"Yes; but I know what to do." The child nodded her head defiantly and made an elaborate sign of the cross, first over Clem and then upon the front of her own bodice. "That"s against witches," she announced.
"Please don"t take me for a witch!" It was absurd, but really Hester began to wonder where these misunderstandings would end. The look, too, on the boy"s face puzzled her.
"I always wondered," said Myra, unmoved, "if the new teacher would turn out a witch. Witches always start by making themselves into young and beautiful ladies; that"s their trick. Whoever heard of a teacher being a young and beautiful lady?"
"Well," answered Hester, between a sigh and a smile, "a compliment"s a compliment, however it comes. I am the witch, then; and who may you be?-- Hansel and Grethel, I suppose? I don"t think, though, that Hansel really believes me a witch, by the way he"s looking at me."
"He isn"t looking at you at all. Come away, Clem!" She led the boy away by the hand, which he gave to her obediently, but left him when half-way across the turf and came swiftly back. "He wasn"t looking at you.
He"s blind."
"Ah, poor child! I am sorry--please tell me your name, and believe that I am sorry."
"If you were sorry, you"d go away, and not come teaching here."
Myra delivered this Parthian shaft over her shoulder as she walked off.
At the same moment Hester heard a door open in the room behind her, and Parson Endicott came forth from the counting-house.
"Ah--er--Miss Marvin "--He paused with a lift of his eyebrows at the sight of the rag doll in Hester"s hand. She, on her part, felt a sudden hysterical desire to laugh wildly.
"It--it isn"t mine!" she managed to say in a faint voice and with a catch in her throat.
"I had not supposed so," Parson Endicott answered gravely. "I came to tell you, Miss Marvin, that Mr. Samuel Rosewarne and I have agreed to recognise your claim. By so doing we shall be piously observing his father"s wishes, and--er--I antic.i.p.ate no opposition from my fellow-members on the Board. The school--you have already paid it a visit, perhaps? No? It will, I venture to think, exceed your expectations. The school is furnished and ready. I suggest--if the other Managers consent--that we open it formally on Tuesday next, with a short religious service, consecrating, so to speak, your future labours.
Yours is a wonderful sphere of usefulness, Miss Marvin; and may I say what pleasure it gives me to learn that you are a Churchwoman. A regular communicant, I hope?"
Hester was silent. She disliked this man, and saw no reason to be hurried into making any confession to him.
"It is a point upon which I am accustomed to lay great stress. In these days, with schismatics on all hands to contend against, it behoves all members of the true Church to show a bold and united front." He leaned his head on one side and looked at her interrogatively. "Do you play the harmonium?" he asked.
But at this point Mr. Sam thrust his head out through the counting-house doorway, and the parson coughed discreetly, as much as to say that the answer might wait.
"Well, Miss Marvin," said Mr. Sam jocosely, "we"ve fixed it up for you between us!"
Hester thanked them both briefly, and wished them good-day.
"She dresses respectably," said the parson, when the two were left alone.
"I detect a certain earnestness in her, though I cannot say as yet how far it is based on genuine religious principles."
"She is more comely than I expected," said Mr. Sam.
At the ferry Hester found Nuncey awaiting her with a boat-load of the Benny children.
"I reckoned you"d be here just-about-now," Nuncey hailed her.
"Come"st along for a bathe wi" the children! I"ve a-brought a bathin"
suit for "ee."
"But I can"t swim," Hester answered in alarm, and added, as she stepped into the boat, "Nuncey, don"t laugh at me, but until to-day I had never seen the sea in my life."
Nuncey looked her up and down quizzically. "And I"ve never seen Lunnon!
Never mind, my dear; "tisn" too late to begin. There"s none of this crew knows how to swim but me and Tenny here," she pointed out a boy of eleven or twelve. "We"ll just row out to harbour"s mouth; there"s a cove where we can put the littlest ones to paddle. And after that I"ll larn "ee how to strike out and use your legs, if you"ve a mind to. It"ll do "ee good to kick a bit, I"ll wage, after a dose of Mister Sam. Well, and how did you like "en?"
"I didn"t like him at all." Hester almost broke down. "Please, Nuncey, be good to me! It--it seems as everyone was banded against me to-day, to think badly of me."
"Be good to "ee? Why, to be sure I will! Sit "ee down and unlace your boots, while me and Tenny pulls. Care killed the cat--"cos why?
He wouldn"t wash it off in salt water."
They rowed down past the quays and out beyond the ancient fort at the harbour"s mouth. On the opposite sh.o.r.e a reef of rock ran out, and on the ridge stood a white wooden cross, "put up," so Nuncey informed her, "because Pontius Pilate landed here one time." Beyond this ridge they found a shingly beach secluded from the town, warmed by the full rays of the westering sun. There they undressed, one and all, and for half an hour were completely happy. To be sure, Hester"s happiness contained a fair admixture of fright when Nuncey took her hand and led her out till the water rose more than waist-high about her.
