From Arcady to Babylon

Introduction

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The beginning of a story is always the end of one which went before it. One, an old, often-told story, ended on that beauti ful June night, fifteen years before the girls thought of the experiment in life which ended so differently to their expectations. About two o'clock on that starry, moonless June night, a young man came down the steps of a large house in a fashionable West End square, lighting a cigar as he waited for a hansom to drive up. He was a handsome fellow about thirty, with a pleasant debonair manner, and just that shade of care or anxiety in his otherwise easy, good-humoured ex pression, which adds a touch of attractiveness to a face. Women said Dick Sinclair looked as though he had a history. He was stepping into the hansom when a man, a shabbily dressed man, apparently one of the crowd who linger round the doors where hght and p. warmth and gay dresses are to be seen, touched him on the shoulder, and asked to speak to him.

" Say what you want, my man, and be quick." The man murmured a few words, at which the expression faded from Dick's face, leaving it white and rigid. " She is dying, you say ? Good God ! " He sprang into the hansom, throwing a piece of silver to the shabby messenger, who grasped it eagerly, and giving the driver an address, told him to drive "like the devil," and was whirled rapidly away. " Laws a mercy, perhaps it's his wife," said a starved-looking girl amongst the bystanders. They turned to seek information from the shabby man, but he had slunk away in silence. In a small, quiet suburban house the windows were wide open, yet the sick woman gasped for air. Her hair had been cut off, and lay in a heap on a small table, except one long tress with which the year-old baby seated on the bed was playing, scattering the long threads of gold over the sheet, crowing delightedly at her novel toy.

Even in its emaciation the young woman's face showed traces of the beauty which had won Dick Sinclair's heart when he tempted Margaret Merle, then a lovely country girl, away from her home and brought her up to London six short years ago. She moved her head restlessly from side to side, while a woman with a plain homely face, standing beside the bed, changed the cloths dipped in ice water now and then. " What time is it ? Do you think he will come ? Are the children here ? Don't let them cry, Anne." Fair-haired Dolly lay asleep on the sofa ; in a far corner of the room little Madge tried to comfort her smaller sister Ruth, who was sobbing with the piteous grief of childhood, so strangely mingled with fear of the unknown " something " which alters the world, they know not how. In the stillness of the quiet street the rattle of wheels was heard.

The dying woman started, and a faint flush came, even then, over her deathly pallor, at the sound of her lover's step upon the stairs. " Keep me alive, Anne," she murmured, as a shudder shook her frame ; " let me at least die in his arms." Haggard and white, Dick Sinclair came into the sick-room. " My poor girl ! Why was I not told ? Why did you not send for me sooner ? " he asked Anne, fiercely. "I would not let her. I was angry, Dick. I thought it would punish you to hear I had been ill ; I did not think I should die. Perhaps it's better. You will be free now, Dick. But be good to the children. Let Anne take care of them always. Will you, Dick ? " "Of course I will. But you must not, shall not die. Where is the doctor ? Can nothing be done ? " He looked helplessly at Anne, but she shook her head.

" There is no hope." They stood in silence as Margaret Merle, after the effort of speaking, gasped for breath. Presently, scarcely conscious, she began to wander, talking in short broken sentences of her girlish days. The baby cried, and Anne took it and soothed it to sleep. The golden curl fell from its tiny hand. Dick picked it up and turned it round his fingers. Suddenly a gleam of consciousness returned ; the blue eyes opened widely and looked for the last time into his. "I was very bad to you, Dick. I know I tormented you with my temper. It's better for me to die out of the way, but be good to the children." The first glimmering of the summer dawn shone through the open window. Anne woke the children and bade them kiss their mother, then took them from the room. " Kiss me too, Dick, once more."

As he bent over, her head fell back. He was alone with the dead. So it was that the four sisters grew up under the care of old Anne. In due time Dick Sinclair married, and his wife knew nothing of the exist ence of those little golden-haired girls. Only old Anne knew the story which ended when theirs began. She kept the house on the money which Dick punctually allowed her, and brought up the children, the only rules he insisted upon being that they should be kept in ignorance of his name and their mother's history, and never allowed to become acquainted with any one. He engaged a staid, demure woman as a daily governess, and in summer sent them under Anne's care to a remote Cornish village for country air. They were perfectly happy. The lack of society was made up for by their love of books, and still more by their vivid imaginations, whereby they wove a web of ingenious romance about everyday occurrences, and built up glorious visions of what they would do in that far-off time when they were grown up.

