Chapter XI: Sad Days

The days did not pass quite so happily, just now, for Una. Philip and Stephen Carew had brought home a boy friend with them from school, and Tom liked to play cricket with the elder boys in the vicarage meadow, while Mary and Ruth and Norah were generally asked to field, and Dan looked on and clapped encouragement from the bank where he usually sat to watch the players.

The little foreign girl was therefore left rather to herself, for a time, and used to listen to the sounds of merriment which sometimes reached her from the vicarage garden, as she wandered by herself in the wood, with rather a wistful look on her little pale face.

If only she had brothers and sisters of her own, Una thought to herself, how happy she would be! And then she would go back to the garden to play with "Snoozy," and to wonder how long it would be before her father came home again.

Then one day he came.

Una heard the sound of wheels as she sat by herself in the little hut on the lawn, and she ran across the grass and peeped through the laurel hedge to see who was in the carriage; and when she caught sight of her father's sad, tired face, and deep-set eyes looking out through the open window, she gave a great shout of joy and pushed her way through the hedge, quite forgetting her usual little formal curtsey as she scrambled into the carriage and up on to her father's knee, as soon as the coachman had pulled up the horses and Monsieur Gen had opened the door.

"Why, my little girl, how glad you are to see me again!" he said, kissing her as she threw her arms round his neck and rubbed her cheek fondly against his.

"Oh, so glad; so very, very glad!" Una sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder.

Then she sprang out into the porch, clapping her hands with delight that she had really got her father back again!

But there was something the matter with her father, Una thought, as she followed him across the hall to the library. He walked so slowly, and stopped every now and then as if in pain; and when he sat down in the big writing-chair by the table he looked so tired and sad--paler even than usual, the little girl thought, as she looked anxiously into his face with the big eyes so like her father's own.

"Are you ill, father?" she asked gently.

"Yes, dear, I am afraid I am. I have been worried, Una, very worried," he said; as he leant his head rather wearily on his hand; and presently Una stole away and came back by-and-by, followed by old Marie carrying a little tray, with nicely scented tea, freshly cut slices of lemon and crisp dry toast, just as her father liked it to be served.

Monsieur Gen smiled, and tried to eat; but he soon gave up the attempt and said that he would go and lie down for a time.

Then followed sad, dark days for little Una--days when all the sunshine seemed gone out of her life; and Marie moved about the house with slow, silent steps, and her stern old face puckered up into a hundred wrinkles with worry and anxious thought.

Monsieur Gen refused to have a doctor to see him; he wanted no strange faces about the place, he said. And all through those hot August days he lay quite still in his bedroom, with the blinds down to keep out the glare of the sun; while Una sat beside him fanning him with a palm-leaf fan, or bathing his forehead with Eau de Cologne and moistening his lips with ice, which Marie obtained from the town.

Then one evening, just as it was getting dark, her father opened his eyes and looked at her with a smile.

There had been a slight thunderstorm during the afternoon, and the rain was still falling; and Una thought that perhaps the cooler weather had made her father feel better.

"Are you better, father?" she whispered.

"Darling, I want you to do something for me," he said. "Go to Mr. Carew, and ask him to come and see me this evening."

Una slipped from her chair at once. She had wanted so often to fetch the Vicar to see her father, but had not liked to do so without permission; and now here was her father asking her to go. With a glad heart the little girl hurried downstairs and passed out through the front door.

She knew the way to the vicarage quite well, for she had once or twice been along the road with Marie, since the day she had first seen the little Carews through the gate, and had often watched from the Grange garden while the vicarage children ran along the little lane. But the lane looked strangely unfamiliar tonight, with the dark clouds scudding across the face of the moon overhead.

Presently rain began to fall heavily once more, and Una, who had not waited to put on hat or coat, was drenched to the skin before she reached the vicarage.

Mr. Carew was sitting writing at his study table when he heard a quick tap on the window. For a moment he raised his eyes, then, thinking it was only the branch of a tree tapping against the glass, he went on writing.

The quick "tap, tap, tap," began again, however; and going to the window he saw a pale, frightened little face gazing at him from the other side of the glass.

In a moment he had opened the window and taken poor, wet little Una in his arms.

"I saw your light burning, and I tapped; and father wants you," she said, all in one breath; and although Mr. Carew wanted her to stay and change into dry clothes, nothing would induce her to wait, and he had to content himself with wrapping her in a warm shawl and carrying her back in his arms through the rain.

Then he handed her over to Marie's care, telling her that the little girl had better have a hot bath and something nice and hot to drink as soon as possible, while he went straight to Monsieur Gen's room.

An hour later, while Una lay in bed listening for the slightest sound from her father's room, the Vicar fetched her to say good-night to him.

"Good-bye, darling," said her father. "God bless you, little one."

"Good-night, father--dear father!" said the child, crying softly, she knew not why; and then Mr. Carew carried her back to bed, and she slept soundly until awakened the next morning by the sunshine pouring through the window on to her bed.

But, although the sun shone brightly out of doors and birds sang gaily in the trees, it was a sad, sad day within the house, for Monsieur Gen had died during the night, and little Una was an orphan.

Oh, how slowly the hours of that day dragged by for Una! No one had much time to spare for the little girl, and she walked drearily from room to room, feeling that it was cruel of the sun to shine and the birds to sing so merrily when her father was dead and she would never, on earth, hear him speak again.

She fell asleep at last--curled up in one of the large study chairs--worn out with crying and want of sleep; for often during the last fortnight she had kept herself awake in case her father should want anything and call for her in the night.

There, some hours later, Mr. Carew found her--fast asleep, and with her arms tightly folded round one of her father's coats.

Very gently he lifted the little girl in his arms and carried her down the lane to the vicarage; and when Una awoke she found herself in Norah's little bed, with Mrs. Carew bending over her with loving looks and tender words of sympathy.

She was to live with them always now, Mrs. Carew told the little girl, and she must try and be as happy as she could among them, and look upon Norah and Dan and Mary and Ruth and Tom and Philip and Stephen as her own brothers and sisters.

In a few days' time, as soon as the little girl was well enough for the journey, she was sent with old Marie to stay at a little seaside place called Bembies. Dan went with them also, partly because Mrs. Carew had thought that it would be good for Una to have a child's company, and partly because the little boy really needed a change.

And at Bembies Una told Dan her father's secret.

What it was must be kept for a new chapter.