"Now trust to me; lean forward, and see if you can"t lift your feet off the ground," said Nuncey, slipping a hand under her breast. Hester tried her hardest to be brave, and although no swimming was accomplished that day, the trial ended in peals of laughter. She splashed ash.o.r.e at length, gleeful, refreshed in body and mind, and resolved to make herself as good a swimmer as Nuncey, who swam like a duck.
CHAPTER XII.
THE OPENING DAY.
It often happens, when a number of persons meet together for some purpose in itself unselfish, that there prevails in the a.s.sembly a spirit of its own, recognisably good, surprising even the pettiest with a sudden glow in their hearts, and a sudden revelation that the world is a cheerfuller place than in their daily lives they take it for. This cheerful congregational spirit I take to flow from a far deeper source than the emotion, for example, which a great preacher commands in his audience.
It may be--indeed, usually is--accompanied by very poor oratory.
The occasion may be trivial as you please; that it be unselfish will suffice to unlock the goodness within men, who, if often worse than they believe, and usually than they make believe, are always better than they know.
This spirit prevailed at the school opening, and because of it Hester felt happy and confident during the little function, and ever afterwards remembered it with pleasure. For the moment Church and Dissent seemed to forget their meannesses and jealousies. The morning sun shone without; the breeze played through the open windows with a thousand hedgerow scents; the two score of children ranged by their desks, fresh-faced and in their cleanest clothes, suggested thoughts innocent and deep as the gospel story; and if Parson Endicott was long-winded, and Mr. Sam spoke tunelessly and accompanied his performance on the bones, so to speak--that is, by pulling at his knuckles till the joints cracked--consolation soon followed. For third and last came the turn of the Inspector, who had halted on his progress through the county to attend a ceremony of the kind in which he took delight. He had lately been transferred from the Charity Commission to this new work, and it fell to him at a time when the selfish ambitions die down, and in their place, if a man"s heart be sound, there springs up a fatherly tenderness for the young, with a pa.s.sionate desire to help them. Hester could not guess that this grave and courteous gentleman, grey-haired, clean shaven, scholarly in his accent, neat even to primness in his dress, spoke with a vision before him of an England to be made happy by making its children happy, that the roots of the few simple thoughts he uttered were watered by ideal springs--
"I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England"s green and pleasant land."
Simple as the thoughts were, and directly spoken, the children gazed at him with set faces, not appearing to kindle with any understanding; and yet, after the manner of children, they were secreting a seed here and there, to germinate in their dark little minds later on, as in due time Hester discovered. She herself, seated at the harmonium, felt a lift of the heart and mist gathering over her sight at the close of his quiet peroration, and a tear fell as she stretched out her hands over the opening chords of the "Old Hundredth." All sang it with a will, and Parson Endicott with an unction he usually reserved for "The Church"s One Foundation."
With a brief prayer and the benediction the ceremony ended, and while the elders filed out the Inspector walked over for a few words with Hester.
"Ever since I learnt your name, Miss Marvin--excuse me, it is not a common one--I have been wanting to ask you a question. I used to have an old friend--Jeremy Marvin--who lived at Warwick, and found for me some scores of old books in his time. I was wondering--"
"He was my father, sir."
"Indeed? Then, please, you must let me shake hands with his daughter.
Yes, yes,"--with a glance down at her black skirt--"I heard of his death, and with a real sense of bereavement."
"I have addressed and posted many a parcel to you, sir, in the days before I left home to earn my living."
"And you weren"t going to tell me that? You left me to find out--yes, yes; "formidable Inspector," and that sort of thing, eh? I"m not an ogre, though. Now this little discovery has just put the finishing touch to a delightful morning!"
Hester, encouraged by his smile, laughed merrily, and so did he; less at the spoken words than because of the good gladness br.i.m.m.i.n.g their hearts.
"But tell me," he went on, becoming serious again, "if a child, out of shyness, hid from you a small secret of that sort, you would be sorry--eh?
And you would rightly be sorry, because by missing that little of his entire trust you had by so much fallen short of being a perfect teacher."
"And two of these children," thought Hester, with a glance at Clem and Myra, "solemnly believe I am a witch!"
As the Inspector went down the hill towards the ferry, he overtook another and older acquaintance in an old college friend. This was Sir George Dinham of Troy, who had attended the ceremony uninvited, and greatly to the awe of everyone a.s.sembled--the Inspector and Hester alone excepted.
Indeed, his presence had bidden fair at the start to upset the proceedings; for Parson Endicott and Mr. Sam had both approached him hat in hand, and begged him, not without servility, to preside. This proposal he had declined with his habitual shy, melancholy smile, and shrunk away to a back row of the audience. In his great house over Troy he lived a recluse: a scholar, a childless man, the last of his race, rarely seen by the townsfolk, of whom two-thirds at least were his tenants. He had heard of the Inspector"s coming, and some ray of remembered affection had enticed him forth from his sh.e.l.l, to listen. Now, at the sound of the Inspector"s footstep on the road behind him, he turned and waited, leaning on his stick. The two men had not met since a Commemoration Ball when young Dinham led his friend proudly up to a beautiful girl, his bride that was to be. She died a bare six weeks later; and from that day her lover had buried himself with his woe.