"Hush," whispered Gertrude, catching her arm in terror. "What was that?"
"What?"
"I am sure I heard the bell--the gate bell. Oh, do let us go back to bed."
"Nonsense! Who would be out on such a night as this? Perhaps the wind rang it."
They waited for a few moments; Gertrude trembling, and Agatha feeling, as she listened in the darkness, a sensation familiar to persons who are afraid of ghosts. Presently a veiled clangor mingled with the wind. A few sharp and urgent s.n.a.t.c.hes of it came unmistakably from the bell at the gate of the college grounds. It was a loud bell, used to summon a servant from the college to open the gates; for though there was a porter"s lodge, it was uninhabited.
"Who on earth can it be?" said Agatha. "Can"t they find the wicket, the idiots?"
"Oh, I hope not! Do come upstairs, Agatha."
"No, I won"t. Go you, if you like." But Gertrude was afraid to go alone. "I think I had better waken Miss Wilson, and tell her," continued Agatha. "It seems awful to shut anybody out on such a night as this."
"But we don"t know who it is."
"Well, I suppose you are not afraid of them, in any case," said Agatha, knowing the contrary, but recognizing the convenience of shaming Gertrude into silence.
They listened again. The storm was now very boisterous, and they could not hear the bell. Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the house door.
Gertrude screamed, and her cry was echoed from the rooms above, where several girls had heard the knocking also, and had been driven by it into the state of mind which accompanies the climax of a nightmare. Then a candle flickered on the stairs, and Miss Wilson"s voice, rea.s.suringly firm, was heard.
"Who is that?"
"It is I, Miss Wilson, and Gertrude. We have been watching the storm, and there is some one knocking at the--" A tremendous battery with the knocker, followed by a sound, confused by the gale, as of a man shouting, interrupted her.
"They had better not open the door," said Miss Wilson, in some alarm.
"You are very imprudent, Agatha, to stand here. You will catch your death of--Dear me! What can be the matter? She hurried down, followed by Agatha, Gertrude, and some of the braver students, to the hall, where they found a few shivering servants watching the housekeeper, who was at the keyhole of the house door, querulously asking who was there. She was evidently not heard by those without, for the knocking recommenced whilst she was speaking, and she recoiled as if she had received a blow on the mouth. Miss Wilson then rattled the chain to attract attention, and demanded again who was there.
"Let us in," was returned in a hollow shout through the keyhole. "There is a dying woman and three children here. Open the door."
Miss Wilson lost her presence of mind. To gain time, she replied, "I--I can"t hear you. What do you say?"
"d.a.m.nation!" said the voice, speaking this time to some one outside.
"They can"t hear." And the knocking recommenced with increased urgency.
Agatha, excited, caught Miss Wilson"s dressing gown, and repeated to her what the voice had said. Miss Wilson had heard distinctly enough, and she felt, without knowing clearly why, that the door must be opened, but she was almost over-mastered by a vague dread of what was to follow. She began to undo the chain, and Agatha helped with the bolts. Two of the servants exclaimed that they were all about to be murdered in their beds, and ran away. A few of the students seemed inclined to follow their example. At last the door, loosed, was blown wide open, flinging Miss Wilson and Agatha back, and admitting a whirlwind that tore round the hall, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the women"s draperies, and blew out the lights.
Agatha, by a hash of lightning, saw for an instant two men straining at the door like sailors at a capstan. Then she knew by the cessation of the whirlwind that they had shut it. Matches were struck, the candles relighted, and the newcomers clearly perceived.
Smilash, bareheaded, without a coat, his corduroy vest and trousers heavy with rain; a rough-looking, middle-aged man, poorly dressed like a shepherd, wet as Smilash, with the expression, piteous, patient, and desperate, of one hard driven by ill-fortune, and at the end of his resources; two little children, a boy and a girl, almost naked, cowering under an old sack that had served them as an umbrella; and, lying on the settee where the two men had laid it, a heap of wretched wearing apparel, sacking, and rotten matting, with Smilash"s coat and sou"wester, the whole covering a bundle which presently proved to be an exhausted woman with a tiny infant at her breast. Smilash"s expression, as he looked at her, was ferocious.
"Sorry fur to trouble you, lady," said the man, after glancing anxiously at Smilash, as if he had expected him to act as spokesman; "but my roof and the side of my house has gone in the storm, and my missus has been having another little one, and I am sorry to ill-convenience you, Miss; but--but--"
"Inconvenience!" exclaimed Smilash. "It is the lady"s privilege to relieve you--her highest privilege!"
The little boy here began to cry from mere misery, and the woman roused herself to say, "For shame, Tom! before the lady," and then collapsed, too weak to care for what might happen next in the world. Smilash looked impatiently at Miss Wilson, who hesitated, and said to him:
"What do you expect me to do?"
"To help us," he replied. Then, with an explosion of nervous energy, he added: "Do what your heart tells you to do. Give your bed and your clothes to the woman, and let your girls pitch their books to the devil for a few days and make something for these poor little creatures to wear. The poor have worked hard enough to clothe THEM. Let them take their turn now and clothe the poor."