All their pocket-money was spent in books or drawing materials. Madge covered the nursery walls with sketches from the histories of favourite heroes, which she never tired of relating to her sisters. They learnt a little from their governess, and much from books, and carolled about the dingy old house like caged nightingales. So years passed by till Dolly, the eldest, was twenty, and Di, the youngest, sixteen. Then the mysterious "father," whose will had been their law, whose coming, bringing presents and hearing accounts of behaviour from Anne, had been the delight and mystery of their lives, missed the time of his accustomed visit. For some days Anne's face was clouded with secret anxiety, till one morning a huge black-sealed letter arrived, and Anne told them their father was dead. There was a visit from a lawyer, terrible heart rending explanations, after which they realized that they were nameless, friendless, homeless orphans.

They had a [small sum yearly each, but the house and furniture must go. Amidst all tbe revelations they were most surprised to discover that Anne, who had so faithfully served them all these years, was in reality, not their servant, but their aunt. Perhaps this fact more than any other served to make them feel that their true rank and position in the world were amongst the " people." " We really are not ladies, you see," Dolly calmly remarked. Then it was that Anne, in fear lest it should be unfit for her darlings, who to her fond eyes had the beauty and training of princesses, suggested that she owned the small cottage where she had lived with her parents. It had since been occupied by her brother, a market-gardener near Ashdown, on the south coast. Anne, having saved most of the allowance made to her by Dick Sinclair during his life, had purchased the cottage at her brother's death, as a place to return to in her old age.

She had too, a small sum of ready money. The girls were too ignorant to know that it was not " house keeping money," as she called it, but her own care ful savings. With this she proposed they should furnish the cottage, and take her to serve them. It was Madge who suggested trying to carry out the idea of living there the simple life of culture combined with manual labour, of which they had read so much, and practising their favourite theories amongst their neighbours in a quiet English village. Anne looked upon this part of the project with great distrust. "You are brought up as ladies, my dears, and can't be otherwise," she remarked. " You can play the piano, and be happy with nought but books, and your painting, and such like. My hands would worrit themselves off my wrists if I didn't have something to keep 'em busy.

As for who you are, folks have only to look at your pretty faces ; that's quite enough to show them you are as good as any ladies in the land." But the girls only smiled at Anne's anxiety for the preservation of their dignity, and talked in language which conveyed no meaning to her, of the dignity of labour, and co-operation, and quoted largely from the literature of the day dealing with social questions. It was all so simple and beautiful, they thought. There was little room for regret or sorrow at leaving childhood and its happy memories behind, so eager were they to push for ward into the fair land of life which spread before their innocent wondering eyes.

Chapter II

The summer was at the full height of its glory. The glowing August days were ripening the fruits, and turning the stretches of green corn into shimmering sheets of gold. Upon the living, sparkling waters of the English Channel the fishing-boats spread their canvas to catch the faint breeze, their sails changing from deep-toned shadow into brilliant whiteness as they tacked hither and thither, dancing like butterflies in the hot haze between the blue sky and the bluer sea. Over the pebbly beach the air trembled and quivered with excess of heat, and choking dust lay thickly on the roads, spreading a film over the dry hedgerows and neighbouring fields. Even in the lanes the heat was stifling ; only over the water there came now and then a gentle puff of wind, and on the higher grassy downs there was a sense of freshness and of thyme-scented air.

Along the dusty road the Rev. Claude Jones plodded conscientiously, protected from the fierce ness of the sun by a white pugarree, which covered his clerical black felt hat. The dust lay thickly on his black clothes, and insinuated itself uncom fortably through the seams of his boots. Never, it seemed to him, had there been a day so hot, or dust so unpleasantly intrusive. Notwithstanding determined efforts to attain to a more Christian frame of mind, he felt a longing to express his feelings concerning it in such words as are not permitted to a clergyman except in his pulpit. This longing included not only the dust, but extended itself to worthy Mrs. Freer, the vicar's wife, who, he felt, was the ultimate cause of his discomfort, she having sent him for this two-mile walk during the hottest hours of an August day.

He had finished his usual parish work early, intending to enjoy a quiet study, as he called it in his own mind, during the hot noontide hours; but just as he was passing the vicarage gate, Mrs. Freer waylaid him. The vicar had a headache, and could not walk so far in the heat, she said ; so would Mr. Jones kindly call instead of the vicar upon the new-comers at the Lonely Cottage ? It was necessary some one should call before Sunday, as the cottage lay near the boundary of the parish, and the inhabitants might go to the church at Saltwood instead of their own parish, if not called upon. So, striving to feel heroic in the discharge of duty, but with an unholy longing for the comfort of a book and a pipe and a cooler garment than his clerical black cloth, and an un christian frame of mind in regard to Mrs. Freer's habit of sending him unexpectedly to do work which the vicar had undertaken, Mr. Jones trudged along through dust and heat on his unwelcome errand.

