A TERRIBLE TOMBOY
CHAPTER I
PEGGY AT HOME
'Good sooth! I know not be she wench or swain; Her face proclaims her one, her deeds the other!'
'Peggy! Peggy! where are you? Peggy! Aunt Helen wants you! Oh, Peggy, dobe quick! Wherever are you hiding?'
Getting no response to her calls, the speaker, a pretty fair-haired girlof fifteen, flung her brown holland cooking-apron over her head, and ranout across the farmyard into the lightly-falling rain. She peeped intothe cart-shed, where the hens were scratching about among the loosestraw. Certainly Peggy was not there. She searched in the kitchengarden, but there was nothing to be seen except the daffodils noddingtheir innocent heads under the gooseberry-bushes. Round through theorchard she sped, bringing down a shower of cherry-blossom as shebrushed against the low-growing trees, and greatly disturbing a robin,who was feeding a young family in a hole in the ivy, but without anysign of the truant. Here and there Lilian ran, hunting in all Peggy'sfavourite haunts--now peeping into a hollow yew-tree, now peering at thetop of a ladder, now rummaging in the tool-shed, then back through thesand-quarry into the stack-yard, where there was a very good chance thatthe young lady might be hidden away in some snug little hole among thehay; but though Lilian got a tolerable amount of hay-seed into her hair,her efforts were fruitless, and she was just turning away, hot and outof breath, to give up the useless search, when the sound of a low,chuckling laugh attracted her to the barn.
The door was slightly ajar, and she peeped in.
On the floor among the straw sat a little boy of between eight and nineyears old, gazing with rapturous delight into the rafters of the roof.Following the direction of his eyes, Lilian glanced up, and beheld asight which made her gasp with horror. The barn was a very large one,and was spanned by a great cross-beam, which ran across the whole lengthfrom one end to another. Mounted on this, fully fifteen feet above theground, a small girl was slowly walking along, her gray eyes bright withexcitement, her brown curls flying in wild disorder, and her armsstretched out on either side to balance herself as she went on herperilous journey.
Lilian gazed at her spellbound; she did not dare to speak or move, lestby some mischance the frail little figure should lose its nerve and comecrashing down on to the stone floor below.
The child herself, however, did not seem to be troubled with theslightest fear, for she walked on as steadily as if the beam had been aplain turnpike road, giving a shout of triumph as she reached thecross-bar, and slid down the ladder on to the ground.
'Hurrah! hurrah!' cried Bobby, clapping his hands in an ecstasy ofadmiration.
Peggy turned round with a radiant face.
'It's perfectly easy!' she exclaimed; 'I could do it over again. Now,Bobby, you come up and try!'
But here Lilian's pent-up excitement and wrath burst forth.
'For shame, Peggy!' she cried. 'If you want to break your own neck, youshan't break Bobby's, at any rate! Don't you know what a horriblydangerous thing you have been doing? And the idea of your walking alongthere with your boot-lace dangling down in that way! You are reallygetting too old for these silly tricks; one can't look after you like ababy. Aunt Helen _would_ be angry if she heard of this!'
Peggy sat down on the bottom rung of the ladder. The triumph had fadedfrom her face, and left something not nearly so pleasant to look atbehind.
'All right,' she said defiantly; 'go along and tell Aunt Helen if youlike! I don't care!'
'Peggy, how horrid you are! Do I ever tell? Didn't I wash and iron yourpinafore yesterday, when you fell into the pig-trough, and nobody evensuspected? I call you right-down mean to go saying things like that!'And Lilian's pretty face flushed quite pink with righteous indignation.
Peggy had the grace to look rather ashamed of herself.
'No, Lil, you're a dear; you don't tell tales,' she said; 'and I haven'tforgotten about the pinafore.'
'Promise me, then, that you won't go playing such mad pranks again, andleading Bobby into them, too?'
'All right--anything for a quiet life.'
'But promise, properly.'
'There! On my honour, I will never walk along that beam again, or letBobby do it either. Will that suit you?'
Lilian heaved a sigh of relief, for whatever might be Peggy's sins andmisdeeds, her word, once given, was not lightly broken.
'I've been looking for you everywhere,' she said. 'Aunt Helen sent me tofetch you in at once, and I've been such a long time in finding you. I'mafraid she'll be ever so cross.'
'What does she want me for?'
'To darn your stockings. Oh, Peggy, how could you go and hide all thosepairs away under the dressing-table? It was really silly, for you mighthave known Aunt Helen would be sure to hunt them out; and now she'sfearfully angry about it, and says you'll have to sit and mend away tillthey're all finished; and she won't let me help you, either.'
Peggy sighed philosophically.
'I suppose I shall have to come,' she said, getting up and shaking thestraw out of her hair. 'Never mind; I'd really rather mend them all inone big heap than in a lot of little horrid pottering times; it spoilsone's Saturdays so!'
