The Fugitives (in Good Cheer)

CHAPTER I. ELEN GOULBURN was sitting

alone in the great drawing-room of her father’s country house on an evening in October. It had been very sultry during the day, and the great heat had ended in a thunderstorm and torrents of rain. Now all the tumult and commotion of the elements were over. The night was cool and fresh. The great windows were open to the unseen garden, from v/hich a sweetness of honeysuckle and mignonette and late roses came in upon every breath of the fitfur night air. The room was an immense room, far too large for a solitary occupant* She and her lamp and her white dress made a lightness in one corner ; the rest of the huge drawing-room was faintly lighted with candles, of which there were regiments about on the walls, reflected vaguely from mirrors here and there, on tables and consoles and cabinets — but yet not enough to give anything like light to the vast shadowy room, which was full of everything that is rich and rare — of everything at least that the highest price could buy or the best workmen produce. The windows, a long line of them, all draped in that shadowy whiteness, stood open, as has been said. Most girls of Helen’s age would have been afraid to sit all alone, with so many windows opening on to a lawn, which in its turn swept downwards into the park, at so late an hour. Sometimes the lace curtains swayed in the night wind as if put aside by a shadowy hand. It was difficult to keep the imagination from developing some stealthy figure half hidden in the drapery, some one coming in, out of the darkness outside. The house was full of wealth, and the temptations to a sudden raid might have been many. When the branches swayed on the night air, bringing down a shower of raindrops, or some twig cracked, or one of the mysterious noises of which darkness is always full, broke the absolute quiet, any one of those sounds, which yet

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were scarcely definite sounds at all, might have conveyed a tremor to the lonely occupant of all this mystic space and solitude. But Helen sat unmoved. She was used to the vacant bigness of the great house, often inhabited by only herself and her little sister, and a crowd of servants. She had been in the hands of a governess till very lately, and in the routine of lessons and the certainty that a school-girl was not likely to be interrupted by visitors, had escaped aU consciousness of the isolation of the great house. It was the most splendid in the county, surrounded by a beautiful park, embosomed in great trees. When Mr. Goulbum bought it from the decaying proud family to whom its glories belonged, Fareham was already a noble place ; and he had added greatly to it, had built out a room here and a room there, and enlarged it with every extravagance of convenience that lavish wealth could think of. He had built and decorated in the most costly way the splendid room in which his daughter was sitting ; he had fitted out for her a suite of rooms worthy of a princess ; the very servants were lodged as half the well-to-do people in England would have been glad to be lodged. Outside, in the darkness of the summer night, full of dew and rain and soft fragrance, were acres of flower-beds and conservatories, tended by a regiment of gardeners.

But notwithstanding all this splendour, the county looked very shyly on the new member of its sacred and select society. He had brought very good introductions, and he gave such dinners as were not to be had within a hundred miles. The Duke called, an honour scarcely less than royal condescension; but the surrounding gentry showed no enthusiasm in following that example. Helen was then still in the schoolroom, which furnished the ladies with a very good excuse; but even after the ball which was given on the occasion of her coming out, and which certified that event to all the world, no genial circle of neighbours collected round her. Even her youth, her solitude, her motherless and friendless condition, did not call forth the sympathy of the county people. Never was girl more solitary. Her governess, who it had been arranged was to stay with her as chaperon, had married suddenly the widowed vicar of the parish, and deserted her not long before the period of which we speak : and she was left alone, the mistress of the wealthiest, most barren, and splendid house in all the district. She had crowds of servants to do whatever she bade — carriages, horses, whatever, as the servants’

hall said, heart could desire — but no friends. Little Jane, her little sister, was the offspring of a marriage which her father had made “ abroad,” and of which, except this child, no trace existed. It was only on his return with the baby, six years before, that his extraordinary wealth had shown itself Before that period Helen had been left at a school in the country — but not in this part of the country — where she had been happy enough with her companions. But when her father returned from “ abroad,” everything had been changed for her. An ayah had brought the baby home, and Helen had first become aware of the existence of a little sister when she saw a big pair of dark eyes gleaming out of the palest of little faces over the dusky nurse’s shoulder. She had been taken away from her school from that day, and ever since had lived the life of a princess, waited upon by innumerable servants, and living in luxurious houses. But her father had always lived the life of a bachelor, notwithstanding his possession of these two daughters. His friends had been all men. There were great dinners now and then, and occasionally Helen had seen through an open door a glimpse of a long splendid table laden with plate and crystal, and baskets of fruit and flowers, where her father’s friends were being entertained. But no ladies had come to the house, nor, after the childish companions of her school, had she had any friends in her new magnificence, except Miss Temple, who had been very good to her, and whose departure had brought a poignant sensation of loss into the girl’s mind, it was almost the only keen feeling she had ever known. She had come into society with something of the bewildered, uncertain vision of a creature bred in the darkness who is dazzled and confused rather than delighted by the light The people who came to the ball had been as figures in a dream to her. The whole scene was like something in the theatre. She was scarcely aware that she was herself not a spectator, but an actor in it, walking about mechanically among the guests, making her mechanical curtsey when her father brought up, now one strange face, now another.

