Chapter VII: In the Dark

"I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth)
Crying, 'Where are ye, O my loved and loving?'"
--E. B. BROWNING.

John Randal did not wait for much explanation from his mother. In truth, she had little to give him. It was impossible for her to imagine where Mary and the child were gone, unless to the fair. Why, in any case, should Lily have been dressed in her Sunday clothes? And though Mrs. Randal agreed heartily with John when he said--"But Polly never would take her there!" yet the moment after she was shaking her head and sighing over the certainty that, for some unknown reason, this was what Polly had done. Poor old Granny Pierce had no object to gain by telling a lie about it, as far as she could see. "No, John dear--Polly never would!" said Mrs. Randal. "But then you know, if she did, of course she meant to bring her home before dark. The child got round her, I expect. She did want to go, Lily did. It seemed a bit hard, with all the other children going. If you'd been at home, John, maybe you would have taken her yourself, just for an hour or so. Don't vex yourself over it too much. They'll be in soon, anyhow."

John's face grew sterner and graver every moment.

"No, mother, I should never have taken her. What's the good of leading a child like that into low sights and low company! I could never have believed it of Mary. Why, only yesterday, when I said good-bye before I started, she says to me that all her family was going to the fair, and that she was coming down to tea with you and Lily. Ay, says I, that's right, and mind Lily don't get away with the others--for that child is like quicksilver, I said, there's no holding her; she flies here and there like a little winged spirit. And Mary, she says, Never you trouble, John, she is safe with your mother and me. Well, I'm vexed with Mary, that's the truth, and I'm bound to tell her so."

John turned to take up his hat and stick.

"You'll stop and have some tea, my dear?" said his mother. "The kettle's boiling."

"No, mother, I can't swallow my tea. They ought to have been in long before this," said John. "I'm going straight off to look for them. Ay, and I'll take the lantern; for it'll be as black as a wolf's mouth in an hour."

"Don't you be hard on Polly, John," his mother called after him as he went out into the dusk. "Maybe she'd some good reason."

"We'll settle it between us," John answered, and the yard gate shut sharply behind him.

On the darkening road it was not long before he met a few of the more respectable Markwood people, coming back from the fair. He stopped the first of these and asked rather stiffly if they had seen any of the Alfricks. One woman said she had seen Mary, rather distracted like, searching about for her mother and the children.

"Did you happen to see if our Lily was with her?"

"No, I didn't see her--I should say she wasn't."

John marched on with great strides. Half-way to Carsham he met Mrs. Alfrick and her children dragging wearily along the road, the younger ones crying, cross and tired. The dusk was drawing in so fast now that John's tall figure towered beside them almost before they knew that he was near.

"Oh I say, John, you did make my heart beat!" cried Mrs. Alfrick, and then, fearful of blame to herself, she began to pour out a torrent of confused words about stupid girls and tiresome children, and how she was that moithered she didn't know which way to turn, and she was sure it was not her fault, and if Mary had behaved like a sensible girl from the beginning this trouble wouldn't have come upon them.

"Where is Mary now, Mrs. Alfrick? Where have you left her?"

John's voice was loud and angry.

"I ain't accustomed to be spoke to in that style, young man," said Mrs. Alfrick. "Ask a civil question, and you may get a civil answer. Well, I wasn't likely to stop there all night, was I, with all these children--and Polly wasn't likely to come off and leave her precious treasure there alone?"

"She's got Lily with her, then! what on earth are they doing there at this time of night?"

"Well, John, it's the shortest way to tell the truth. Lily's got lost in the fair somehow, and Polly's looking for her. I couldn't do no good, you know, with all these brats to look after."

"He's gone, mother!" said little Lizzie Alfrick, pulling her mother's gown. "But he didn't ought to be angry with Polly, 'cause it wasn't her fault that Lily got lost."

"You hold your noise, and don't correct your betters," replied Mrs. Alfrick. "He may be angry with who he likes, for all I care, and if you go chattering I'll knock your head up the chimney as soon as we get home."

