A Life Sentence. Sergeant Adeline
him for ever from his only child!
"Do you mean," said Jenny Westwood slowly, "that father will never come out of prison any more?"
"Perhaps—after many years—he may come out."
"Many years? Three—or five?"
"More—more, I am afraid, my little girl—perhaps in twenty years—if he is still alive."
He scarcely knew what impulse prompted him then to tell her the truth. He repented it the next moment, for, after a horrified stare into his face, the child suddenly flung herself down upon the gravelled path and burst into tears, accompanied by passionate shrieking sobs and wild convulsive movements of her limbs.
"He shall come out—he shall come out!" Hubert heard her cry between her gasps for breath. "He can't do without me. Take me to him, or I shall die!"
In utter dismay Hubert tried persuasion, argument, rebuke, for some time in vain. At last he turned away from her, and began walking up and down a short stretch of the drive, bitterly regretting the impulse that had caused him to take the care of this strange child, even for a few moments, on his hands. But he had promised to get rid of her, and he must do so, if only for Enid's sake. It would never do to let this little wild creature go on roaming about the village, asking questions about her father. And there were better motives at work within the young man's breast. It seemed to him that he had brought a duty on himself—that he was at least responsible for Andrew Westwood's forlorn and neglected child.
He had not paced the drive for many minutes before the sobs began to grow fainter. Finally they ceased, and the child drew herself into a crouching position, with her head resting against the steep mossy bank just within the gate. Seeing her so quiet, Hubert thought that he might venture to speak to her again.
"You must not cry so bitterly," he said, almost as he might have spoken to a grown-up person, not to a child.
"Grieving can do your poor father no good. Wait and grow up quickly. He may come out of prison some day, and want his little daughter. If I take you to a place where you can be taught to be a good girl, like other girls, will you stay there?"
The child raised her head and fixed her dark eyes upon him.
"Not to the workhouse?" she said apprehensively.
"I promise you—not to a workhouse, if you will be a good child."
She scrambled to her feet at once, and, rather to Hubert's surprise, put one hot and dirty little hand into his own.
"I will be good," she said briefly; "and I will go wherever you like."
Nothing seemed easier to her just then.
CHAPTER VII.
"But, dear me, Mr. Lepel," said Mrs. Rumbold, "there's no place for a child like that but the workhouse."
Hubert stood before the Rector's wife in a pretty little room opening out upon the Rectory garden. Jenny had been left in the hall, seated on one of the high-backed wooden chairs, while her protector told his tale. Mrs. Rumbold—a short, stout, elderly woman with a good-natured smile irradiating her broad face and kind blue eyes—sat erect in the basket-chair wherein her portly frame more usually reclined, and positively gasped as she heard his story.
"To think of that child's behavior! I assure you, Mr. Lepel, that we tried to do our duty. We knew how painful it would be for the dear General and Miss Vane if any member of that wretched man's family were left in the village, and we thought it simplified matters so much that there was only one child—didn't we, Alfred?"
Alfred was the Rector, a tall thin man, very slow in expressing his ideas, and therefore generally resigning the task of doing so to his wife's more nimble tongue. On this occasion, unready as usual with a response, he crossed his legs one over the other, cleared his throat, and had just prepared to utter the words, "We did indeed, my dear," when Mrs. Rumbold was off again.
"Some neighbors took care of her before the trial," she said confidentially. "Indeed we paid them a small sum for doing so, Mr. Lepel—we didn't like to send the child to the workhouse before we knew how matters would turn out. But, when the poor wretched man was condemned, I said to Alfred,'We really can't let the Smiths be burdened any longer with Andrew Westwood's child—she must go to the Union!' And Alfred actually went to Westwood, and asked him if he had any relatives to whom the child could be sent—didn't you, Alfred?—and, when he said that there were none, and that the girl might as well be brought up in the workhouse as anywhere else, for she would always be an outcast like himself—I quote his very words, Mr. Lepel—his graceless, reckless, wicked words!—why, then, I just put on my hat and cloak, and I went to the Smiths at once, and I said, 'Mrs. Smith, I've come to take little Westwood to the workhouse;' and take her I did that very afternoon."
"Do you know when she ran away?" Hubert asked.
Mrs. Rumbold shook her head.
"I haven't heard. Not more than a day or two ago, I should fancy, for nobody seems to have been looking for her in this direction. I wonder she came back to Beechfield, the hardened little thing!"
"Oh, come, I don't think she is that, Mrs. Rumbold!" said Hubert, affecting a lightness which assuredly he did not feel. "I fancy that she wandered back to Beechfield out of love for her father and her old home, poor child. She is not to be blamed for her father's sins, surely!" he added, seeing rather an odd expression on Mrs. Rumbold's face as the involuntary words of pity passed his lips.
"Oh, no, no—of course not!" Mrs. Rumbold hastened to reply. "It is very kind of you, Mr. Lepel, and very kind of Miss Vane too, to interest yourselves in the fate of Andrew Westwood's daughter—very Christian, I am sure!"
"I don't know that," said Hubert, somewhat awkwardly. "I fancy that my cousin simply wishes to get the child away from the place before the General is well enough to go out again—I suppose he knows her by sight. It would be painful to him—and little Enid might come to hear."
"Of course, of course! I quite understand, Mr. Lepel. And the Churton workhouse is so near Beechfield too!"
"She shall not go back to the workhouse," said Hubert, with firmness. "I am resolved on that!"
"An orphanage, I suppose? Well, we might get her into an orphanage if we paid a small sum for her; but who would pay? There's the Anglican Sisterhood at East Winstead—not that I quite approve of Sisterhoods myself," said Mrs. Rumbold grimly—"but I know that in this case the Sisters are doing a good work and for a small annual payment——"
"I don't much like the idea of a Sisterhood. Do you know of a smaller place—an ordinary school perhaps—where she could be taken in and clothed and taught and civilised?"
"No, Mr. Lepel, I don't. You could not send a child like that to a lady's house without letting the whole story be told; and who would take her then? In a charitable institution, now, she could be admitted, and no questions asked."
"I did not think—I did not exactly want to find a charitable institution," said Hubert, suddenly seeing that his position would appear very strange in the Rumbolds' eyes, and yet resolved to stick to his point. No, whatever happened, "little Westwood," as Mrs. Rumbold called her, should not be brought up as a "charity-girl." He had an instinctive understanding of the suffering that the child would endure if she were not in kindly hands; and he did not think that the atmosphere of a large semi-public institution would be favorable to her future welfare.
Mrs. Rumbold looked at him in open-eyed perplexity.
"But, Mr. Lepel, what do you want?"
"I want the child to be happy," Hubert cried, with some vexation—"I want her to be where she will never be taunted with her father's position, where she will be kindly treated, and brought up to earn her own living in a suitable way."
"Then,"