Now that she had lost her boy, the one and only joy that was hers, Mrs. Lang seemed to turn to Jessie with more real affection than she had ever shown before. Jessie had loved her dead darling, and any one who had loved him or been good to him had all the grateful devotion of the poor mother"s aching heart.
Charlie"s little room was re-papered and painted, his little bed was put away, and another bought for Jessie, and on the floor was spread a new rug. Jessie soon grew to take quite a pride in her little room. She scrubbed the floor every week, and polished the window until it put to shame most of the windows in the neighbourhood.
Miss Patch gave her a piece of pretty chintz to hang at the back of her looking-gla.s.s, and Tom Salter actually brought her home one day a china vase to stand on her mantelpiece. Jessie was proud and pleased sure enough then! and, as time went on, and she grew to miss Charlie less, she would have been quite happy if she might but have written to her grandfather and grandmother, or could have had some tidings of them.
But month after month went by, and still the same suspense continued.
She did not even know if they were alive or dead.
Lodgers came and went, some pleasant, some very much the reverse; some kind, some exacting. Jessie worked early and late at school and at home. The school did not count for much in her life, and she made no real friends amongst the children. Her earlier delicate training made her feel she was not one of them; their speech and manners jarred on her, and having lived most of her life with grown-ups, she had no knowledge of games, or play, nor any skill in either, and their tastes did not interest her, nor hers interest them. She would far rather sit with Miss Patch, and talk or read to her, or be read to. Miss Patch was teaching her some different kinds of needlework, and while Jessie worked her teacher would read to her; and those readings in that peaceful room were Jessie"s greatest delight.
Then one day, when they least expected it, came an end to it all, and all the ordinary everyday life they had lived together in that house for months past was finished by a violent knocking at the front door.
At least that was the first sign they had of the change that was impending!
Such a knocking it was! it echoed through the house, and up and down the street, making them both spring to their feet in dire alarm.
Miss Patch gave a sharp cry and her hand flew to her side.
Jessie"s face blanched, and her eyes grew dark with fear.
"Who can it be!" she gasped; "who--what--what can have happened?"
Mrs. Lang was out, gone to the cemetery, so there was no one to answer the knock but Jessie herself, and realizing it she ran trembling down the stairs. She had delayed only a moment, but before she reached the foot of the stairs there came another knock, longer and louder than the first. Jessie threw herself on the door and flung it open. A man was standing on the step, evidently trying to keep himself from making another a.s.sault on the door. He seemed almost beside himself with excitement or fright, or something very like both.
"Where"s your mother?" he demanded impatiently.
"Out," said Jessie shortly, something in the man"s manner increased her alarm until she could scarcely utter a word. "She"s--gone--to the cemetery," she gasped in explanation. "I think--she"ll be-- home--soon."
The day was already waning, and the sun going down. She looked out anxiously, longing to see her mother come into sight. The man gave an impatient click of his tongue.
"What am I to do?" he demanded testily, gazing anxiously up and down the street, but as he seemed to be addressing only the air, or himself, Jessie did not feel obliged or able to make any suggestion.
"Look here," he said, turning quickly round to her, "there has been an accident, and--and I came to--to--break it to your mother. I know her and your--your father. I lived here once, and--and I thought it might be kind to break it to her before the police came for her."
Jessie"s heart almost stood still with fright. "The p"lice," she gasped, "for mother!--oh, what has happened?"
"There"s been an accident to your father; there was a bit of a fight in the train coming home from the races, and--and he got flung against the door, and it opened--and he fell out."
A low cry of horror broke from Jessie. Instinct told her that the news was very serious. If her father had not been severely injured-- or worse, the man would not have been so upset.
"Is--is--" she gasped.
"He is taken to the hospital," responded the man quickly, almost as though he was anxious to check her next question.
"Ah! there is mother!" cried Jessie in a tone of infinite relief, as she saw her appear at the gate. Mrs. Lang looked very white and very tired, and an expression of vague fear came into her eyes as they fell on pale, trembling Jessie, and the stranger, also pale and evidently greatly agitated. She lived always in a state of dread of some disaster or disgrace, and instinct told her that one or the other had come.
The man went down the steps to meet her. Jessie stood waiting at the door; she would have gone forward too, but that she was shaking so, she felt she should never get down the steps. So she stood there supporting herself by the door, and watched her mother"s face, and saw the shocked look that came over it. She could not hear all that was said, but she caught fragments of sentences, "Come at once"-- "alive when I left." "Searching him for his name and address, but I knew Harry--and came along to prepare you. He"s at St. Mary"s."
Mrs. Lang came up to the door to Jessie, holding out her basket and umbrella for her to take. She dragged her limbs almost like a paralyzed woman, and her eyes looked dazed. "I"ll be back--as soon as I can," she said; but her lips seemed stiff and scarcely able to move. "You look after the house." She was turning away, when she suddenly turned, and stooping, kissed Jessie for the first time in her life; and Jessie, looking up, flung her arms around her stepmother"s neck and kissed her in return. This new trouble had brought them very close.