Before John reached Carsham it was so dark under Sir Henry Smith's large trees that he lighted his lantern, being afraid of missing Mary by the way. Long before he entered the town, he could hear the discordant noises and see the flashing lights of the fair. At the near end of the bridge his hurried steps were suddenly checked by Mary's rushing up to him and clasping her two hands round his arm.

"O John!" she said in a low voice, which trembled on the edge of a sob. "Oh, some good angel's brought you! Have you heard? have you met mother? what shall we do?"

"I've heard that you have lost Lily--that's what I've heard! Took her to Carsham Fair and lost her--that's enough bad news for one day," said John. "You, as I trusted like myself! You took Lily to the fair and lost her, while I was away."

The flush in Mary's tired face faded to a deadly paleness as John spoke. He lifted his lantern and looked at her; the poor girl gazed back at him with a bewildered horror that he did not in the least understand. For a moment she felt as if she must faint; her hand leaned heavily on his arm, and his voice as he went on speaking seemed far off, mingled with the rushing of some distant sea.

"You understand? you've deceived me--you've broke my heart--I shall never trust in you again. And coming home without her, were you? Well, go on then. Take the lantern, for you can't see. Tell my mother I'm not coming back till I've found the child."

Mary's lips moved. "Wait a minute, John!" she tried to say, but could not utter a sound.

He shook his arm free from her detaining hand, and tried to give her the lantern. Its light flickered up and down, on the great boughs of the trees that stretched overhead, on his dark face, pale and stern, in a white heat of anger such as Mary had never seen there before, certainly never with herself for its object.

"Stop--let me tell you," she began, with a violent effort. "You oughtn't to speak to me like that----"

"Speak to you! I don't want to speak to you at all. I wish I had never trusted you--but it's the last time!"

"Very well," Mary said. Somehow, his extreme anger, which altered his voice, making it hoarse and shaky, so that she would hardly have known it, had the effect of raising anger and pride in her too. He was so utterly unjust, if he only knew it; and he would not let her speak to tell him. This was not a man to make a girl happy. She stepped back from him into the road; he still held the lantern in a hand that trembled.

"Very well; let it be the last time," said the girl. "That's my wish as much as yours. The place where Lily got lost is under the big trees outside the Travellers' Joy. My belief is, she's inside that house now, but the woman abused me and wouldn't answer nor let me go in. That's all I can tell you. Good night."

Her voice was as hard and cold as John's was angry.

"What am I stopping here for then?" he exclaimed. "Here, take the lantern--and whatever possessed you to take that child anywhere near the Travellers' Joy, or to go near it yourself! It's little better than a den of thieves."

"Ah--well, you see you didn't know what a wicked girl I was," said Mary bitterly; and then she laughed.

John stared at her for a moment; he could hardly believe his ears. She suddenly took the lantern from his hand, and started off on her way home; the next instant he was half across the bridge hurrying into the town.

Mary went straight back to the farm, and reached it safely, having overtaken her stepmother and the children in the lane. She would not answer a single question, only saying that she had met John, and he was gone to look for Lily. The look in her face gave Mrs. Alfrick some secret anxiety; she suspected that the two had quarrelled, and knew very well that it was all her doing.

"Well, serve him right! only they're sure to make it up again, worse luck! She's too good for him, as her father always said--an ignorant, stuck-up fellow!"

In the meanwhile, in the gathering darkness of that evening, a small covered cart was slowly climbing the long slope of Dog Down.

A man and woman walked by the side of the horse and talked together in low tones. In the cart a child was tied to the seat, muffled in shawls and handkerchiefs, so that Lily in her bright fairness could hardly have been recognised. She was terribly frightened, poor little girl; she was moaning to herself, crying out for John, yet afraid to cry loudly, for the woman, after petting and cajoling her at first, had threatened to beat her within an inch of her life if she made any noise.

