The Lost Clue - Abridged Edition

by Mrs. O. F. Walton

  "Well, we haven't had many puddings lately. Not since missus has been ill."

  "Do you think I should make one, Bessie?"

  "Yes, if you will. They won't half smile if you do."

  This, Marjorie discovered, was the Daisy Bank way of expressing great satisfaction.

  "Very well, Bessie, let me see what you have in the house."

  Marjorie soon made a large suet pudding with plenty of raisins in it for the children, and a dainty custard pudding for their mother. Then she laid the table for dinner, for which she found a clean tablecloth, washed and polished the electro-plated forks and spoons, made the dull and dirty tumblers shine brightly by washing them first in hot and then in cold water, and afterwards rubbing them with a dry cloth. She managed to have the dinner cooked and all in readiness by the time the children came in from school.

  "You have made it nice, Miss Douglas," Patty said as she looked at the table. "I wish mother could see it."

  "Will you help me to get your mother's dinner ready, Patty?"

  "Yes. What shall I do?"

  "Find me a little tray. And, Patty, have you any serviettes?"

  "Yes, there are some in a drawer upstairs. I'll get one."

  Patty was only too delighted to help, and when Mrs. Holtby's dinner was ready, she carried the tray with great glee up to her mother's sickroom.

  Mr. Holtby looked round with satisfaction as he took his place at the head of the table, but he said nothing. He was a most silent man, and Marjorie found that his words of commendation were at all times few and far between.

  Chapter 12

  A Walk

  THAT AFTERNOON, Mrs. Holtby insisted on Marjorie going out for an hour or two to get some fresh air after her hard work. Marjorie proposed taking the twins with her, but their mother said that the roads were too wet for their thin shoes, and that they would be quite happy playing in her room. So she set out alone, not sorry to feel free for a little time.

  So far, she had seen practically nothing of Daisy Bank, for it was too dark the night before for her to do more than see the dim outline of what she passed. From the windows of Colwyn House there was merely a narrow view, shut in by houses on either side. She had not expected to see much to charm her during her walk, but she was hardly prepared for the scene that met her eyes as she went down the muddy lane leading from the house.

  On one side of it were a few tumbledown cottages, damp and discoloured. On the other was an open waste tip, strewn with the remains of old furnace heaps. She looked across this wilderness to the huge pit mounds, rising in all directions, a picture of gloom and misery.

  Finding that the lane was still impassable due to the depth of mud, she turned onto the waste common, parts of which were covered with thin, smoke-begrimed grass. Here stood two old houses, even more forlorn than those she had already passed. The bedroom window of one was partly blocked with wood, and the room was given up to pigeons which flew in and out at pleasure. The door of the other house was open, and she saw a cock and a hen and three fat ducks walking about as if the whole place belonged to them.

  A little further on she found two ragged women, down on their knees on an old mound, raking over the muddy ashes and picking out the wet and dirty cinders which were to be found among them, stowing them away in an old sack.

  "What are you doing?" Marjorie asked.

  "Getting cinders for the fire."

  "Will they burn?" she asked in astonishment.

  "Yes, with a little coal. It's better than no fire at all."

  Marjorie walked on, sick at heart as she thought of the kind of homes that those women must have. The cold, icy wind blew in her face, and she shivered as she thought of the apology for a fire which would be kindled with those cinders.

  After this she passed more houses and more mounds, but nowhere in the whole place did she see a vestige of anything that was pleasant to look upon. The houses were destitute of paint, the doors and window frames were bare and unsightly, and the numberless broken panes were filled in with rag or paper. More than one of the houses was in ruins -- every window broken, and the walls ready to fall in.

  The coal mines below had caused these houses to sink, and they had been pronounced unsafe and left deserted. But no one had taken the trouble to clear away the bleak ruins. There they stood, blackened with furnace smoke, unsightly and melancholy objects.

  Only two coal pits were working, so a man told her, who was smoking a dirty clay pipe at his door. Some pits had stopped because of bad trade; some were worked out; some had filled with water and were therefore abandoned. Yet at the mouth of each of these deserted pits the heavy wooden frame and great horizontal winding wheel remained -- a gloomy memento of more prosperous days.

