The Children's Pilgrimage by L. T. Meade (best sales books of all time txt) 📗

shelter him.

He threw himself now on the dirty floor of the caravan and cried until he could cry no longer. Oh, how he longed for Cecile! How he repented of his foolish running away that morning! How he hated Anton! But in vain were his tears and lamentations; no one came near him, and at last from utter weariness he stopped.

It was dark now, quite dark in the tiny inner room where Anton had thrust him. Strange to say, the darkness did not frighten the little fellow; on the contrary, it soothed him. Night had really come. In the night it was natural to lie still and sleep; when people were asleep time passed quickly. Maurice would go to sleep, and then in the morning surely, surely Joe and Cecile would find him and bring him home.

He lay down, curling himself up like a little dog, but tired as he was he could not sleep—not at first. He was nothing but a baby boy, but he had quite a retrospect or panorama passing before his eyes as he lay on the dirty caravan floor. He saw the old court at home; he saw the pretty farm of Warren's Grove; he saw that tiring day in London when it seemed to both Cecile and himself that they should never anywhere get a lodging for the night; then he was back again with kind, with dear Mrs. Moseley, and she was telling to him and Cecile those lovely, those charming stories about heaven.

"I always, always said as heaven would suit me better than South," sobbed the poor little boy. "I never did want to come South. I wished Jesus the Guide to take me to heaven. Oh, I do want to go to heaven!"

Over and over he repeated this wish aloud in the darkness, and its very utterance seemed to soothe him, for after a time he did really drop asleep.

He had not slept so very long when a hand touched him. The hand was gentle, the touch firm but quiet.

Maurice awoke without any start and sat up. The Frenchman was bending over him. He pointed to the open door of the room—to the open door of the caravan beyond.

"Run—run away," he said. These were the only words of English he could master.

"Run away," he repeated and now he carried the child to the open outer door. Maurice understood; his face brightened; first kissing his deliverer, he then glided from his arms, ran down the steps of the caravan, and disappeared.

CHAPTER XXII. THE ENGLISH FARM.

Cecile had strange dreams that night. Her faith had hitherto been very simple, very strong, very fervent. Ever since that night at the meeting of the Salvation Army, when the earnest and longing child had given her heart to the One who knocked for admittance there, had she been faithful to her first love. She had found the Guide for whom her soul longed, and not all the troubles and anxieties of her long and weary journey—not all the perils of the way—had power to shake her confidence. Even in the great pain of yesterday Cecile was not greatly disturbed. Maurice was lost, but she had asked the good Guide Jesus so earnestly to bring back the little straying lamb, that she was quite sure he would soon be with them again. In this confidence she had gone to sleep. But whether it was the discomfort of her position in that sleep, or that Satan was in very truth come to buffet her; in that slumber came dreams so terrible, so real, that for the first time the directness of her confidence was shaken. In her dreams she thought she heard a voice saying to her over and over again: "There is no Guide—there is no Lord Jesus Christ." She combated the wicked suggestion even in her sleep, and awoke to cast it from her with indignation.

It was daylight when the tired child opened her eyes. She was no longer lying against Joe's breast in the forest; no, she was in the shelter of the little hut, and Toby alone was keeping her company. Joe had vanished, and no Maurice had returned in the darkness as she had fondly hoped he would the night before. The candle had shed its tiny ray and burned itself out in vain. The little wanderer had not come back.

Cecile sat up with a weary sigh; her head ached, she felt cold and chilly. Then a queer fancy, joined to a trembling kind of hope, came over her. That farm with the English frontage; that fair child with the English face. Suppose those people were really English? Suppose she went to them and asked them to help her to look for Maurice, and suppose, while seeking for her little brother, she obtained a clew to another and more protracted search?

Cecile thought and thought, and though her temples throbbed with pain, and she trembled from cold and weariness, the longing to get as near as possible to this farm, where English people might dwell, became too great and strong to be resisted.

She rose somewhat languidly, and, calling Toby, went out into the forest. Here the fresher air revived her, and the exercise took off a growing sensation of heavy illness. She walked quickly, and as she did so her hopes became more defined.

The farm Cecile meant to reach lay about a mile from the village of Bolleau. It was situated on a pretty rise of ground to the very borders of the forest. Cecile, walking quickly, reached it before long; then she stood still, leaning over the paling and looking across the enchanted ground. This paling in itself was English, and the very strut of the barn-door fowl reminded her of Warren's Grove. How she wished that fair child to run out! How she hoped to hear even one word of the only language she understood! No matter her French origin, Cecile was all English at this moment. Toby stood by her side patiently enough.

Toby, too, was in great trouble and perplexity about Maurice, but his present strongest instinct was to get at a very fat fowl which, unconscious of danger, was scratching up worms at its leisure within almost reach of his nose.

Toby had a weakness, nay, a vice, in the direction of fowl; he liked to hunt them. He could not imagine why Cecile did not go in at that low gate which stood a little open close by. Where was the use of remaining still, in any case, so near temptation? The unwary fowl came close, very close. Toby could stand it no longer. He made a spring, a snap, and caught at its beak.

