CHAPTER I

NOT WANTED

SHE stood watching the crowd on the pier; a slim upright little figure, in a shabby waterproof, and a woollen cap crammed down on her head, and hiding the soft silky curls underneath it.

Her small face with its clear pallor, dark speaking eyes, and sensitive lips, struck more than one observer with peculiar interest.

"An intelligent child that," remarked the ship's doctor, as he lounged over the bulwarks, waiting for the gangway to connect them with the shore; "but it's a type that is bound to suffer—too much feeling!"

His companion—a pretty woman of uncertain age—gazed at the small girl reflectively.

"She will be one of the many lonely unattached women, I suppose. No parents or brothers and sisters, I hear; being brought home by the Commissioner of the district in which her parents died. He seems rather in a quandary about her, for there is a doubt as to whether any relatives will turn up. Poor mite! I suppose a school or orphanage will be her fate."

Their voices reached the child's ears. She did not turn her head, but big tears rose to her eyes. Then she brushed them away with the back of her hand. Another voice, and a hand on her shoulder, made her glance up, and in an instant her face was glowing and radiant with delight.

"Well, little Harebell, we're home at last! Now for a scrimmage at the Customs, and then we'll dine together at some hotel! We won't think about to-morrow, will we? I don't fancy anybody on the pier belongs to you, do you think so?"

The big Commissioner—six foot in his stockings—glanced down at his protégée with laughing eyes; but there was a big pity at the bottom of his heart for her future. She slipped her hand into his with great content.

"We'll have a beautiful evening," she said in clear soft tones. "And do you think we might have ice-pudding to-night?"

"We'll have the best of everything! A perfect feast! Now then—come along!"

There was a rush to the gangway; laughter, tears, and fervent embraces were in the atmosphere around them; but he piloted her safely through the crowd. He cast a quick glance around him. Was there any one ready to greet this lonely little one? He had decided in his own mind that there was not.

"I believe you'll have to come to Scotland with me to see my old mother," he said cheerily.

Harebell laughed aloud at the thought. It was what she had been hoping. She cried fervently:

"Oh, I do hope there's nobody here who wants me!"

And neither of them noticed that at the sound of the child's clear voice, a tall stately figure moved towards them.

Mr. Graham was startled when he was confronted by a very beautiful woman, with a cold grave face.

Her tone was haughty in the extreme:

"May I ask if that child belongs to you?"

"I wish she did, madam; but she is in my charge."

"Is her name Felicia Darrell?"

"It is, though she is accustomed to be called Harebell."

"I am her aunt, Mrs. Keith. Mr. Capel has forwarded me your letters."

"Ah, yes. Well, I was her father's executor! He was ill but twelve hours, poor chap! And I had only the address of his lawyer. I did not know of any relation—there seemed to be no letters—I'm glad she'll have some one to look after her—"

"I was her mother's sister," said Mrs. Keith severely, "but we never corresponded."

Harebell looked up at her new aunt with wondering eyes, then drew back, and clung with a desperately tight grasp to her friend the Commissioner.

"I don't know you," she said falteringly. "Please don't take me."

There was not a glimmer of a smile upon her aunt's face.

She held out her hand.

"You will soon learn to know me," she said.

And Harebell, somehow or other, dared not resist any longer. With drooping head she dropped Mr. Graham's hand, and placed her own in her aunt's firm clasp. They all went together to the Customs, Harebell's luggage was found, and transferred to a cab awaiting them. There was a hurried agonising farewell taken of Mr. Graham, and a few minutes after, the child found herself driving in a taxi alone with her aunt.

She gazed at her with frightened, miserable eyes. Mrs. Keith looked out of the window and said nothing. She was handsomely dressed in velvet and furs. It was a March day, and cold enough to make the Indian child shiver.

Tears came to Harebell's eyes again, and rolled down her cheeks. Suddenly Mrs. Keith turned to her, and spoke very sharply.

"When did your mother die?"

"Long, long ago," said Harebell, choking down a sob. "I was very little, for I didn't know she died at all; I thought she had just walked away to heaven—"

"And your father? How long has he been dead?"

"Oh, it seems a long time too, but they say it's only ten months."

"I need not get you any black clothes, then," her aunt said decisively.

Harebell stared at her. Black garments were unknown to her. She wondered what they were like.

The taxi took them to another station, and then a long railway journey began. Mrs. Keith was silent most of the time. Harebell, from her corner seat, surveyed the strange country with eager interested eyes. She did not want to talk; she was entirely wrapped up in the present. Childlike, she accepted the inevitable, and had no anxiety about the future. Her aunt was merely an aunt, and a grown-up; a necessary belonging, not half so interesting as the plump little lambs playing in the fields, the rabbits darting along a hedge-side, and the quaint country cottages and farms.