'Aunt Helen said if I found Bobby he was to come in too, and learn hisLatin,' continued Lilian, looking round. But that youth had prudentlydisappeared at the first hint of Saturday duties, and was nowhere to beseen.
Peggy chuckled.
'I'm afraid you won't find him,' she remarked; 'and it's no use looking.He's got the most lovely hiding-place in the world that he goes to whenhe doesn't want to be told to come in. I only found it out by accidentmyself, and I promised wild horses shouldn't wrench the secret from me.Come along; we may as well go and get the scolding over.'
And the young lady tossed back her tangled locks, shook her fist at theanticipated pile of darning; then, putting on an air of chastened andbecoming meekness, as being most likely to soothe Aunt Helen's wrath,she marched sturdily into the house.
It was a beautiful old home into which Peggy entered, half castle, halffarmhouse, with an air of having seen better days about it. The quainttimbered house, with its carved gables and red-tiled roof, was built inat one end into a kind of square tower or keep, with tiny turret windowsand winding staircase, getting just a little ruinous in places, but heldfirmly together by masses of ivy, which clung round it like a greenmantle. Beyond the tower lay the remains of an abbey, more ancient thanthe keep. Most of it had been carried away to build the large barns andstables, but the foundations could still be plainly traced, with hereand there part of a wall thickly covered with ivy, the ruins of ashattered column, a delicate little piece of window tracery, or a fewsteps of corkscrew staircase. There were rows and heaps of mossy stonescovered with nettles and elder-bushes, with patches of green grass inbetween, where the cows grazed and the pigeons flew about, cooinggently. In the ivy the jackdaws were always busy, and the children hadmany a perilous climb trying to reach the coveted nests. The earliestprimroses grew here, and beds of sweet violets under the ruined walls,and there were so many turns and corners and sheltered nooks that itmade the grandest play-place in the world for anyone who loved a game athide-and-seek.
On the other side of the house stretched the garden--such a sweet,old-fashioned garden, where roses, lilies, and gillyflowers were allmixed up with the currants and gooseberries and cabbages. It wassomewhat neglected, it is true, but perhaps it looked none the lesspicturesque for that, and certainly no one would be disposed to quarrelwith the beautiful ripe strawberries and the sweet little yellowgooseberries with the hairy skins, or the big red plums that hung uponthe old brick walls.
Inside the house was large and roomy, with rambling passages and oddlittle windows in unexpected corners. There was a large oak staircase,with wide, shallow steps, leading to a panelled gallery, where hungswords, and rusty armour, and moth-eaten tapestry, and many an ancientrelic of the past; while in the best bedroom was a great carvedfour-post bed, hung with faded yellow curtains, where Queen Elizabethher
self was said to have slept in much state for two nights on herjourney from Shrewsbury to Wrexham.
The big drawing-room had been shut up for many years; the Queen-Annechairs and china-cabinets were swathed in wrappers, and the ornamentsput away in boxes; but sometimes the children would steal in and openthe shutters to look at the portraits which hung upon the oak-panelledwalls--stately gentlemen with wigs and lace frills, whose eyes seemed tofollow you about the room; haughty dames with powdered hair and patches;stiff little girls in hoops and mittens, and pretty young ladies attiredas shepherdesses or classic goddesses, with cupids and nymphs in thebackground.
The little blue drawing-room, which was always used instead, was a farmore cheery apartment, with its sunny French window and fresh muslincurtains, and the blue chintz covers on the chairs. But of all the roomsI think the quaintest was the kitchen. It was by far the oldest part ofthe house; the great beams of the roof, roughly hewn out with an axe andblack with age, had been a portion of the ancient castle, and so had themullioned windows, with their deep, old-fashioned seats and diamondpanes, filled with green, uneven glass. It looked a cheerful place, withits polished-oak dressers and shining brasses, and on a winter'sevening, when the shutters were closed and the settle drawn close to thefire, it seemed the cosiest spot in the world; and Peggy and Bobby wouldoften escape from the sober atmosphere of the dining-room to pull theirlittle stools into the ingle nook, and listen to Nancy's wonderful talesof ghosts and goblins, which seemed twice as thrilling when the wind washowling like a banshee in the chimney, and rattling the doors till theycould fancy that spirit fingers were tapping on the panels, and onlywaiting a chance to catch them in the dark passages, and sent such coldshivers running down their backs that they grew almost too frightened togo to bed.
Below the house the meadow sloped down to a river, where a stone bridgeled to the village, with its pretty thatched cottages and Norman church,whose square tower stood up like a beacon for the surrounding country;and away in the distance, tier upon tier, rose the Welsh mountains,fading from green to purple or from purple to misty mauve, till the lastwere lost in the hazy blue of the sky.
Gorswen Abbey, as Peggy's home was called, had been an important placein its time, and an air of sleepy grandeur seemed still to hang aboutthe old walls, as if sometime it might rouse itself from its lethargyand take its part in the world again.