  In every direction in which she looked, Marjorie saw unmistakable marks of squalid, cheerless poverty -- the only prosperous-looking building being the public house at the corner, which appeared to do a thriving trade. The whole country was honeycombed with mines, and in consequence many of the houses had sunk below the level of the others in the same row. Everything in Daisy Bank seemed crooked and out of shape. Other cottages were scattered among the furnace waste, built anywhere and everywhere that a place could be found for them, on different levels and in sundry nooks and corners of the hilly spoil tips.

  Then she came to higher mounds still, and crossing these she saw deep, black pools in their hollows, stretches of dark stagnant water which she thought never reflected anything that was pretty or bright except the moon in God's pure heaven above. Here and there someone, more thrifty than his neighbours, had made a little garden in the waste, but a few struggling plants of the most hardy kinds were all that the best garden in Daisy Bank could produce.

  Marjorie was glad to get back to the dismal house in which her lot was cast. It seemed almost cheerful after the unkempt hideousness of these depressing surroundings.

  Chapter 13

  Black Country Roses

  THAT FIRST DAY at Colwyn House in Daisy Bank was a fair sample of many others that followed it. Bit by bit Marjorie restored order to the once untidy and comfortless house. Mrs. Holtby's room was made as sweet and cheerful as it was possible for any room in such a neighbourhood to be. The floor was washed, the carpet shaken, clean white curtains were hung in the window, and fresh coverings placed on the bed. On the table stood a vase which was filled with spring flowers, a constant supply of which was sent regularly by her sister Phyllis from the Rosthwaite garden.

  Then Marjorie took another room in hand, and with Bessie's and Patty's help worked the same reformation there, and so by degrees the house looked more homelike and far less dreary. But it was an arduous life to which she had come, and sometimes she felt inclined to despair.

  Work as hard as she might, from early in the morning till late at night, Marjorie could never keep pace with the darning and patching, the clearing and dusting, which seemed always waiting to be done. Her feet were weary with running up and down stairs; her head ached with the noise of the children, and at times she longed terribly for a single day's holiday and rest. But of this she saw no prospect whatever. Beyond a daily walk over the pit mounds she never got out, and she saw no one in these walks to whom she could speak. Apart from her love for Jesus, her thoughts were her only companions, and they were anxious ones at times.

  The home letters sounded bright as a rule, but now and again some sentence in her mother's made her feel how much she was missed there. Her own letters were as cheerful as she could make them, although she wrote a truthful account of the place to which she had come, for she had promised her mother that she would do so.

  As Marjorie wandered over the wilderness of ashes day after day, she thought of her family and her home in the Lakes, and a terrible yearning came over her to see them again, and to look even for five minutes at the scenes she loved so well. And then her thoughts would wander to Captain Fortescue. She had kept her promise to him before leaving home. She had written once through his lawyer to tell him where she was go
ing, but she had never received an answer. Sometimes she wondered whether her letter had ever reached him. What was he doing now? Had he left the army? Was he happy in the new life on which she supposed he must have entered?

  She thought of the captain's words to her mother. "I will not allow myself a single indulgence of any kind until the full amount is in your hands." What a hard life that would mean if he kept his word. And she believed that he would keep it, for she felt that he was a man to be trusted. Over and over again her busy thoughts returned to this subject, and in her prayers for those at home his name was added. It could not be wrong to pray for him, surely.

  One day when spring weather was beginning, and when even Daisy Bank looked a degree less dismal, Marjorie was passing one of the tumbledown cottages when she saw an old man tending a pot containing a small rose tree. Then she noticed that a row of similar pots stood in the sunshine against the discoloured wall of the house.

  The roses were just coming into leaf, and she watched as the old man turned and bent lovingly over them, loosening the soil near their stems, and giving each of them some water from a jug which was standing on the doorstep. Marjorie felt that at last she had found something in Daisy Bank at which it was pleasant to look. She went up to the old man and admired his roses, and he showed them to her with great pride, telling her the name and the color of each.