But as time went on, Harebell's head and back began to ache, then her eyes were too weary to gaze out any more, and finally sleep came to her.

She was barely conscious of being helped out of the train and placed in a country fly.

As they rumbled along the country roads, she slept again, and it was only when they reached her future home, that she thoroughly roused herself.

Mrs. Keith did not live in a big house, but it was comfortable, and had a rambling garden surrounded with high red-brick walls. When the door opened to them, an old man-servant appeared, and Harebell, looking at him, loved him on the spot.

He was a short square-built man, with grey hair and a round smiling face, and the merriest eyes that Harebell had ever seen.

She looked up at him with confidence, and then to her astonishment, he winked one of his eyes slowly at her.

Then Harebell laughed aloud. Her aunt turned upon her sharply.

"What is the matter?"

"He is so funny!" said Harebell, pointing with her finger to the old man, who was now shouldering her heavy luggage as if it were only a featherweight.

"Do you mean Andrews? It is rude to laugh at people, even if they be servants."

Harebell's smile disappeared at once. She followed her aunt up a short wide staircase, and was shown into a room. It was small, but there was a blazing fire in it; bright pictures were on the walls, a little white bed in the corner, and flowered chintz curtains hung in the windows.

"Is this for me?" Harebell asked timidly.

"It is your room, and I shall expect you to keep it tidy."

Then Harebell wheeled round upon her aunt with clasped hands.

"It is beautiful," she cried with shining eyes; "and I think you beautiful too!"

Mrs. Keith stared at her in silence; then turned round and swept out of the room. Speaking over her shoulder, she said:

"Wash your face and hands, and take off your hat and coat, then come downstairs to supper."

Harebell waited till the door was closed upon her. A little ache and longing was in her heart for one kind word. But she had never remembered a mother's love, and was accustomed to grave grown-up society. She never expected much from any one. Now she began to dance in the middle of her room. And as she danced she chanted some words she had learnt from her ayah:

"It's good to be happy and sing— The birds and the flowers agree— There's music to make for us all, And some must be made by me."

Her cap and her coat had been flung off. She was dressed in a soft blue woollen frock; her small head of curls, rather a delicate little neck, and her fragile wisp of a body impressed one who was looking on as peculiarly appropriate to her name. She looked like a nodding blue harebell swaying in the wind.

"Not hungry or tired! How wonderful children are!"

Harebell started, and stopped her dance in an instant. A grave motherly-looking woman stood in the doorway. She wore a lace cap, and for a moment Harebell wondered if she were another aunt. She saw she had kind eyes, and precipitated herself into her arms without any hesitation.

"I've been so frightened, it's all so strange, but I feel happiness in the room; it has come to me, and so I can't help dancing."

"Bless your little heart, I'm glad to think you're so easy made happy! I'm your aunt's maid and housekeeper, dear; I've been with her twenty years, and I don't know which I loved best when they were little girls, she or your dear mother. You must call me Goody, the same as they did—my name is Goodheart, but I'm still Goody. And I shall have time to slip in and wait on you and dress you. It will be like old times. We're not a very big household. There's only Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and Lucy and myself. Now let me put a brush to your curls."

"I'm glad you're in the world," said Harebell, as she resigned herself into Goody's hands at once. "I shall be able to talk to you; that lady who brought me here is like a princess in my fairy book. 'Slowly, slowly she turned into stone, very beautiful but cold she was, her face got stiller and whiter, when she spoke she hardly seemed to breathe.' Shall I go on? I know it by heart, and then one day she gets soft, you know! I shall be looking for that day, won't you? What is her name?"

"Your aunt? Dear me, I feel quite bewildered with such talk. Your Aunt Diana she is. Now you must walk downstairs nicely like a little lady, for it's getting late, and supper has been ready this half-hour or more."

Harebell slipped downstairs without another word. In the hall she met Andrews. He took her little hand in his.

"You're going to be friends with old Andy, I know," he said, and his eyes began to twinkle again. "He's an old sailor, and an 'Andy man, see the joke? 'Tis no use dressing him up as a sober butler, he can't play the part! But he's butler and gardener, and carpenter and jack-of-all-trades here. And now he has the honour to tell you that supper is served."

His tone turned from gay to grave, and at the same moment, Mrs. Keith crossed the hall. Harebell followed her into the dining-room.

It was a long low room with red walls and dark oak panelling. Harebell seated herself opposite her aunt, and Andrews waited upon them in deferential silence. Some hot soup, chicken, and a sponge-cake pudding refreshed and exhilarated Harebell so much that silence seemed impossible.