Then ensued a fuss and an uproar; every fowl in the place commenced to give voice in the cause of an injured comrade. Cackle, cackle, crow, crow, from, it seemed, hundreds of throats. Toby retired actually abashed, and out at the same moment, from under the rose-covered porch, came the pretty fair-haired boy. The child was instantly followed by an old woman, a regular Frenchwoman, upright, straight as a dart, with coal-black eyes and snowy hair tidily put away under a tall peasant's cap.

Cecile heard her utter a French exclamation, then chide pretty sharply the uproarious birds. Toby lying perdu behind the hedge, the fowl were naturally chided for much ado about nothing.

Just then the little boy, breaking from the restraining hand, ran gleefully into a field of waving corn.

"Suzanne, Suzanne!" shouted the Frenchwoman in shrill tones, and then out flew a much younger woman, a woman who seemed, even to the child Cecile, very young indeed. A tall, fair young woman, with a face as pink and white as the boy's, and a wealth of even more golden hair.

"Ah! you naughty little lad. Come here, Jean," she said in English; then catching the truant child to her bosom, she ran back with him into the house.

Cecile felt herself turning cold, almost faint. An impulse to run into that farmhouse, to address that fair-haired young woman, to drag her story, whatever it might be, from her lips, came over her almost too strongly to be resisted.

She might have yielded to it, she was indeed about to yield to it, when suddenly a voice at her elbow, calling her by her name, caused her to look round. There stood Joe, but Joe with a face so altered, so ghastly, so troubled, that Cecile scarcely knew him.

"Come, Cecile, come back to the hut; I have some'ut to tell yer," he said slowly and in hoarse tones.

And Cecile, too terrified by this fresh alarm even to remember the English folks who lived at the farm, followed him back into the forest without a word.

CHAPTER XXIII. TELLING THE BAD NEWS.

All the way back to the forest not one word passed the lips of Joe. But when the two children, panting from their rapid run, reached the hut, he threw himself on the ground, covered his face for a brief instant, then asked Cecile to come to his side.

"For I've a story to tell yer, little Missie," said Joe.

Cecile obeyed him at once. A great terror was over her, but this terror was partly assuaged by his first words.

"I ha' got some'ut to tell yer, Missie Cecile," said Joe Barnes, "some'ut 'bout my old life, the kind o' way I used to live in Paris and Lunnon."

At the words Cecile raised her little flower face with a sigh of relief; she was not going to hear of any fresh trouble; it was only an old, old woe, and Joe needed comfort.

"Dear Joe," said the little girl, "yes, tell me about Paris and London."

Joe felt himself shrinking away from the little caressing movement Cecile made. He looked at her for an instant out of two great hollow eyes, then began in a dull kind of voice.

"It don't make much real differ," he said, "only I thought as I'd like fur yer to know as it wor a werry bitter temptation.

"I remember the last night as I slept along o' my mother, Missie Cecile, how she petted me, and fondled of me.

"Then I wor stolen away, and my master brought me to Paris. We lived in a werry low part o' Paris, high up in a garret. I wor taught to play the fiddle—I wor taught by blows; and when they did not do, I wor made real, desperate hungry. I used to be given jest one meal a day, and when the others as did better nor me wor eating, I had to stand by and wait on 'em. Then, when I knew enough, I wor sent into the streets to play, and when I did not bring in enough money, I wor beat worse nor ever. One day my master sold me to an Englishman. Talk o' slaves! well, this man give my master a lot o' money fur me. I seed the money, and they told me as I wor apprenticed to him, and that I could not run away, for ef I did, the law 'ud bring me back. My new master tuk me to England. He tuk me to Lunnon. It wor bad in Paris, but in Lunnon it wor worse. I wor farther from my mother. I wor out o' my own country, and I did not know a word of English.

"Oh! I did find out wot hunger and cold and misery wor in London. Nobody—nobody give me even a kind word, except one poor lad worse off nor myself. He belonged to hour company, and he broke his leg. My master would not send him to 'orspitle, and he died. But afore he died he taught me a bit of English, and I picked up more by and by. I grew bigger, and the years went on. Oh! it wor a dreadful life. I did nothink but long for my mother and pine for the old home, and once I tried to run away. I wor found the first time, and kep' in a dark cellar on bread and water for a week arter.

"Then I seed you and Maurice at the night-school. I heerd you say you wor goin' to France, and when I heerd sech plucky words from sech a little mite as you, Missie, why I thought as I'd try to run away again; and the second time, no matter how, I succeeded. I had wot I called real luck, and I got to France, and there, jest outside Calais, I met you two, and I thought as I wor made. Oh, Missie Cecile, but for the purse o' gold—but for the purse o' gold, I might ha' been made."

Here Joe paused, again covered his face, and groaned most bitterly.

"The purse of gold is quite safe with Miss Smith in Paris,"