After a mile and a half through the closed in lanes, however, the way to the cottage lay along a track over the downs; and here, refreshed by the sweet air, Mr. Jones had time to wonder what sort of people he was about to visit, having heard vaguely the rumours floating in the air concerning them, as repeated to him by his landlady, to whose gossip he was not in the habit of according much attention. The pathway which he followed led to the back of the Lonely Cottage, the front being reached from below, where the high-road divided the garden from the waste sea-grass-grown land of the fore-shore. As he descended the primitive stairway — a steep flight of steps, each step formed by a single stone, which made possible the descent of the steep natural slope from the downs to the garden — he looked round for some signs of the character of the inmates of the cottage.

The old fashioned formal boundaries of the garden were overrun in every direction with the extravagant profusion of its wild summer growth. The glorious white discs of the bindweed festooned the wooden palings and ran riotously over the gooseberry bushes ; graceful, fruit-laden brambles thrust forth their long arms from the hedgerow ; pimpernel and groundsel disputed possession of the strawberry beds with the rightful owners ; tall purple thistles and crimson dock raised their heads amongst the potatoes ; while a whole army of scarlet poppies flaunted gaily amongst the blue-green of the cab bages. Clearly the garden was neglected, and sadly in want of weeding. This, however, was not the fault of the new-comers, one of whom (a girlish figure with a large apron, white sun-bonnet, and gown tucked up over a short grey skirt), was busily engaged in this very occupation at a short distance from the cottage.

Already the tidied paths and tended flower-border gave evidence of her successful commencement towards restoring a certain order in the overgrown garden. An elderly woman was busily employed in unpacking some plain white dishes and plates from a case full of straw at the cottage door. It was old Anne, who, raising herself as she perceived the approach of the curate, wished him " Good morning " with quiet, decent civility. "Good morning, my good woman," Mr. Jones returned, with an air of friendly patronage. "Is your husband at home ? " "I am an unmarried woman, sir. My nieces have taken the cottage. They are at home, if you will step inside." " Now, auntie, are more plates coming ? " cried a musical voice, and Madge Merle, her lithe, graceful figure showing to advantage in a simple black gown, and white apron with large pockets, her glorious hair shining like gold in the sunlight, and her pale refined face slightly flushed and ani mated by her unwonted exertions, appeared at the cottage door.

She started, and the flush deep ened a little at the unexpected sight of a stranger, but she held out her hand with perfect self possession. " Oh ! how do you doj " she said. " Won't you come inside ? I suppose you are the clergyman. How kind of you, to come and see us so soon ! We are hardly straight yet, but the kitchen at least is tidy." The sudden apparition of this tall graceful girl so surprised the Rev. Claude Jones as almost to deprive him of the power of speech. He made some incoherent remark to the effect that he was not the vicar, only the curate ; and, heartily wishing he was not so abominably dusty and far removed in appearance from his usual irreproachable neat ness, found himself seated in the kitchen, where he had been wont to visit old Matt, opposite this self possessed, golden-haired young lady, whose refine ment of speech and manner were so strangely at variance with her surroundings.

" I trust I am not inconveniencing you," he re marked, "but the vicar requested me to call, as you are new-comers in the parish." " Not at all, if you will excuse our untidiness," Madge answered, with all the innocent candour of a confiding child. " We have not had time to unpack our things yet, you see, as we do it all ourselves. We have only been down four days, but we are getting in order, and we do like the cottage so much- It is exactly our ideal, and everything is so handy. Dear me ! " as an old eight-day clock in the corner announced the hour with a solemn note, " it's one o'clock, and I have not got the dinner. Should you mind my setting the table while I talk with you ? We dine at one, and Ruth will be so hungry — that is my sister. She is gardening this morning, and I do the housework ; we take it in turns.

You will stay to lunch with us, I hope. There are so many things we should like to ask you about." " Thanks ; you are very kind," Mr. Jones assented, feeling that some compensation for his dusty walk might be granted to him. All the time Madge spoke she was moving about with the quick, energetic grace which was so characteristic, looking at the astonished young man with her frank, fearless glance, as she smoothed the coarse white cloth over the deal table, turning to him with that queenly pose of her head as she lifted the plates from the dresser, or set out in tempting order the half-cut loaf, the yellow butter, and plate of fresh green salad. When she asked him to hold a large flat dish for her, upon which she deposited a fragrant potato-pie, which she withdrew from the oven, he began to wonder if he were dreaming.