And after that one ball, silence had fallen again upon Fareham. The porter at the lodge received sheaves of cards, and some carriages even penetrated through the grand avenue to the hall door ; but no one entered the house. Doubtless there were some hearts in those carriages in which there vibrated some touch of pity for the millionaire's shy, motherless, inexperienced daughter. But the

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county was wonderfully intact, and its gentry had made up their minds to discourage the advent of Money among them. A few years of perseverance would no doubt have made an end of that irrational notion ; but in the meantime they distrusted Mr. Goulbum. He was far too rich ; it was insolent of a man who, so far as any one knew, was nobody, to be richer than all the squires put together. A ball in such a house might be tolerated. It was like a public ball ; you took your own party (for in this respect the invitations were most liberal), and, save that one of your men had to sacrifice himself to ask the girl of the house to dance once, you kept yourselves to yourselves, as you did at the ball* for the hospital or any other subscription assembly. This was what the county people said. And as for Helen, she was often dull, but she had not learned to blame anybody for her dullness. She thought it a law of nature — it was no one’s fault.

All this explanation is to show how it was that Helen found nothing unusual in her own position, alone in this great dim room, with all the windows open. The windows always were open, except in the depth of winter. The darkness without had no dangers for her ; it never occurred to her that any strange apparition might disturb her solitude. She liked the stillness, the night air, the fragrance from the garden. Though she usually went to bed early, yet on this night she was not sleepy. She was reading a novel ; that was one of the luxuries which her father provided regularly. She had not read many books that were worth reading, but of novels all kinds. When the butler came softly into the room, with the intention of closing up the house for the night, she stopped him.

“ Are you going to sit up to-night, Brownlow ? ” she said.

“ Yes, Miss Goulbum, as usual on Saturdays, till the last train comes in,” the man replied.

“Then leave the windows open a little longer.”

“ Yes, Miss Goulbum,” he said. But he did not go away forthwith ; he extinguished the candles on the distant tables and in the sconces, moving like a shadow (though he was very substantial) in that elegant desert of costly furniture, until finally Helen’s figure in her white dress, lit up by her lamp, became the one definite point in the darkness. She was at some distance from the windows, in the winter corner near the fireplace, now all dark. Everything was dark except that one spot. The soft and almost stealthy closing of the door was all that testified to Brownlow’s departure; he had become invisible before. In the great stillness his soft and regular step, subdued and respectful, as a good servant’s ought to be, yet stately, was heard retiring, thick though the carpets were and closely fitting every door. He went away through those softly carpeted corridors and across the great marble hall to his own part of the house. And once more absolute silence and solitude abode with Helen. The night air came in softly, swaying the curtains ; sometimes a bough creaked, a long tendril of some creeping plant shook out a few raindrops, a moth dashed against the panes. No other sound in heaven or earth. And Helen in her white dress gave a heart to the darkness. All alone, no one near her, yet not afraid !

CHAPTER II. What was it that stirred?

Scarcely a sound at all — not half so definite as the cracking of the twigs, the boom of the night moth against the window ; yet it affected Helen as those sounds never did. When it had occurred twice she raised her

head. It was nothing, and yet Again !

What was it? Though you would not call it a sound it made the air thrill as no sound of the inanimate ever does. She looked up, but the light of her own lamp blinded her. She could scarcely see beyond its charmed circle. Then a slight jar succeeded to the soft pressure, as of a human foot upon the turf. A sound that conveys purpose and energy, how different is it from the aimless noises of nature! She rose up in great, though restrained alarm, with a cry almost on her lips. Then Helen reflected that all the servants were far away, that a scream would not help her much ; and though her heart beat wildly, almost taking from her both sight and hearing, she still could after a sort both hear and see. She stood up, closely drawn against the wall, looking out with puckered eyelids. Then a hand stole between the curtains of the nearest window : they were pushed aside, and a dark figure showed itself, at first indistinguishable, a something merely, an emblem of mystery and danger. Helen’s scream got vent, but in a low cry only of fright and dismay. Then all at once the fluttering of her heart stopped, her pulses regained their steadiness.

