Spring in a Shropshire Abbey. Gaskell Catherine Henrietta Milnes

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Bess avoided my gaze, and did not answer, and a minute later I heard the two children scuttle up the newel staircase, and shortly after heard the muffled sound of voices in the old tower of the Abbey that a Lawley is said to have erected in the middle of the seventeenth century.

THE FAIRY-STORY

      About half an hour after, the children returned to me in the chapel hall. Bess, I noticed, looked white and fagged, and both children seemed exhausted by their play, whatever it was, so I made them sit quiet, fetched my embroidery, and began to tell them a fairy-story. I meandered along the paths of fiction. I fear my story had but little plot, but it had fiery dragons, wild beasts, a fairy prince, and a beautiful fairy princess, and, in the background, a wicked ogre. And as I talked, the children sat entranced.

      “You see,” I said, as I heard the front-door bell ring, and heard the tramp of horses outside, “the prince was to have everything, all that his heart could wish – dogs, the golden bow and arrows, the azure ball, and the deathless crimson rose – as long as he restrained his temper, and never gave way to fits of violent passion. But if he swore at his old nurse, Ancoretta, or struck the goat-herd, Fritz, or even pinched the goose-girl, Mopsa, palace, dogs, bow, ball and rose were all to disappear like a flash of lightning, and he was to become again the poor little bare-legged village lad. Then the princess was to be carried off by fiery dragons, and never return till he, Florizel, had been able to grow good and pitiful again, and to do some lowly, humble service to some poor old dame that everybody else despised, and was unkind to.”

      At this point of my story, Fremantle entered and announced the carriage.

      “Go on, go on,” cried the children in one breath. “We want to hear what happened!”

      But I answered, shaking my head, “How Prince Florizel was rude to his tutor, ungrateful to his old nurse, and beat his faithful foster-brother, Fritz, is another story, as Mr. Kipling would say; and all this you must wait to hear in the second volume of my mind, which will appear on Easter Monday, when Hals shall come over, if his mother can spare him, and we three will all sail off in fairy barks with silken sails to the far and happy land of Fancy.”

      So Harry departed, attended by Jane, and Bess sat on in silence looking hard into the fire, and then early, and of her own accord, pleaded fatigue and slipped off to bed.

      Just as I was finishing dinner I saw old Nurse Milner standing in the doorway.

      “Nothing wrong, nurse?” I asked, starting up.

      “Nothing very wrong,” answered old Nana, cautiously; “leastways, Miss Bess is not ill, but she seems out of sorts and won’t say her prayers to-night, and will keep throwing herself about, till I think she’s bound to fall out of bed. I have asked her what’s the matter, but she’s as secret as a state door. She and Master Harry have been up to some tricks, I’ll be bound, for I don’t hold to children playin’ by themselves, as if they were nothing but lambkins in a meadow. You can’t tell what they won’t be up to, but this you may be sure of, to childers left by themselves, mischief is natural sport.” And old Nana glared, and made me feel very small.

      “No great harm done this time,” I said, and went upstairs.

      “What’s the matter, little girl?” I asked. I took a little hot, feverish hand and pressed her to tell me why she would not say her prayers.

      At first Bess was sullen – turned her head away, and would not speak; but she could not resist my kiss, and at last confession bubbled up to her lips.

A LITTLE MAID’S CONFESSION

      “Mama,” she exclaimed vehemently, “I have been wicked, very wicked – wicked as an ogre or a she-dragon. Can you love me really and truly when you know what I’ve done – really love me again?”

      “I am sure I can,” I answered, “only tell me. When I know, I can help you.”

      Bess buried her head against my shoulder, and then rambled on rather incoherently —

      “Do you remember what I told you about Hals’ birthday – how there wasn’t a conjurer but a white dog, and how, after the tricks were done, Miss Jordan read us stories and told us poems? Well, there was one bit of poetry that I wish I had never heard, nor Hals either, and that was Sister Helen, because it has made me very wicked. It has made me think of how I could pay out Fräulein. We both hate her, she does nothing but punish; not punish you to make you good, but to make you horrid. Hals catches it for not washing his hands, for not brushing his hair, for not putting on his coat, for losing his blotting-paper, for dropping his pencil. Everything means a punishment with Fräulein. She pounces on him like a cat, and she has him everywhere.” Then, after a pause, Bess began again. “Hals and I thought we would punish her, too – once and for all.”

      “Yes, Bess,” I inquired; “but what did you do?”

      “Mum, I was very naughty,” replied my little girl, tearfully. “To-day, Hals and I went upstairs, up to the tower, and I got a dustpan and two candle-ends, and we lighted some sticks and some paper in the dustpan – I stole some matches out of papa’s room – and then we melted up the wax.”

      “And then, Bess?”

      “Then, when the wax was sticky and horrid, we stuck pins into it, and I said, ‘Please, God, let Fräulein die.’ And Hals did not want to say it, but I made him, for I said I wouldn’t have God angry with only me.

      “And then I called out, ‘Let her die, God, in horrid pain, like the snake last year that Burbidge killed and that wouldn’t die straight off; and then, dear Lord, let her go to hell and be kept there ever afterwards.’ But Hals wouldn’t say that, because he had heard Parsons, their stud groom, say you must give every beggar a chance, so he bargained that she should come out one day and have some chocolates. To which I said, if the Lord lets her out of hell, it shall be only common chocolates, not like those that Uncle Paul brought me back from Paris. Then Hals agreed, Mum Mum; only he said, for all she was a German woman, the chock was not to be too nasty, seeing that she would only have some once a year.

      “Then Hals wanted to go away; but I said he shouldn’t till we had done the whole job.

      “Then he and I blew out the fire and stamped upon the wax, and it was quite soft and squashy and I pricked my foot; but nurse does not know, for Eliza bathed me to-night, and Eliza did not notice.”

      “And after that?” I asked.

      “Oh,” sobbed Bess, “you will be very angry.”

      “Never mind, go on,” I said.

      “Then,” said Bess, steeled to the point, in a penetrating broken chirp, “after that I told Hals we must say bad words, for I knew that bad words can do a great deal. But Hals couldn’t think of any, so I called him a muff and a milksop, and I told him to repeat after me all that I said.”

HOW COULD I BE SO NAUGHTY?

      “What did you say?”

      “Mama, I called out ‘damn’ three times.”

      “My dear, what a dreadful word! How did you know it?”

      “Oh, once I heard Uncle Paul say it when he ran a nail in his boot; and once I remembered that Crawley said it when he got his foot caught in a gate-post out riding, and I have never forgotten it. And worse,” continued Bess, “I called out, ‘hell! hell! hell!’ and then I was frightened; but I didn’t let Hals see it, or he would have said girls were only funks after all.”

      “Well, СКАЧАТЬ