"I like it here, aunt! I like my room, and Goody and Andy, but I want to see Mr. Graham again. Will you ask him to come and stay here?"

Her aunt looked at her slowly and reflectively; then she said shortly:

"No."

Harebell's little head dropped at once. She spoke no more, but when the meal was over, her aunt took her into another room. It was daintily furnished. Mrs. Keith took a seat by the fire, then she made Harebell stand in front of her.

"I want you to understand," she said, "that I am willing to give you a home on certain conditions. I am not fond of children. I have taken you in because you have no other relations, not because I wished to have you. If you are obedient and truthful, you can make this your home; if I ever find you out in a lie, or any kind of deceit, I shall send you off to a boarding-school, which will become your home until you can earn your own living. You will have to do that, for your father's affairs are in a shocking state; and there will be no money left for you after his debts are paid."

Harebell knitted her brows, then she looked up and said quietly:

"I suppose a boarding-school is a dreadful place? We haven't got them in India, not for white children. Is a mission school a boarding-school? I think they're made with boards, but I'm not sure."

"We won't discuss the matter," Mrs. Keith said coldly. "I have told you the conditions under which you stay in my house."

Harebell looked at her aunt in silence for a minute. Her extreme composure irritated her aunt.

"If you understand me, you had better go to bed. It is getting very late."

"I have told lies," Harebell said slowly and thoughtfully. "When I was very little I did. I had an ayah who frightened me, and I said I hadn't picked some flowers when I had. I'll try not to tell any to you. Daddy told me it wasn't playing the game if I did. Good-night, Aunt Dinah."

"My name is Diana. Good-night."

She did not offer to kiss her. Harebell went upstairs very slowly. There was a little choke in her throat. She suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and misery come over her. She crept into her little bedroom; then throwing herself down on the hearthrug before the fire, she burst into a passion of tears.

"Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do! Nobody loves me here; nobody wants me! Oh, I wish I could run away to Mr. Graham. I wish he'd taken me to see his old mother!"

She was tired and overwrought. Half an hour later, Goody found her lying in the same position, but she had sobbed herself asleep. It was with difficulty that she roused her sufficiently to undress her.

"I never knew you had come to bed. I meant to have sent Lucy to you. We have been having our supper. It's so strange to have a child in the house that I keep on forgetting it. Now won't you say your prayers before you get into bed? You do say some prayers, don't you?"

"Who to?" asked Harebell, looking at Goody with wistfulness. "I used to say them to daddy, but he has gone away, and I haven't said any prayers since!"

"But you say your prayers to God," said Goody in shocked tones; "don't you know that?"

Harebell shook her head.

"I talk to God very often," she said; "but I don't say my prayers to Him. It was 'Our Father' I used to say to daddy. I never did understand what it meant, but I learnt it when I was a baby, and he liked to hear me say it."

Goody looked quite horrified, but she tried to give a satisfactory explanation.

"Saying your prayers is talking to God; asking Him to forgive you for being naughty, and begging Him to watch over you while you sleep."

"I don't talk like that," said Harebell with a superior smile.

"Well, kneel down now," said Goody, impatiently.

"I talk to God in bed. I don't kneel. I only used to kneel to daddy."

"It's most irreverent not to kneel; you kneel to God in church."

"So I do!" said Harebell, a light springing in upon her. "So I do. I never thought of that."

She went down on her knees at once, closed her eyes, and began to whisper. Goody folded up her clothes, but she was rather scandalized at scraps she heard the little girl say.

"I expect you laughed when you made him, God, but I'm so glad he has such a funny face—and if I could find a spell to melt her—would you advise me not to think about it? I should like it soon, please—I must have something to cuddle!"

As the whisper went on, Goody cleared her throat, then coughed. Harebell looked up.

"Do you want to speak to me? It doesn't matter interrupting; God is dreadfully accustomed to interrupting. You see, such millions of people are talking to Him all day long!"

"I think you had better get into bed," said Goody severely.

Harebell meekly obeyed her, but the whispering went on even after she had left the room.

"Never in my life have I seen such a child," was Goody's verdict downstairs. "I would say one minute she was fifty years old, and the next as ignorant as a savage! Uncanny, I call her! And yet I feel my heart warm towards her!"

Later that evening Mrs. Keith visited her small niece, candle in hand. She looked down upon the sleeping child with cold bitterness.

"More like her mother than father. I suppose deceit and dissimulation is ingrained in her nature. She will be a continual reminder to me of how I was duped."

Harebell's tired little face looked very sweet and content in her sleep; her dark silky curls clustered round her forehead, and accentuated the whiteness of her skin. She turned over on her side, muttering:

"She turned into stone."

Mrs. Keith hastily left the room.