  "Would you like to see my garden, miss?" he asked.

  He took her through the kitchen, which was surprisingly clean although bare of paint and whitewash, and led her to the back of his cottage. There he showed her his lawn, a tiny strip of green about three feet long and two feet broad, covered with grass. This he watered daily, to keep it from being blackened by the smoke-laden atmosphere, and kept it short by cutting it every evening with a pair of scissors.

  He introduced himself as Enoch. He was clearly intensely proud of his miniature lawn, and of a row of hardy plants which were leading a struggling existence under the wall of the house. London Pride was, perhaps, the only one which did not appear to be depressed by its surroundings, and which Marjorie thought might rightly have changed its name to Daisy Bank Pride.

  But the old man was proud of them all, and beamed with delight when Marjorie stooped to examine them. That tiny garden was the joy of his heart, as dear to him as the lovely home garden in Rosthwaite had been to her, and quite as beautiful in his eyes.

  "It's a wonder that anything will grow here," Marjorie said.

  "Ay, it's unlikely soil, but the Lord's plants do thrive sometimes in that."

  "Yes," said Marjorie, although she did not quite see what he meant.

  "There was old Dan'el in Babylon, and Obadiah, him as lived in Jezebel's time, and there was saints in Nero's household. They had bad soil, all of 'em, but they was faithful trees of the Lord's planting, that He might be glorified."

  And then Marjorie knew that she had found a friend. Old Enoch would have been stamped as an uneducated man by many, but he knew his Bible well and could repeat much of it by heart. It was his daily study, and he was taught by the Spirit of God. Many and many a time, when things seemed darker than usual, Marjorie would run in to see him, and she always came away feeling brighter and better.

  It was on the very day on which she first made old Enoch's acquaintance that, as she was going back to the Holtby family in Colwyn House, she had a great and most unexpected surprise. Coming along the lane to meet her, and picking his way among the pools which even the spring sunshine had not dried up, she saw a well-known figure, and her heart danced with joy at the sight, for it seemed to her like a bit of home put down among the dreariness of Daisy Bank.

  It was Louis Verner.

  "Oh, Louis, how nice to see you," she cried. "It is lovely to see a home face."

  "I thought you would be pleased to see me, Marjorie. I'm on my way home, and I thought I could tell your family about you."

  "And you've come out of your way on purpose to see me. How awfully good of you, Louis."

  "Not at all good. I wanted to come." He hesitated, then said, "Marjorie, you're prettier than ever."

  "Don't talk such nonsense, Louis," she said. "Tell me about yourself. How have you been getting on?"

  "Oh, fairly well, I think. We've had an awfully jolly term. All sorts of things going on."

  "And what are you going to be when you leave Oxford?"

  "Now, Marjorie, that's too bad. You said you would ask me when you came home next."

  "Very well, I won't scold you today when you've been so good as to come and see me. How long can you stay?"

  "Only an hour."

  "Will you come in?"

  "I'd rather not," said Louis. "We can't talk if all those people are there. Can't you come for a walk?"

  "I'll ask Mrs. Holtby."

  The permission was readily given, and Mrs. Holtby who was sitting up in her room, crept to the window and peeped through the blind with true feminine curiosity to see who was the friend from home with whom her much-valued mother's help was so anxious to go out.

  "A very particular friend, I should imagine," she said to herself with a smile, as the two disappeared together over the pit mounds.

  "Marjorie," said Louis, as she joined him, "of all detestable and hateful places on the face of this earth, I do think Daisy Bank is the worst."

  "Don't be too hard on it, Louis. You should see it at night when the sky is lit up by the furnaces. We have constant illuminations here!"

  "I don't know what your mother will say when I tell her."

  "Then you mustn't tell her, Louis. I shall be angry if you make it out to be blacker than it is."

  "I couldn't do that," said Louis, laughing, "No matter how hard I tried!"

  "Well, what does it matter, Louis? If I don't mind it, why should anybody else?"

  They came now to one of the large dark pools.