"No, no. Steady, master," said the man, stepping forward to propitiate Miss Wilson, and evidently much oppressed by a sense of unwelcomeness.
"It ain"t any fault of the lady"s. Might I make so bold as to ask you to put this woman of mine anywhere that may be convenient until morning.
Any sort of a place will do; she"s accustomed to rough it. Just to have a roof over her until I find a room in the village where we can shake down." Here, led by his own words to contemplate the future, he looked desolately round the cornice of the hall, as if it were a shelf on which somebody might have left a suitable lodging for him.
Miss Wilson turned her back decisively and contemptuously on Smilash.
She had recovered herself. "I will keep your wife here," she said to the man. "Every care shall be taken of her. The children can stay too."
"Three cheers for moral science!" cried Smilash, ecstatically breaking into the outrageous dialect he had forgotten in his wrath. "Wot was my words to you, neighbor, when I said we should bring your missus to the college, and you said, ironical-like, "Aye, and bloomin" glad they"ll be to see us there." Did I not say to you that the lady had a n.o.ble "art, and would show it when put to the test by sech a calamity as this?"
"Why should you bring my hasty words up again" me now, master, when the lady has been so kind?" said the man with emotion. "I am humbly grateful to you, Miss; and so is Bess. We are sensible of the ill-convenience we--"
Miss Wilson, who had been conferring with the housekeeper, cut his speech short by ordering him to carry his wife to bed, which he did with the a.s.sistance of Smilash, now jubilant. Whilst they were away, one of the servants, bidden to bring some blankets to the woman"s room, refused, saying that she was not going to wait on that sort of people.
Miss Wilson gave her warning almost fiercely to quit the college next day. This excepted, no ill-will was shown to the refugees. The young ladies were then requested to return to bed.
Meanwhile the man, having laid his wife in a chamber palatial in comparison with that which the storm had blown about her ears, was congratulating her on her luck, and threatening the children with the most violent chastis.e.m.e.nt if they failed to behave themselves with strict propriety whilst they remained in that house. Before leaving them he kissed his wife; and she, reviving, asked him to look at the baby.
He did so, and pensively apostrophized it with a shocking epithet in antic.i.p.ation of the time when its appet.i.te must be satisfied from the provision shop instead of from its mother"s breast. She laughed and cried shame on him; and so they parted cheerfully. When he returned to the hall with Smilash they found two mugs of beer waiting for them. The girls had retired, and only Miss Wilson and the housekeeper remained.
"Here"s your health, mum," said the man, before drinking; "and may you find such another as yourself to help you when you"re in trouble, which Lord send may never come!"
"Is your house quite destroyed?" said Miss Wilson. "Where will you spend the night?"
"Don"t you think of me, mum. Master Smilash here will kindly put me up "til morning."
"His health!" said Smilash, touching the mug with his lips.
"The roof and south wall is browed right away," continued the man, after pausing for a moment to puzzle over Smilash"s meaning. "I doubt if there"s a stone of it standing by this."
"But Sir John will build it for you again. You are one of his herds, are you not?"
"I am, Miss. But not he; he"ll be glad it"s down. He don"t like people livin" on the land. I have told him time and again that the place was ready to fall; but he said I couldn"t expect him to lay out money on a house that he got no rent for. You see, Miss, I didn"t pay any rent. I took low wages; and the bit of a hut was a sort of set-off again" what I was paid short of the other men. I couldn"t afford to have it repaired, though I did what I could to patch and prop it. And now most like I shall be blamed for letting it be blew down, and shall have to live in half a room in the town and pay two or three shillin"s a week, besides walkin" three miles to and from my work every day. A gentleman like Sir John don"t hardly know what the value of a penny is to us laborin" folk, nor how cruel hard his estate rules and the like comes on us."
"Sir John"s health!" said Smilash, touching the mug as before. The man drank a mouthful humbly, and Smilash continued, "Here"s to the glorious landed gentry of old England: bless "em!"
"Master Smilash is only jokin"," said the man apologetically. "It"s his way."
"You should not bring a family into the world if you are so poor," said Miss Wilson severely. "Can you not see that you impoverish yourself by doing so--to put the matter on no higher grounds."
"Reverend Mr. Malthus"s health!" remarked Smilash, repeating his pantomime.
"Some say it"s the children, and some say it"s the drink, Miss," said the man submissively. "But from what I see, family or no family, drunk or sober, the poor gets poorer and the rich richer every day."
"Ain"t it disgustin" to hear a man so ignorant of the improvement in the condition of his cla.s.s?" said Smilash, appealing to Miss Wilson.
"If you intend to take this man home with you," she said, turning sharply on him, "you had better do it at once."
"I take it kind on your part that you ask me to do anythink, after your up and telling Mr. Wickens that I am the last person in Lyvern you would trust with a job."
"So you are--the very last. Why don"t you drink your beer?"