With tear-blinded eyes Jessie turned and groped her way back into the house to face that hardest of all trials--suspense. Slowly, slowly she dragged herself down to the kitchen to see to the fire, then up the stairs to Miss Patch to tell her the news and wait.
Before long, though, they both crept down to the kitchen, so as to be at hand when needed; but Jessie could not keep still, the suspense was hard to bear, and made her restless. She wandered aimlessly from fire to window and back again. They talked a little, speculating as to what was happening, and what they should hear, and Jessie lit the lamps as soon as the dimness gave her the slightest excuse. A great dread of troubles and changes, and they knew not what else, filled them both.
Fortunately the suspense did not last very long. Before two hours had pa.s.sed they heard footsteps coming up the path to the house.
Jessie knew them, and flew out to meet her mother. Miss Patch stirred the fire into a cheerful blaze, then smiled to herself at the uselessness of her own act. She longed to do so much, yet was able to do so little.
Mrs. Lang came in slowly, heavily; her face was white, her eyes were red.
"He is dead," she gasped, as she dropped heavily into a chair.
"He is dead!" and her voice grew high and shrill and quavering.
"Poor soul, poor soul," sighed Miss Patch softly. "Did he suffer much? I hope he was spared that."
"He was never conscious, he--he--had no time to be sorry--to repent, or try to be better. He was struck down in the midst of all his wickedness and folly, with lying and cheating and bad language all about him. His last feeling was pa.s.sion--and so he died--and I feel that I am as bad as any of them, I never tried to save him," and the poor widow laid her head on her outstretched arms and sobbed uncontrollably.
Miss Patch laid her thin arm around the shaking shoulder. "You did.
My dear, you did. When first you knew him you were always trying."
"And then I got tired and gave up, and never tried any more, and we drifted further and further away--and now it is too late. He is dead, dead in all his sinfulness!"
Jessie crept away and up to her own little room. It was dark there and peaceful; the street outside was unusually quiet, awed into silence, for the time, by the tragedy in their midst--for the news had spread like wildfire.
The window was open, and up in the steely blue sky the moon was sailing, large, peaceful, grand. Jessie knelt by the window and gazed up at the sky and the moon, awed and wondering. She was dazed and overcome by all that had happened. Then she buried her face in her hands and prayed that her mother might be comforted.
She tried to think of some good deeds her father had done; but, alas, poor child, she could think of none, though it seemed treacherous to his memory to try, and fail.
Two days later Harry Lang was laid in his grave. Quite a crowd attended his funeral, but only four "mourners," and the chief of those four were the two he had wronged most, his widow and his child.
Tom Salter, who had shown himself kind and helpful and full of thought in this terrible time, went to support the widow, and Miss Patch, in spite of her lameness, and pain, and weakness, went too, as a mark of respect to those that were left, and as a companion for poor Jessie.
Everything was done as nicely and carefully as though the dead man had been the best of husbands and fathers; no outward mark of respect was lacking; but, though none spoke it aloud, each one felt, as they returned to the empty house, that there was none of that awful sense of blankness, of loss, of heartrending silence, which usually fills the house that death has visited, the feeling that something is gone which can never, never return. There was, instead, almost a sense of relief, a feeling of peace. They all tried not to feel it, and nothing would have made them admit it, even to themselves; but it was there--one of the most sad and awe-inspiring feelings of that dreadful day.
Tom Salter left them as soon as he had seen them home, and went up to his room to change into his every-day clothes. His young, almost boyish face was very grave and thoughtful. "G.o.d help me never to live to leave such a feeling behind me," he thought to himself solemnly.
Life after this should have settled down into the usual groove again, and so Jessie thought, with the difference that a great discomfort and ever-present dread would be gone. Somehow, though, it did not.
Mrs. Lang, looking ill, and worn to a shadow, seemed grave and abstracted, and full of thoughts which she did not share with any one. She was often absent, too, on business of which she did not speak. At first Jessie noticed none of all this, she thought her mother"s manner was simply the result of the shock and the trouble she had been through; then, by degrees, it came to her that things were different, that there was something in the air that she could not understand or explain, but she felt that changes were impending.
Often when she looked up she found her mother gazing at her wistfully, it seemed, and questioningly. More than once, too, she drew Jessie on to talk of her old home and her grandparents, and of her longing to see them again; and then one day her mother came to her and asked her if she remembered her grandfather"s address!
Jessie knew then that her surmises were correct, and her heart beat fast with wonderment and hopes and fears, and a thousand questions poured through her brain.
CHAPTER XII.
SPRINGBROOK AGAIN.
Thomas Dawson was sitting in his chair in the garden enjoying the warmth of the October sunshine. The weather was unusually warm for the time of the year, and the little breeze which blew across the garden was very acceptable. The long graceful tendrils of the jessamine rose and fell like soft green waves above his head, a little cloud of dust rose and skidded along the road, to the annoyance of some lazy cows being driven home to the milking.
But Thomas heeded none of these things, he sat with his head sunk on his breast, his eyes staring gloomily before him, his thoughts far away. He had aged ten years and more in the last two. A very slight sound, though from within the house, roused him in an instant and brought him to his feet.