CHAPTER XVI

THE BREAKING OF BOUNDS

"And I, so young then, was not sullen. Soon I used to get up early, just to sit And watch the morning quicken in the grey, And hear the silence open like a flower, Leaf after leaf--and stroke with listless hand The woodbine through the window." --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Melicent's little bedroom was her sole refuge; and this her aunt, in her petty tyranny, denied her as often as she could. It was her theory that solitude was bad for girls. She liked them to be always herded together, under the eye of Tommy or one of their parents. Melicent must work, write, read, in the constant babble and racket of the schoolroom. The first time she found her niece curled up in the window-seat of her own room with a book, she swooped upon her with her sweetest smile, to see what the volume was. On discovering it to be "Alison's History of Europe," she shifted her attack from the reading to the spot where it took place. It was a draughty window; dear Melicent had better go into the warm schoolroom.

Melicent felt her tongue tingle to resent this aimless autocracy. The window of her little room was dear to her. It overlooked the grey stable-yard, with the glowing copper of autumn beeches, the dazzling gold of birches, peeping over the further wall, flanked by black Scotch firs, whose trunks seemed to glow red-hot when the sun was in the west; and behind them lay the long purple ridge--Weary Ridge--that fenced Fransdale away from the world on the eastern side.

The window was quite close to one inner corner of the quadrangle formed by the house and outbuildings. At right angles to it was the warm, dry, stone barn, on the upper floor of which the old mare's fodder was stored. There was a door, the upper half of which had a wooden shutter, on a level with Melicent's casement; and running up to this, one of those exterior flights of stone steps, so common in Cleveshire stable-yards.

Melicent felt sure that it would not be difficult, if there were something to hold by, to swing herself out of the window, upon the rectangular slab of stone, which was only a little to the left. In this way she could get out, if ever her longing for a solitary ramble overcame her. The gate of the yard was locked at night, but she knew were the key hung; and at times her longing to be free and away on the magical moors was like a voice calling, or a force drawing her.

There were only four windows overlooking the stable-yard; one was on the landing, one was her own, and the remaining two belonged to the boys' room, which was of course, during term, untenanted.

On Thursday night, her head full of what Mr. Dow had said about Gwen, she found herself unable to sleep, and actually carried out her plan. There was a staple, securely fixed in the wall, just by her window. To this she firmly attached a bit of rope's end with a loop. Sitting on the sill, and jumping lightly to the left, she alighted on the verge of the stone slab, and, holding firmly to her rope, swung herself round, got her balance, and stood safely. It was easy to slip round the two dark sides of the yard and open the gate. When it was shut behind her, and she stood under the wall, in the grass of the church meadow, she felt herself swallowed up in the immensity of the night.

For an hour she wandered in the little wood, and sat by the side of the tributary beck, rushing noisily over its stony bed to join the trout stream below. Then, no longer restless, she quietly returned, accomplished, not without difficulty, her re-entry, and creeping into bed, was instantly asleep.

It so happened that she mentioned her exploit in the course of the following day to her cousins. They were all cross and out of sorts, their mother having forbidden a walk to Bensdale that day--Bensdale, where there awaited them an instalment of a new serial--Phyllis and the Duke having been duly united by an archbishop in the bonds of matrimony, amid a blaze of splendour and a pageant of ancestral halls.

"We might just as well live in a prison," grumbled Maddie.

"Prisons are not so easy to get out of," replied Melicent: "If you dislike it so, why don't you run away, and decline to come back unless they make terms?"

"Run away!" they all cried; and Gwen added, with a sneer: "Why don't you try, if it's so easy?"

Melicent answered in all good faith:

"Because I don't want to seem ungrateful. I know it was good of Uncle Edmund to ask me here. Only, you see, I don't fit, and I never shall, because I don't want to be the kind of person that Aunt Minna wants to make me. So I shall not stay; but I don't want to run away in the night, as though they ill-treated me."

The girls clamoured to know how she would set about running away, if it came to that; and she simply told them that she had been out the night before, and explained how she managed it. They listened with deep interest.

"Shall you tell them you went?" they asked.

"No; not unless I am asked. I don't think myself bound to account to them for every minute of my time."

"Yet you played the Pharisee yesterday, and would not join our game."

"I think that's different. To do what we were specially told not to do, in front of other people, is publicly to shame Uncle Edmund and Aunt Minna. Now my going for a breath of air was quite private; there was nobody to be scandalised."

"Well," observed Babs, "if you had been seen, half the village would have been scandalised."

"That's true," said Melicent thoughtfully. "I think I had better not do it any more; but it was very tempting, just to try."

On the following day, Gwen had neuralgia, and was in great pain.

"It's her bed," said Maddie, "it's in such a draught; and mine's no better. Mother says it's all right if we keep the window shut, but we can't sleep with the window shut, so we always get up and open it, after she has been in. I wonder we're not both blown away! I tell you what, Millie, I wish you'd let her sleep in your bed just for one night, to get rid of it. We don't want to tell mother, or she'll keep her indoors, and perhaps stop her from going to Clairvaulx on Monday."

"Why, of course I will!"

"Yes; but remember, we mustn't change till after mother has been round last thing."

"All right; Gwen had better slip in when the coast's clear," said Melicent unsuspiciously.

The change was duly effected, without detection, and next morning there was no doubt that Gwen's neuralgia was cured.