It had all been very puzzling, and Lily could not understand it. She had very vague ideas of her own past life, but she had a notion, half from memory, half from the talk of other children, that Mrs. Randal was not really her mother, nor John her brother; that she had been found somehow and brought home--to the home which she loved and never wished to leave again. And now this woman, who came out of the public-house with smiles and admiring words and sticks of candy, and kissed her, and looked wonderfully pleased to see her, had enticed her into the house "just for a minute," and the man who was playing the organ had followed with a very unpleasant grin on his pale face, and they looked at Lily's locket, and said to each other, "It's her sure enough! Well, this is a piece of luck!" And the woman had looked hurriedly at her other clothes, and kissed her again, and told her she was a sweet child and her poor mother had found her again, and now she would come along with them, wouldn't she? and they would show her no end of pretty things, and she should have a new frock and a necklace and lots of barley-sugar, and dance to the organ as much as ever she liked. But by this time Lily had become alarmed and dissatisfied. She did not like the woman's red face, and shrank away from her kisses; as for the man, he looked ugly and cruel, and she was frightened. She cried and stamped her foot, and said, "No, you ain't my mother. I want to go back to my mother--I want to go back to John."

"Make yourself easy, pretty one," said the man. "I don't know who John may be, but he's no business with you. And as for your mother, she's a long distance off."

"There--didn't I tell you it was me?" said the woman.

"You won't get her to believe that in a hurry," he said, with a hoarse laugh.

Then they agreed it was best to start as soon as possible, before any friends the child might have should begin a search for her; and so they changed their tone, silencing her with rough threats, and wrapped her up and smuggled her away under the tilt of the cart, unknown even to the people of the Travellers' Joy.

The poor little horse toiled dismally up the long slippery hill, while the two from whose hands John had first rescued Lily walked together at his head and talked over their recovered prize. At last the reward that had long ago been offered for the lost child seemed to be really within their grasp. They could claim it now with an open face, for this time it could not be said that they had stolen the child.

"'Twas a lucky thought of yours, going down to that fair," said the woman to her husband. "As to me, I never expected to see her again. I couldn't believe my eyes when she came dancing round the tree with that very same locket round her neck, and looking just the same, only a bit bigger. They're good people as has taken care of her all this time. They might as likely as not have sent her to the Union. I wonder what their name is. There's a John as she talks about like as if he was a big boy."

"We won't make inquiries about John," said the man. "He'd maybe put in a claim for half the reward. Well, that's a queer part of the country, where they never hears nothing. But don't you go boasting too much. We should have been rich folks three years ago, if you hadn't made a fool of yourself. Just because I sent you and her down to lie quiet in one o' them lonely villages for a bit, till I could find out how the land lay, you must needs be so careful as to leave her under a hedge while you went drinking. I ain't going to trust you again in a hurry. My word, I wonder I didn't murder you!"

"Well, there, Dick, let bygones be bygones. What'll you do next?"

"Next? Why, lie safe at Moreton till first train to-morrow morning, and then get up to London and back to the old shop. Then let the police know as we can give information of the whereabouts of Miss---- there, no names."

"Wouldn't it be safer to go all the way with the cart?"

"No, stupid. It's likely enough they may follow us from Carsham--depends what sort of people they be, this here John and his lot. We must get out of this country as quick as ever we can."

That night John's Lily sobbed herself to sleep in a little black hole of a room, at the back of a low public-house in Moreton. The man and woman had changed their tone again, now that she seemed to be safely in their hands; perhaps it struck them that unkindness might not pay in the end. They did their best, though without success, to make her eat some supper. Finally the woman carried her upstairs, so weary with grief and the day's excitement that the fair little head could not hold itself up, but drooped and lay on its jailor's shoulder. Not unkindly the woman unwrapped the child and laid her down on a grimy little bed.

"Now you are a silly," she said. "Me and Dick's the kindest friends you've got, my dear. We're going to take you to a beautiful house where there's lots of servants and all kinds of pretty things, and sweets and toys as you never saw the like--leastways not since you was lost--and gentlemen and ladies to make ever such a fuss with you, and beautiful children to play with, and sweet new frocks so as you'll never be poor and shabby again. Oh, and such a lot of rooms--" she went on, seeing that the tired blue eyes had opened wide, and that in the dim flicker of the candle Lily was gazing with awakened interest--"and pictures on the walls and lots of lovely flowers----"

"The blue lady on the stairs!" Lily said suddenly. Some remembrance of her baby life, some impression that had lain asleep in the utterly changed existence of the last three years, woke up then in Lily's childish brain. She looked round the black little room with bewildered eyes.