“ Papa ! ” she said, “ oh, how you have frightened me ! Why didn’t you come in the other way ? ” It was a great relief, for her

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terror had been all the greater that she had never experienced any visionary alarms before, and her imagination was unprepared. She put out her hand to the bell, “ I will ring for Brownlow ”

Her father did not leave her time even for another word. He sprang forward and caught her arm. “ Don’t do anything of the kind,” he said. “ I want no Brownlow. I am going again immediately. I want no one. I don’t wish it to be known that I have been here.” It was certainly her father, but not the placid, prosperous, moneyed man she knew. His coat, which was of a rough kind she had never seen him wear before, was beaded with rain. His face was pale and haggard ; his dress bore traces of mud as if he had scrambled over ditches; his boots were wet and clogged with the damp soil. She looked at him with a terror she could not express, and he looked at her with a somewhat stern inquiry in his eyes.

“But you are wet: you want — dinner — something ? ” she faltered. “ Shall I run and bid them bring ”

He shook her slightly, still holding her arm. “Are you good for anything?” he said. 4 Have you any stuff in you ? Now is the time to test it. Go and get that white rag off. Put on your darkest dress, and come with me.”

“ Come with you ? To-night, papa ? ”

He gave her a slight shake again. “It will neither be to-night or any other night if you make so much noise. What are you capable of, Helen? Are you able to be quick, and silent, and brave? Can I rely upon you ? — if not say so ; but make up your mind, for there is not a moment to lose.”

She grew whiter than her white dress, and looked at him with gleaming, wide open eyes. She had read of appeals like this, but she could not remember how the heroines responded. She said, faltering, “I can be quick, and quiet, papa.”

“ That is all that is necessary ; but we have not a moment’s time to lose. No one must know that I have been here. I shall go out again outside the window and wait for you. Go up to my room to the little Italian cabinet near my bed, on the right hand. You know it, and you know how to open the secret drawer ? Here is the key, bring me a little portfolio, a sort of letter case you will find in it. Stop ; that is not all. Change your dress and put on thick boots, and a cloak, and a

veil. Then go and bring Janey ”

“ Janey ! papa? She has been in bed for hours.”

“ Did I say she was not in bed ? Take up the child out of her bed, wrap her in something, and bring her down-stairs. You can surely carry that little thing down-stairs. After that I’ll take charge of her myself.”

“ But, papa, Janey ! she is so little. If I wake her she will cry.”

“Not she! But why wake her at all? Lift her, and wrap her in something warm ; she need not be awoke. My poor little Janey! I can’t go without my Janey,” he said to himself.

Helen scarcely knew what she was saying in her consternation and surprise. “ If you are goin^ anywhere, papa, and want to take Janey — -at this hour — would it not be best to order the brougham ? ”

“ Would it not be best to order a coach and six, with half-a-dozen fools to draw it ? ” he said savagely. Just then some far-off sounds were audible, some one moving in the silence of the house. Mr. Goulbum made a hurried step towards the window. Then paused and said in a half-whisper which he seemed to try to make tender, “ Let me see what mettle you are made of, Helen. Do what I have told you without betraying yourself — without attracting any one’s attention. Show what you are good for, once in your life.”

He disappeared, and Helen stood for a moment like one in a dream. Was it a dream ? and would she awake ?— or had the rest of her life been a dream to which this was the awaking ? She felt that her father was watching her from behind the white mist of the curtains, and that she dared not delay. She went up-stairs mechanically. The huge house lay silent like an enchanted palace. On Saturdays it was always possible that the master might return by the late train, and it was common for the greatrhousehold of servants, badly ruled and prodigal, to hold a sort of domestic saturnalia on that night Faint sounds of fun and frolic were to be heard from the servants’ hall — very faint, for Brownlow had a sense of his [responsibilities — and all the guardians of the place were out of the way. Helen went up, unseen and solitary, to her father’s room and her own. She did what he had told her — changed her own dress, and took the Russia leather letter-case, which was full apparently of papers, out of the secret drawer of the cabinet. But there she paused ; the other part of the mission was more difficult; and Helen stood still again, with a beating heart, outside the door of little Janey’s nursery, where the nurse certainly ought to be, even if all the other servants were off duty. What should she do if the nurse were there ! Her mission was difficult enough without that. When Helen went in, however, to the luxurious rooms appropriated to her little sister, no nurse was visible. The child of the millionaire slept, unwatched, like the child of the poorest clerk.