No one could remember when Vaughans had not lived at the Abbey. Therewere tombs in memory of them in a side transept of the church--stalwartCrusaders, lying with legs crossed and meek hands folded in prayer;stout Elizabethan squires and their dames, with ruffs round their necks,and rows of prim little kneeling children beneath them; full-facedJacobean worthies in curled wigs, with sculptured cherubs weeping overextinguished torches; and there was a high old pew with a carved canopyover it, and an escutcheon bearing a coat of arms with a dragon on it,which, when Peggy was very little, she had always associated with thedragon in the Book of Revelation, and had an uneasy feeling that its eyewas upon her all service time, and if she did not behave properly itmight come down in great wrath and devour her.
There had been Vaughans who fought in the Wars of the Roses, Vaughanswho threw in their lot with King Charles and helped to beat Cromwell atAtherton Moor, Vaughans who had joined the Young Pretender's force, andhad lost their heads as their reward. There was no end to the storieswhich the children could sometimes cajole out of old David, thefarm-help, who had all the family history at his finger-ends.
But they had been a happy-go-lucky, spendthrift race, loving to ride tohounds and to entertain liberally better than to look after theiraffairs. Little by little the fine property had been wasted away, till,when Peggy's father succeeded to the estate, he found it to consist ofscarcely more than the old house with the surrounding farm andwoodlands, together with such a multitude of debts, mortgages, and otherencumbrances, that it was truly a barren heritage. Robert Vaughan,however, was a man of strong will and much determination. Some of thegrit of the old Crusaders was left in his blood, and instead of takinghis solicitor's advice, and selling the place for what it would fetch,he resolved to farm the land himself, and by using every care andeconomy to free the property, and raise it to its former level in thecounty. He worked in his own fields, ploughing, harvesting, and reaping,toiling harder than any of his labourers, and living in as plain amanner as possible.
To those friends who thought he lost caste thereby he had always thesame argument--that he saw no reason why the cultivation of fieldsshould counteract the habits of refinement and good breeding to which hehad been reared; that in the colonies educated gentlemen set to work tolabour with their hands, and are thought none the worse of: so why notin England, where land is good and markets are plentiful, especiallywhen it involved the keeping of a fine old property which had been inthe family for so many hundreds of years?
Fortune, however, had been against him. Several bad seasons and a spellof disease among the cattle had made all the difference between profitand loss, and at the time this story begins Robert Vaughan realized thatany unusual run of ill luck might bring matters to a crisis, and rendervain the struggle of so many years. The children, however, knew littleof the shadow which haunted their home, for they lived as yet in thathappy thoughtless paradise which is the inheritance of true childhood,where a new rabbit in the hutch or an extra treat on a holiday is of farmore importance than any grown-up affair.
Their mother had faded so early from their young lives that she wasscarcely more than a tender memory, and her place had been taken bydear, pretty Aunt Helen, father's younger sister, who did her best totrain them up in the way they should go. Aunt Helen fondly imaginedherself to be a great disciplinarian, but her own lively youth was stillsuch a recent remembrance that her eyes were wont to twinkle and thecorners of her mouth to twitch in the middle of her severest scoldings,and the children always had a feeling that so long as they did not doanything rude or wrong, or run into any very imminent danger, theirescapades were secretly condoned by their aunt, who admired pluck andspirit, however much she might feel it incumbent upon her to lecturethem.
Gentle Lilian gave little trouble, and Bobby, Aunt Helen often declared,would be easy enough to manage alone; but where Peggy led he was alwayssure to follow, and the end was generally mischief of some sort orother.
The worst of it was poor Peggy really did not mean to be naughty; shewas so eager, so active, so full of overflowing and impetuous life, withsuch restless daring and abounding energy, that in the excitement of themoment her wild spirits were apt to carry her away, simply because shenever stopped to think of consequences. She had always a hundredprojects on hand, each one of which she was ready to pursue withunflagging zeal and that absorbing interest which is the secret of trueenjoyment.
'Let her alone,' the Rector, who rejoiced in Peggy, was wont to say.'Don't prune her too hard, for it is sometimes the side-shoots that bearthe best flowers, after all. She is like a young growing plant--a littletoo much leaf at present, but I see a grand promise of blossom, andshe'll turn out a fine woman in the end.'
Happily both her father and Aunt Helen shared his views, and, knowingPeggy's generous, affectionate nature, were able to lead her more bylove than severity (for with human hearts it is often like the fable ofthe sun and the wind: they will respond to a kindly touch, whileharshness will only make them sullen and obstinate), and they furtherheld the opinion that it is better for a child to have many interestsand much energy, even though these qualities prove a littletroublesome, than to grow up clipped to the prim pattern of those whomay have outlived their enthusiasms.
Such natures as Peggy's taste life to the full; for them it is never astale or worthless draught. Each moment is so keenly lived that timeflies by on eager wings, and though there may be stormy troublessometimes, as a rule the spirit dwells, like the swallows, in an upperregion of joy, which is scarcely dreamt of by those who cannot soar sohigh.