Part 13 (1/2)

It was at the appointed trysting place they found him--”half-way between the stiles”. But not till late that evening, when Betsy, more alarmed by his absence than by her mistress's not returning, at last struggled out through the deep-lying snow to alarm the nearest neighbours.

”The missis and Miss Nell will have stayed the night in the town,” she said. ”But I mis...o...b.. me if the master will ever have got so far, though he may have been tempted on when he did not meet them.”

By this time the fury of the storm had spent itself, and they found poor Giles after a not very protracted search, and brought him home--dead, they thought at first.

No, he was not dead, but it was less than half _life_ that he returned to. For his first inquiry late the next day, when glimmering consciousness had begun to revive--”Marion, the baby?”--seemed by some subtle instinct to answer itself truthfully, in spite of the kindly endeavour to deceive him for the time.

”Dead!” he murmured. ”I knew it. Half-way between the stiles,” and he turned his face to the wall.

They almost wished he had died too--the rough but kind-hearted country-folk who were his neighbours. But he lived. He never asked and never knew the details of the tragedy, which, indeed, was never fully known by any one.

All that came to light was that the dead body of Marion Giles was brought by some semi-gipsy wanderers to the workhouse of a town several miles south of Colletwood, early on the morning after the blizzard. They had found it, they said, at some little distance from the road along which they were journeying, so that she must have lost her way long before approaching the Monksholdings confines, not improbably, indeed, in attempting to retrace her steps to the town which she had so imprudently quitted. But of the child the tramps said nothing, and after making the above deposition, they were allowed to go on their way, which they expressed themselves as anxious to do; for reasons of their own, no doubt; possibly the same reasons which had prevented their returning to Colletwood with the young woman's corpse, as would have seemed more natural.

And afterwards no very special inquiry was made about the baby. The father was incapable of it, and in those days people accepted things more carelessly, perhaps. It was taken for granted that ”Little Nell”

had fallen down some cliff, no doubt, and lay buried there, with the snow for her shroud, like a strayed lambkin. Her tiny bones might yet be found, years hence, maybe, by a shepherd in search of some bleating wanderer, or--no more might ever be known of the infant's fate!

Barnett Giles rose from his bed, after many weeks, with all the look of a very old man. At first it was thought that his mind was quite gone; but it did not prove to be so. After a time, with the help of an excellent foreman, or bailiff, he showed himself able to manage his farm with a strange, mechanical kind of intelligence. It seemed as if the sense of duty outlived the loss of other perceptions, though these, too, cleared by degrees to a considerable extent, and material things, curious as it may appear, prospered with him.

But he rarely spoke unless obliged to do so; and whenever he felt himself at leisure, and knew that his work was not calling for him, he seemed to relapse into the half-dreamy state which was his more real life. Then he would pa.s.s through the village and slowly climb the slope to the stile, where he would stand for hours together, patiently gazing before him, while he murmured the old refrain: ”'Half-way between the stiles,' she said. I shall meet them there, 'half-way between the stiles'.”

Fortunately, perhaps, it was not often he attempted to climb over; he contented himself with standing and gazing. Fortunately so, for otherwise the changes at Monksholdings would have probably terribly shocked his abnormally sensitive brain. But he did not seem to notice them, nor the new route of the old right-of-way agreed to by the compromise. He was content with his post--standing, leaning on the stile, and gazing before him.

His, of course, was the worn, wistful face which had half frightened, half appealed to Sybil Raynald.

But she forgot about it again, or other things put it temporarily aside, so that when the Raynalds came down to Monksholdings again the following Easter it did not at once occur to her to remind her father of the inquiry he had promised to make.

Miss March was not with her pupils and their parents at first. She had gone to spend a holiday week with the friends who had brought her up and seen to her education--good, benevolent people, if not specially sympathetic, but to whom she felt herself bound by ties of sincerest grat.i.tude, though her five years with the Raynald family had given her more of the feeling of a ”home” than she had ever had before.

And her arrival at Monksholdings was the occasion of much rejoicing.

There was everything to show her, and every one, from Mark down to little Robin, wanted to be her guide. It was not till the morning of the next day that Sybil managed to get her to herself for a _tete-a-tete_ stroll.

Ellinor had some things to tell her quondam pupil. Mrs. Bellairs, her self-appointed guardian, was growing old and somewhat feeble.

”I fear she is not likely to live many years,” said Miss March, ”and she thinks so herself. She has a curious longing, which I never saw in her before, to find out my history--to know if there is no one really belonging to me to whom she can give me back, as it were, before she dies. She gave me the little parcel containing the clothes I had on when she rescued me from being sent to a workhouse. They are carefully washed and mended, and though I was a poor, dirty little object when I was found, they do not look really as if I had been a beggar child,” with a little smile.

”You a beggar child!” exclaimed Sybil indignantly. ”Of course not.

Perhaps, on the contrary, you were somebody very grand.”

”No, no,” said Ellinor sensibly. ”In that case I should have been advertised for and inquired after. No, I have never thought that, and I should not wish it. I should be more than thankful to know I came of good, honest people, however simple; to have some one of my very own.”

”I forget the actual details,” said Sybil, ”though you have often told me about it. You were found--no, not literally in the workhouse, was it?”

”They were going to take me there,” said Miss March. ”It was at a village near Bath where Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs were then living, and one day, after a party of gipsies had been encamping on the common, a cottager's wife heard something crying in the night, and found me in her little garden. She was too poor to keep me herself, and felt certain I was a child the gipsies had stolen and then wanted to get rid of. I was fair-haired and blue-eyed, not like them. She was a friend or relation of some of Mrs. Bellairs's servants, and so the story got round to my kind old friend. And you know the rest--how they first thought of bringing me up in quite a humble way, and then finding me--well, intelligent and naturally rather refined, I suppose, I got a really good education, and my good luck did not desert me, dear, when I came to be your governess.”

Sybil smiled.

”And can you remember _nothing_?”

Ellinor hesitated.