It was Sunday morning--a warm, sunny, October day, and the golden light streamed into the Vicarage breakfast-room. The girls were all assembled, waiting for breakfast, with newly brushed hair and clean frocks. All looked healthy, cheerful and glad. But the vicar's face, as he walked in, was in sharp contrast to the gay morning. More than the customary hush descended on his entrance.

"Melicent," he said, greeting nobody, "oblige me by taking your breakfast into the study. Eat it there, and wait till I come."

Melicent stood up, staring in surprise. "Why do you say this? What have I done?"

"What you have done cannot be so much as alluded to before your young cousins. Leave the room at once."

Melicent drew herself up. She looked round at all the furtively dropped eyes--at Gwen's cheeks, oddly suffused with sudden scarlet--then at her uncle.

"I have done nothing to deserve to be so spoken to," said she. "When you find out the truth, I hope you will apologise to me."

"We wish to hear nothing from you, Melicent. Go in silence."

Tommy behind the tea-tray, and her pupils seated round, were well-nigh paralysed with terror. What had been found out? Were they implicated? Would Melicent obey?

She took up her cup and plate, tossed back her hair, and walked out, white and speechless. The vicar shut the door, sat down in the dire silence, and began his breakfast. They all chewed their way through chunks of pork-pie in unbroken gloom.

When his daughters had filed away to learn their collects, their father betook himself to his study and the culprit.

Melicent had finished her breakfast, and stood by the window. He sat down at his table, and fixed his eyes upon her.

"Well," said he, "I suppose, before condemning you, it is only right to ask you what you have to say."

"I don't know what you mean," said Melicent. "I have nothing to say. I am waiting for you to explain why you treat me in this manner."

"Unfortunately," he said, "all is known. You will hardly deny that you got out of the window of your bedroom, when I happened to see you do it."

"I do not deny that I did," she returned quietly.

"Perhaps you will tell me why you did so?"

"It was partly that I wanted to see whether I could, and partly that I was restless. I am used to be out of doors a great deal more than Aunt Minna likes me to be."

"When I tell you, Melicent, that I know what happened last night, you should see how much worse you are making things by quibbling like this."

"Last night! But--"

"We are speaking of last night."

"I am not. The only time I got out of the window was on Thursday night."

"Do you seriously mean to tell me that you did not get out of the window last night?"

"Certainly! I did not."

He sat staring; and in the pause that followed, enlightenment came to Melicent, and she wondered at her own blindness. Gwen had asked to sleep in her room, in order to get out of the window!

That being so, she could not clear herself without incriminating her cousin; and in a flash she saw that if she said Gwen and she had changed beds the previous night, the others would all deny it. Her mind, travelling with the speed that comes in moments of crisis, discerned the strength of the case against her. Even Tommy did not know of last night's escapade. Both she and Mrs. Cooper could say with confidence that all the girls were in their own beds at half-past ten on Saturday night. She wondered at herself for being deceived by the flimsy pretext of the toothache, when she thought how unlikely the story would sound.

The girls must deny everything. They had no other course. They had to go on living at home, and such a thing, if known, would make life impossible, and turn their prison into a veritable dungeon keep.

She, on the contrary, had no intention of remaining where she was. Her uncle had already a bad opinion of her. To allow it to grow worse seemed the only course in the dilemma so suddenly developed.

After long thought, her uncle spoke, in a gentler tone than he had ever used to her.

"Confession, Melicent," he said, "is the only possible way to lessen my extreme displeasure. Last night, or to be more correct, at two o'clock this morning, I heard a casement flapping in the wind. I got up, believing it to be the landing window, and left my room without a light, to shut it. I found it closed, and was on the point of pushing it open, to look out, and see whence the noise came, when a movement in the yard below caught my eye. Two people were seated, side by side, upon the stone steps near your window, the window of which was no doubt causing the disturbance. One was a man, the other was my niece. I saw that the man had his arm round your waist. His face I could not distinguish, but in the light of recent events, I consider myself justified in supposing it to have been Alfred Dow."

The girl's short, indignant laugh, naturally increased her uncle's idea of her shamelessness.

"I saw you"--he went on--"I saw you escort him to the gate, shut and lock it after him, return and scramble in, by means of a piece of rope, into your bedroom. I stood there, broad awake, and saw all this. After hearing my story, will you persist in your denial?"

"No," she said, after a minute's thought; "I do not persist in it."

"You admit," he said, with righteous indignation blazing under the even surface of his voice, "that you did all this?"

"No," said the girl; "I do not admit it. If you saw it, there is no question of my denying it or admitting it Either the thing is certain, or you have made a great mistake."

"Why not confess openly, Melicent?"

"I have nothing to confess."

"This is mere quibbling," he said, still temperately. "But what you have said I consider tantamount to a confession. One thing, and one alone, you can do to lessen your guilt. Give me the name of the man who has violated my home, insulted my office and degraded my niece."

She was silent

"You will not?"

"I cannot."

"You mean you will not."

"I mean that I cannot."

He almost wished that she were a boy, and could be caned.

"I believe you to be wilful and undisciplined," he said, almost appealingly, "but I am most anxious not to judge you too harshly, Melicent, for I know what your bringing up has been. I will not make too much of what I hope and pray may have been merely a wild, rebellious prank. If you will tell me frankly what you did, and the man's name--"

"I can't do either."

"Then, Melicent, most unwillingly, I must require of you that you remain in the schoolroom while we are at church. Think things over, and by the time we return, God grant you may be of a better mind. Come with me, please."

Melicent followed him without a word.