Who could this girl be who looked like a lady, talked hke a child, and lived like a peasant ? " Only seven minutes late ! " she triumphantly announced, as she deposited the pie upon the table. " I must call the girls." Taking up a tin pan and an iron spoon, she rattled loudly upon the former at the kitchen door. " That's our dinner gong," she said laughingly. " Primitive, but it answers very well." As it evidently did, for almost immediately Ruth came running in, dangling her sun-bonnet by one string, unpinning her gown, and drawing a pair of huge leather gloves from her little white hands, followed by old Anne, while at the same moment Dolly descended the stairs, which came straight into the kitchen, looking like one of the angels upon Jacob's ladder. To the bewildered young man, with the remembrance of old Matt, whom he had been accustomed to see smoking a dingy old pipe in this very kitchen, it was like witnessing a transformation scene where graceful creatures appear with the suddenness of magic in unexpected places.

But yet another surprise awaited him. From the adjoining best parlour, where old Matt had been wont to keep the big family Bible and such other articles of his furniture as were too good for daily use, came the sound of a chord struck lightly on a piano, and a fresh young voice sang a roulade like the notes of a wild bird, clear, sweet, and true, with a facility of execution which would have done credit to a professional singer. At the same moment the door opened, and there appeared the most beautiful girl it had ever been the lot of poor Mr. Jones to behold. She too, like her sisters, wore a simple black gown, but at her throat she had pinned a rosebud, and there was an air of daintiness about her white apron which to a critical observer would have marked her greater regard for personal adornment.

They were all well-grown, good-looking girls, but Di possessed a rare exceptional beauty. Mr. Jones never forgot her as she stood that first moment with her song on her lips at the open door. " Come, Di," cried Ruth, " the gardener is very hungry after her work." " This is my sister Di, Mr. Jones," said Madge, attributing his bewildered look to surprise at so many new faces. " And now, girls, I hope the pie is good. I made it while auntie unpacked the china. Luckily we have plenty of plates to-day." Madge sat at one end of the table, and Dolly at the other. Aunt Anne had with difficulty been persuaded by the girls to take her meals with them, but refused to occupy the head of the table. " I'm not used to sitting still like you young ladies," she affirmed. " It gives me the fidgets to wait quiet so long over my victuals ; so if I must sit with you, my dears, you must just let me be at the corner near the dresser, where I can get up and change a plate, or reach the pudding out of the oven handy."

So they let her have her way, and their simple meals were served with a readiness and freshness which many a household might envy. The cottage door stood open, admitting the sweet moorland air with its scent of sun-dried gorse and fern. Through the window the sunlight fell upon the redtiled floor, its radiance shaded by a httle muslin curtain drawn across the casement during the heat of the day. Bumble bees, losing their way, humming heavily laden with their sweet burdens, strayed now and then round the little kitchen, pausing over the plants on the window-sill, then escaped again by the open door. The distant murmur of the sea made a low monotonous accompaniment to the sound of the girls' gentle voices and rippling laughter, as they chatted merrily over the little adventures of their morning work.

For some time Mr. Jones could scarcely withdraw his eyes from gazing upon the beautiful face of Di, but presently he succeeded in rousing himself from his abstraction, and managed to reply to the question which Dolly was putting to him. " Were the villagers well off, or were there many very poor amongst them ? " " Yes, very ; that is to say, no, not very poor," the unfortunate young man stammered, recalling to mind his professional character and his duty. " The men all have work to do, but many of them spend their wages at the public-house, and their wives and families are often badly off." " Dear me ! something should be done to prevent their doing that," Madge affirmed. " A great deal is done, I assure you, Miss Merle, in the parish," the Rev. Claude replied, with an assumption at once of his clerical manner.

He felt instinctively a forecast of interference in parish matters, which must be promptly nipped in the bud. " The vicar and Mrs. Freer are most admirable organizers, and the whole parish machinery is in capital working order." Madge said, "Oh, really ! " She felt a little snubbed by his tone, though she had not the vaguest idea what he meant by the parish machinery, or what it had to do with the amount of wages spent by the labourers on their wives and families. " How much do the men earn a week ? " asked Ruth, as Madge did not carry on the conversation. " Oh, well, you would hardly get a man to work for less than three and sixpence a day," he rephed, supposing that they required the services of some one in the garden. "That is twenty -one shillings a week, and on that he supports his family and spends money at the public-house, and pays his rent," reckoned Dolly, eagerly.

