was a thief, a liar, and one, as she could instantly perceive, without shame.

"You _stole_ it!"

"Yes; here it is." Sarah laid the ring on the table.