Part 11 (1/2)
”Don't, Bertha!” cried Mildred sharply. Her face flushed to a vivid pink, she seemed to struggle with herself for a moment, then said decisively, ”Look here, I am going to tell you something. You will be shocked, but it's done now, and can't be undone, so there is no use saying anything about it. There was no shower. It was a trick. I played the hose upon her window.”
A gasp of horror sounded through the room as the twins uttered a simultaneous question, ”You--_what_?”
”I played the hose upon her window. I'll tell you all about it. You had both been crying in the dining-room, saying that your pleasure was spoiled, and that you wouldn't enjoy yourselves a bit. Then you went out of the room and I strolled into the garden. I heard a noise at the window and saw Lady Sarah standing in her room. I didn't want her to see me, so I slipped behind a clump of trees, and the hose was lying on the ground all ready. It darted into my head in a moment that I could make her think it was raining, and I took it up and played it gently on the panes,--just like the very beginning of a shower. By and by I heard the window open and saw her stretch out her hand; then I gave a flick round the corner, so that she got quite a nice little bath. The window shut with a bang, and I went on pattering until it was all over drops.
She stood in the background looking out--”
”Oh, Mildred!” echoed the Dean's daughters in horrified chorus; ”Oh, Mildred! how could you, how dare you? Suppose anyone had seen you.”
”Oh, I took good care of that! No one saw me at all--except Erroll.”
”Erroll? Good gracious! And did you warn him not to tell?”
Mildred shook her head.
”No; Mother never allows us to tell the children anything like that.
She says it makes them deceitful. He will forget all about it; children always do.”
”They generally remember when you want them to forget. Oh, Mildred, I wish you hadn't done it! I don't like it a bit. It makes me feel worse than ever.”
”You can't feel anything like as bad as I do,” retorted Mildred miserably. ”I was sorry the moment after I had done it. I went upstairs and stayed in my own room, for I thought I had done enough mischief, and had better keep out of the way. I was really disappointed to see Miss Turner in the carriage instead of Lady Sarah. I thought I shouldn't enjoy myself at all--it worried me so; but then I got interested and forgot all about it--until we came home.” Her voice sank into a disconsolate whisper, ”I don't know what your mother will think, when she put her into my charge, too, but there are two days more; I'm going to be awfully nice, and try if I can't make up.”
”We will all try,” said Bertha heartily. She saw that Mildred was even more distressed than she would admit, and was anxious to say something comforting before retiring for the night. ”We have had our good time to-day, she shall have hers to-morrow. Don't worry any more, Mil dear, but try to think of something nice that we can do for her as a surprise before Mother comes back.”
”It's awfully good of you not to scold me, Bertha. I know you must be disgusted with me, though you won't say so. You would never have done such a thing yourself.”
”No, because I am never in a hurry. I take a long time to make up my mind about anything, good or bad. If you had waited five minutes to think about it, you would never have played that hose; but never mind, Mil, some time there will be a brave thing to do, and you will have risked your life and done it, while I am still trembling on the brink.
It works both ways, you see!”
Bertha patted her friend on the arm with an air of gracious condescension, and bidding her an affectionate good-night, returned to her own room.
Left to herself, Mildred began to undress in listless, disconsolate fas.h.i.+on. She was tired with the day's exertions, and sorely troubled about the escapade of the morning. Lady Sarah's face haunted her. If Bertha and Lois were shocked, what, oh! what, would be their mother's feelings? ”She will be grieved in earnest this time,” Mildred sighed to herself. ”Oh, goodness, I wonder why it is that I am always getting into trouble! I mean to be good, I have the best intentions... Mrs Faucit will look at me as she did that day when I flew into a pa.s.sion.
I hate to be looked at like that. Great, solemn eyes, as if her heart were broken! And it was all my fault this time... I wish I could be calm and deliberate. I'll begin to-morrow, and count twenty to myself before I say a single word.”
She crept into bed and laid her head upon the pillows with a weary sigh, but sleep was long in coming, and even when the lids closed over the tired eyes, the groans which forced themselves through the closed lips, the nervous twitches of the limbs, showed that an uneasy conscience pursued her into the land of dreams.
How long she slept Mildred never knew, but it seemed as if at one moment she was lost in unconsciousness, and at the next she was awake--wide, wide awake,--with her heart beating like a sledge-hammer, and an unusual chilling of fear in her veins. Something had aroused her--what was it?
The echo of the sound rang in her ears, shrill, piteous, beseeching.
What could it have been? Mildred sat up in bed and looked searchingly round the room. The light was high enough to show the furthest corner.
The door was closed, the window as she had left it, the sash opened a few inches at the bottom; the tick of the little clock on the mantel-piece sounded clearly in the silence. All looked so calm, so peaceful, so safe, that Mildred drew a breath of relief and was preparing to burrow down again among the clothes, when her heart leapt at a repet.i.tion of the same mysterious sound.
There was no mistaking it this time. It was the sound of a voice raised in a wail of such bitter, helpless pleading as left the listener trembling with nervousness.
In the broad light of day, with friends seated by our sides, it is difficult to realise how keenly a sound such as this tells upon the nerves in the dark silence of the night, but Mildred was of a fearless nature, and after the first shock of surprise, her impulse was to find out the source of the alarm, not to hide her head under the bedclothes and stuff her fingers in her ears, as many another girl would have done in her place. She slipped out of bed, crept across the room to the window, and kneeling on the floor, applied her ear to the open s.p.a.ce, listening intently.
The windows of the house were dark and lifeless, but as she waited, in straining silence, it seemed to Mildred that a faint murmur of voices reached her ear. Now a long level murmur, now a broken effort of protest, then again the smooth low voice.
Mildred turned her eye from one side to the other, calling to mind the different rooms to which the windows belonged. Below the breakfast-room, above the day nursery, to the right her own dressing-room, to the left, in the projecting wing, Lady Sarah's room and that of her maid. Mildred had never realised before how she was cut off from the rest of the household, but the conviction that the voices must come from this last-named room brought with it a throb of relief.
Cecile had said that her mistress was often irritably wakeful during the night-time, and had warned her of a possible alarm like the present.