" Why, Anne, how could you tell us it would cost us so much more than that to live ? " " Laws, Miss Dolly dear, you don't suppose you could live hke a labourer's family, surely now ! " exclaimed Anne. " And don't you be thinking of trying it now," she added, her fear as to what wild notions might enter the girls' heads overcoming her shyness before the curate. " It's bad enough as it is, with Miss Ruth spoiling her pretty hands with gardening, and Miss Madge burning her face over the fire cooking the dinner, when you might be sitting as you've been brought up, a-reading books and playing the piano all day long." Anne was changing the plates and setting a delicate cream cheese upon the table while she spoke. As she leaned over Di, the girl threw up her arms round the old woman's neck, and, drawing the plain, hard-featured face down to her own young and radiant one, she kissed the withered cheek.

"Don't be cross, Anne," she said laughingly. " You must be comforted by me. I have been playing the piano, and no one lets me do any hard work ; but when the sun goes down, you will help me to tie up the rose-bush over the porch, won't you ? " " Ay ; you always did get your own way, Miss Di," Anne replied, with a grim smile. " I suppose you have come here for a summer holiday ? " Mr. Jones inquired of Dolly, as he helped himself to cream cheese, and the fresh salad which she had just dressed in a large white bowl. " Oh dear, no," she answered emphatically ; " we have come here to live altogether. We are not ladies, you know, though Aunt Anne talks as though we were. We belong to the people by birth" — Dolly blushed hotly — "and we mean to live amongst them, and try to help them. We do not intend to spend lives of luxurious idleness," she added, unconsciously using phrases picked up from books they had read, " but to do our share of the world's work, and use our superfluity to help those who cannot help themselves.

You will tell us of ways c to do this, won't you, for we are very inexperienced ? " " Certainly ; of course the parish charities will all be glad of your help. There are the societies — the Foreign Missions, Home Missions, S.P.G., Bible Society, Tract Society ; we collect subscrip tions for them all." " I don't know that we care much for societies," put in Madge, doubtfully. " We want to help people we know." " Then there is the organ fund and the choir — we are getting up a surpliced choir, you know — and the rebuilding of the church tower. We are getting up a bazaar ; but Mrs. Freer will tell you about that," he added, hastily remembering that only the ladies were expected to help in these matters. " But the poor," urged Madge ; " it is the poor we want to help." " Perhaps you had better talk to the vicar him self," suggested poor Mr. Jones, watching as he spoke the play of light and shade over Di's face as the sunshine fell upon it, and the slight draught from the open door ruffled the little golden curls that lay about her neck and brow.

"I have nothing to do with the district visitors, but I think all the districts are occupied now. But there will be the soup-kitchen in the winter and coals and blankets, and the Christmas dinners and decora tions. You will find plenty to do in the winter. There will be the harvest festival soon also," he added encouragingly. Madge sighed, but did not reply ; she was be ginning to dislike the curate. " Come, girls," suggested Dolly, " it is time to clear away and begin our reading. As it is so hot, we will take the book into the summer-house. Will you stay and read with us ? " she asked their guest, with courteous hospitality. He assented eagerly, without thought of to morrow's unwritten sermon. Speedily the table was cleared, glass and china washed up, and placed polished and glittering on the dresser, the cloth folded away in a drawer.

Then the four girls, each armed against the sun with a huge straw hat, led the way down an alley where the grass was green even in the hot August weather, screened by hedges of sheltering yew, at the end of which one tree, larger than the rest, cropped by succeeding generations till it had be come a dense impenetrable mass, formed a summer house, where the shelter from sun and rain and wind was alike complete. In front a little lawn sloped, somewhat steeply, to where a border of tangled flowers divided it from the kitchen garden ; below which, again, lay the strip of coarse sea grass ; and beyond, the far-stretching infinite blue of sea and sky, the distances melting and glimmering in the heat. Here the girls seated themselves. Ruth and Madge took out some delicate embroidery of strange device and harmonious colour; Dolly opened the book; and Di, sitting on the turf, her head resting against Dolly's knee, toyed with a rose she had plucked in passing.

"We are reading political economy," Dolly an nounced. " We think we ought to understand it, lest we should do harm by ignorant mistakes. You, of course, understand these things, but we know really nothing. We have so much to learn." " I never went in for political economy, but I am sure it is immensely interesting," Mr. Jones remarked, as he watched Di scattering the falling petals of her rose. The girls read in turns, Mr. Jones taking the book for a time as it came round. It might have been the divinest poetry, so sweet it seemed to him to sit in that yew-tree arbour, hearing words which conveyed no meaning to him, fall from Di's lips. The butterflies flitted by in the sunshine; the swallows flew so close the swish of their keen flight was audible ; the sun sank from the meridian, and a little breeze came up from the sea.