A faint night-light burnt in the inner room. There were acres of stairs and corridors between little Janey and the highly-paid functionary who was supposed to be devoted to her body and soul. She might have died of fright before any one could have heard her cry. Helen stood, breathless, at the foot of the little bed in which Janey lay fast asleep. She thought she had never realised before what perfect rest was, or the beauty of the child who lay with her pretty round arms thrown above her head, rosy with sleep and warmth, her soft breathing making a little murmurous cadence in the stillness. How can I have the heart to wake her ? Helen said to herself ; a new sentiment, half tenderness, half fear, seemed to awaken in her heart. To wake the little one to this hurried incomprehensible night journey seemed terrible — yet somehow Helen felt a reluctant conviction that Janey would adapt herself to the adventure better than she herself should. The child’s sleep, however, was so profound, and there was something so contrary to all the prejudices of education in waking her up at that hour, that only the thought of her father’s severe and haggard countenance kept Helen to her errand. She had even turned away to go back to him — to say that she could not do it — when the greater evil of having to return again, and of, perhaps, meeting the nurse next time, prevailed. She got a warm little pelisse, with many capes — a piquant little Parisian garment, which had tantalized all the mothers in the district — out of its drawer, and put the little shoes ready. Then she bent over her small sister and called her. “ Janey, wake up, wake up ; papa wants you. Wake up ; we are to go with him if you are quiet and don’t cry.”

The child sat up in her bed, awake all at once, with big, dark eyes, opening like windows in her pale face. “ I am not doing to cry,” she said, and stared at her sister through the gloom which was faintly illuminated by the night-lamp. Janey was, as Helen had anticipated, much more at home in the emergency than she was. She woke up in a moment as children do, not with a margin of bewilderment and confusion such as is common to us — but wide awake, with all her little intelligence fresh and on the alert.

“What is it? what is it, Helen?”

“ I don’t know ; but you are to go down to papa. You are to be quiet ; you are not to cry. We are going with him.”

“Where? where?”

“ I don’t know,” said Helen, ready to weep with the strange and wild confusion, the sense of misery and wretchedness which was involved to her in this overthrowal of all habits, this sudden secrecy and adventure in the dark. But little Janey clapped her hands. It was a delightful novelty to the child. She pulled on her stockings on her own small pink feet, her eyes dancing with pleasure and excitement. No need to carry her down asleep, as Helen with terror and doubt of her own powers had feared.

“ You must be quiet ; you must be quiet — not to let the servants know,” the elder sister whispered.

“Iam doing to be quiet,” said the little girl, delighted with the mystery. She thrust her big doll into her bed, and covered it carefully, while Helen, not knowing what she did, picked up various fugitive articles, halfconsciously, and put them into the pockets of the ulster which she had put on.

“ Be dood, baby, and keep my little bed warm till I come back,” sang little Janey.

“ Oh, hush, hush ! you are to be quiet — you are to be quiet,” Helen said.

They crept down the great stairs like two ghosts, fantastic little shadows, so unlike anything that could have been expected on that grand staircase at that hour. But they met no one. The sounds from the servants’ hall were a little more audible as the evening went on. The master was absent, the master’s daughter too shy and timid, even had she heard them, to take any notice. The hours of license were approaching when even Mr. Brownlow relaxed the bonds of discipline. As these sounds reached them little Janey clasped her sister’s hand tighter. But it was the sense of a mischievous escapade, not of a mysterious calamity, which was in her mind.

“What will Nursey say?” the child said with a low laugh.

Even the whisper frightened Helen. The lights flared in all those vacant passages, but gloom lurked in every corner ; the great rooms were all dark and empty, not a living being, not a sound of habitation was in the magnificent costly place, except the squeak of the footman’s violin, the far-off laughter of the servants — so much for so little 1 Amid all the confusion and terror of the moment, Helen always recollected the vacant lighted

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staircase, the hall with its marble pillars, the vast darkness of the dining-room standing open — not a creature near, except those two helpless creatures equipped for flight ; but on the other hand, the servants* merry-making, and the squeak of the fiddle painfully scratching out a popular tune . They paused to listen for one moment, holding their breath. Then they went into the drawing-room, where Helen’s lamp was still burning close to the wall, making the darkness visible. Her book was still lying open on the table. She had left the heroine at a painful crisis, but it was not so terrible as this.

Helen closed the door behind her with great precautions, and Janey, a little frightened at the dark, clung to her closely.