  "What a ghastly hole." he said. "Just the place to tempt a fellow to commit suicide."

  "Now, Louis, that is our best lake. The Derwentwater of these parts."

  "Derwentwater, indeed!" said Louis, scornfully. "Look here, Marjorie, I don't like your being here at all."

  "I assure you, Louis, there is no need to pity me."

  Then Louis suddenly changed his tone. "Marjorie . . ."

  "Yes, Louis."

  "Why do you never write to me?"

  "I haven't time, Louis. It's as much as I can do to write home."

  "But I do think you might write to me, because I am -- well, I really am awfully fond of you. I like you better than any girl I know. Upon my word I do."

  "Thank you, Louis," said Marjorie, with a mock bow. "That's a very pretty compliment"

  "It isn't a compliment, Marjorie. At least, I mean it's quite a true one. Did you get the picture postcards I sent you? "

  "Yes, thank you, Louis. I asked mother, if she was writing to you, to thank you for them."

  "So she did, but I had rather have had a letter from you."

  They were walking towards the railway station when the hour was over, and Louis's train was almost due, when he said suddenly, "Marjorie, I'm going away, and you haven't said anything nice to me."

  "Now that isn't a compliment." she said, laughing again. "Look, Louis, the signal is down. We must hurry."

  They ran down the steps, and Louis had barely time to get his ticket before the train came in.

  As he jumped into the carriage, Marjorie could not help wishing that she was going with him, or at any rate that she was on her way to the same destination.

  Chapter 14

  Mother Hotchkiss

  AS TIME went on, in spite of her hard work, Marjorie began to feel not merely accustomed to the life at Colwyn House, but really fond of the people with whom she lived. Mrs. Holtby was grateful for all that Marjorie had done for them, and was willing to fall in with any suggestion that she made. Her health was gradually returning, and she was able to come downstairs and relieve Marjorie of several lighter duties.

  As for Patty, she was Marj
orie's firm ally and most willing helper. Marjorie rejoiced when she saw the look of care departing from the girl's face, as she realized that the burden of the family no longer rested on her shoulders. The boys were at times exceedingly naughty and troublesome, but the twins were devoted to "Miss Duggie" as they called her, and loved to sit on her knee listening to Bible stories, or to children's hymns which she sang to them. Their mother would often creep into the room and listen too. She told Marjorie that it made her think of her own mother, and of the lessons she had learned long ago, but which, alas, she feared that she had forgotten.

  On Sunday, Marjorie took the older ones to the church which stood on a hill overlooking the cindery waste, and which could be seen from any part of its forlorn parish. Mr. Holtby never went to any place of worship. Both he and his wife had become accustomed, after years of neglect, to regard Sunday as little more than an excuse for a better dinner than usual, and an opportunity for a certain amount of self-indulgence.

  One day in the early summer, when the sun was shining as brightly in Daisy Bank as in more favoured spots, Marjorie was standing at old Enoch's door, once more admiring his roses. They were actually coming into bud, and the old man's excitement was great as he counted the coming blossoms.

  "The very first rose that comes out shall be for you, Miss Douglas."

  "Thank you, Enoch. I wonder which it will be."

  "This Crimson Rambler, miss, I believe. Look at it. You can just see the color coming in the bud."

  "So I can."

  "Miss Douglas," the old man went on, "do you ever go to see old Mother Hotchkiss?"

  "No, I've never heard of her."

  "She lives in that old house down the lane. You must have noticed it, surely. Two big square windows, almost like shop windows, and lots of nice plants in them."

  "Oh yes, I know."

  "Well, I wish you'd go and see her. I don't think she's long for this world, and she's never learned so much as a letter in the book."

  "Poor old thing."

  "Ay, you may well say poor old thing, Miss Douglas. She knows nothing. She can neither read nor write, and as for Scripture, why, a baby in yon schools over there knows more about it."

  "I'll go and see her, Enoch. Who looks after her?"

  "Nobody much. The neighbours go in a bit, and I do what I can."

  "Has she no one belonging to her?"