"There--to be sure, yes," the woman said in wheedling tones. "And then you was lost, you don't remember about that--" it certainly was better that the child's memory should not revive there--"and then your poor dear papa, he looked for you everywhere, and now me and Dick, we've found you, and if you're a very good child we're going to take you back to him. Yes, little one, we're good friends, me and Dick."

But if any vision of the past had flashed for a moment on Lily's mind, it was soon forgotten. She was cold, she was tired and sick with crying, and she longed for the only home she really knew. So when the woman began again to talk of the beautiful house and all its riches, she turned her head aside with an impatient moan.

"I want John--I want John and mother!"

"Never mind, little missy--don't be naughty now. You'll see them again some day. Now go to sleep like a good girl."

"I must say my prayers."

In a moment she had scrambled down from the bed, and was kneeling on the dirty floor. "Our Father, which art in heaven." Such holy words, such a sweet and silvery little voice, had not often before been heard in that black den of a room. They were very strange to the ears of the poor degraded woman who stood by with the crooked dip candle in her hand, looking down on the fair golden head, the innocent face bent, the little hands reverently put together. She could not have moved or disturbed the child, even if Dick had been thumping on the door.

"O LORD, forgive my faults and comfort poor sinners, and bless all those that love me, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen."

It was the little form of prayer that Mrs. Randal had taught the child, with a thought in her heart for some distant father and mother who might have lost Lily. To-night she waited a moment, and added quickly out of her own head--"O LORD, please take me back to John."

"You didn't know what you was saying," said her companion, rather grimly, as she tucked her up in bed. "Whatever John may be, he isn't your own father, and it's him you're going back to, my dear."

After that she left her alone in the dark, and Lily, frightened once more and broken-hearted, sobbed till she fell asleep.

Very early the next morning she found herself sitting alone in the waiting-room at Moreton Road Station. Outside, a wild tempest of wind and rain was tearing past the wooden building, rattling the windows, streaming noisily down the roofs. The cold breeze that whistled among the booths at Carsham had brought this, and the second day of the fair was likely to be anything but cheerful. Dick and his wife had no objection to the bad weather. He despatched her and the child early to the station, lingering himself to the last moment in the comfortable bar of the inn. She, arriving at the station, found it was half an hour too early, and could not resist running back for an extra glass of something hot to cheer her through the journey. She kept out of his sight, knowing very well that he would not approve of her leaving the little girl alone. She had herself no fears on that score. Lily was neither old nor clever enough to run away. She left her quite quiet and sad and sleepy in a corner of the bench, so wrapped in shawls that her little face was hardly to be seen.

She had only been alone there a few minutes, when two people with wet umbrellas and waterproofs hurried along the platform and came in. They were an elderly man and his wife, who sat down side by side, and began talking of the business that was taking them to London by the early train. At first Lily in her misery hardly noticed them; but presently the man said--"It was a good thing that our friend John had not such weather as this for his long walk."

"Ah! I thought he might as well have stayed till this morning, but there never was such a young man for going home to his mother. Still, I've nothing to say against him. Of all your friends, Isaac, John Randal's the one I like the best."

"And well you may, Jemima," said the old schoolmaster. "He deserves both respect and affection. I am anxious to see Miss Mary Alfrick; I wish John would bring her one of these days to pay us a visit. And his little Lily too. It would give me sincere pleasure to see those three together."

"I'm afraid that poor child stands in the way of his marriage," said Mrs. Bland. "Goodness me, what's this?"

For suddenly the bundle of shawls in the opposite corner scrambled down from the bench, shuffled as well as it could across the floor, and made frantic efforts to climb into her lap.

"What little girl is this?" said the schoolmaster.

Lily pushed the shawl desperately back. With large eyes wet with tears she made her silent petition for help.

"Please," she said then, "I'm John's little girl, I'm John's Lily. Please take me home."