“ Where is papa? I don’t see papa,” cried the child.

“ Oh, hush, hush ! ” said Helen, frightened by the sound of her voice.

He was standing behind the curtains waiting for them.

“ How long you have been ! ” he said to her in a low, stern voice ; but he opened his arms to the child. " My little Janey — my little darling ! ” he said, bending down on his knees to bring himself within her reach. Janey clasped her arms round his neck, and kissed him, with open-mouthed, childish kisses.

“ Where are you doing to take me, papa?” she said, her dark eyes dancing with excitement. He raised himself up, holding her closely clasped to his breast, and carried her out into the night.

What a strange night-walk it was — through the country lanes, all heavy and muddy after the storm, and dark as the darkest midnight ; brushing against the rustling, thorny hedges, stumbling over heaps of stones, through the pools at the roadside, and upon the slippery grass; here and there crossing a stile, at haphazard, with no guide but instinct ; here stealing past a cottage, shrinking from the lamps of the doctor’s gig, which threw a suspicious light upon them. Helen, following, dragging her weary feet through the muddy ways, holding up the long skirts not intended for such usage in her arms, her veil over her face, felt herself shrink, too, when the light flashed upon them. But who could have supposed that it was the master of Fareham and his children that were out there in the muddy lanes ? Once at the turnpike, where they were all as well known as the day, her father, whom she always saw before her, a vague, dark shadow with the child in his arms, replied in a gruff feigned voice, with a fictitious country accent which gave Helen a sharp shock, to the good-night of the gatekeeper. To avoid notice was one thing, to tell a practical lie was another. This, in the midst of her confused wretchedness, gave her a painful prick of sensation. Janey in her excitement had begun to prattle at first, but had been summarily silenced by her father, and now drooped upon his shoulder fast asleep, her face half hidden in the rough collar of his coat. Between the other two not a word passed. Helen was too miserable and too much bewildered to ask any questions ; she followed submissively.

The little station was within about a mile of Fareham, but a mile is long when trudged through mud and rain by unaccustomed feet, in a gloomy night, and with a heavy heart. A late train going express to town which otherwise would have scorned this little station, had been arranged to stop there for the convenience of the man of business, the well-known Mr. Goulbum, whose affairs were on too colossal a scale to be managed by the ordinary means of communication open to everybody. Sometimes he had special parcels to send by the guard : sometimes a clerk who had “ run down ” for some special directions, of an associate acting with him on some great city board, whose time was too valuable to permit the loss of a moment, took advantage of this train ; and sometimes he himself, jumping into a dogcart the moment the latest guest had departed after a sumptuous dinner, had rushed up to town by it. The station-master and the porters were like his own servants, and the whole place all but kept for his convenience. He crept up to it now, keeping carefully in the shadow, out of the glare of its poor paraffin lamps.

“ Keep yourself muffled up, and your veil down, and go and get the tickets,” Mr. Goulbum said in the low and peremptory tone in which he had throughout addressed Helen. She went without a word ; she who had never in her life done any such thing for herself. The clerk peered at her through his wicket; the solitary porter stared as she stood alone on the little platform. She was left there alone until the train came up, and the three persons who formed the pcrsonnil of the station had nothing to do but to stare at her, and ask about the luggage which she did not possess. When the train stopped with its usual little fret and commotion, Mr. Goulbum suddenly came forward and plunged into an empty carriage. His high coat-collar, the slouch of his hat, and finally the figure of the child asleep upon his shoulder, con-

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7 * cealed him effectually. Helen could not help wondering whether she was as effectually disguised, and the thought once more gave her a sharp pinch of pain. Why were they hiding themselves ? There was not a word spoken while the train rushed on, tearing through that darkness which they had just traversed so slowly and painfully. Only once, and that when they were but just started, did any communication pass between the father and daughter. They both looked out towards the home they had left, though it was invisible as they left the little station. Upon the road close by the lights of a carriage were visible, slowly approaching. It was the carriage which, when Mr. Goulburn was absent, was dispatched to meet the last train on Saturday nights. The last train from London was not due for half an hour, and the coachman came along at a leisurely pace, slowly climbing the road to meet his master, who was flying, disguised and shameful, in the other direction. The contrast was so strange that he looked at Helen, and their eyes met. Something piteous was in his look. It contained a whole world of misery, of consciousness, of appeal which was almost humorous, amidst the profundity of pain. She had asked no questions, she had scarcely ventured to form to herself an idea of what the cause of this flight could be, but for the first time her heart was touched.