Читать книгу: «Dumps – A Plain Girl», страница 16
“I must have other witnesses to this transaction,” she said.
Again she rang the bell. Riki darted blue fire of indignation towards me. I did not speak; I believe I looked a greater culprit than she did at this moment.
“Request Mademoiselle Wrex and Fräulein Schumacher to come here immediately,” said the Baroness, her tone now one of great imperiousness. The servant withdrew, and the French and German governesses made their appearance. The Baroness handed the letter in question to each in turn.
“Do not speak,” she said; “I only want you to witness exactly what will immediately take place. – Comtesse, will you have the goodness to tell me the name of the individual who calls himself Heinrich?”
Silence on the part of the Comtesse.
“If there is such reluctance to your making a full confession of your disgraceful conduct, I shall be forced to send a telegram to your father, the Count Kronenfel, and request him to attend here in order that he may take his daughter away in disgrace from my establishment.”
This threat had a due effect on Riki, and she now, in a very nervous voice, confessed that the name of the youth who called himself Heinrich was Holgarten. Further investigation proved that Holgarten was a boy at a large school near Riki’s native place, that he and she had met two or three times, and that the idea of a correspondence had started between them. She did not wish, she said, to enter into a forced marriage. Here she burst into tears.
“It is not the English way,” she said.
“And pray, Comtesse, what have you to do with the English way? You are a German girl.”
“I – I love Heinrich,” she said.
She threw herself down on the sofa, regardless of proprieties, and burst into sobs.
“You will have the goodness in a minute or two to leave the room. Your punishment, which will be a severe one, will be meted out to you when I have considered all the circumstances. I now wish to ask you the name of the English girl who posted your letters.”
There was no answer from Riki; again she glanced at me. Again she lowered her eyes and twisted her hands in distress.
“A full confession, Comtesse; in no other way will you escape the just anger of your noble father.”
Before she could speak I sprang to my feet.
“You need not ask her,” I said. “I did very wrong. I posted the letters.”
“That will do,” said the Baroness. A relieved look passed over her features. “Riki, stop crying. Your conduct has been beyond words, but I will not say any more to blame you just now. – Fräulein Schumacher, conduct the Comtesse to her room, and see that she does not leave it; stay with her there, for I cannot trust her alone.”
The German governess immediately conveyed the weeping girl from the room, and I found myself the one culprit who was now to be dealt with.
“I must ask you,” said the Baroness in her very bitterest tone, “why you, an English girl, brought up without the terribly circumscribed pale of the German girl, dared to help her to convey letters from this house.”
“I did it without thinking,” I said.
“The rule on the subject of letters was in your bedroom.”
“I know.”
“You had read the rules?”
“That is true; but they did not make any impression on me; I did not remember any of them.”
“You must tell me exactly what occurred; also on what dates you posted the letters.”
Gradually, piece by piece, the Baroness got the information from me. My conduct seemed to grow blacker and blacker in my own eyes. The Baroness evidently thought very badly of me. After a time she said:
“I shall be forced to make a distinction between you and the other girls. It must be known amongst the English girls – and we have six or seven in this establishment – that their letters will still be unread, that their correspondence will still be unmolested, with the exception of the correspondence and letters of one girl – Rachel Grant. In future you must post every letter in the box in the hall, and each letter you receive must be first of all opened and read by me before it is handed to you. That is your just punishment. I could do much more severe things, but I will to a certain extent overlook your inexperience.”
I left the room feeling as though the very floor would open to receive me. I went upstairs with my cheeks on fire. How was I to live? How was I to endure this?
Presently Mademoiselle Wrex followed me.
“Oh mademoiselle, I cannot bear this!” I exclaimed. “I must go away.”
“Go away?” she said.
“Yes; how can I bear to stay at the school when I am disgraced?”
“But your punishment is not very great,” said the French teacher.
“But to let the others know, and to have my freedom as an English girl taken away from me!”
“It will be restored again, I am sure, if you bear your punishment with meekness,” said Mademoiselle; “but if you rebel and make a fuss the Baroness will keep up her indignation.”
“And will she tell my people at home?”
“I do not think she will do that if you bear your punishment with all due patience. You did wrong.”
“I did wrong, but not such a dreadful sin as you give me credit for. I did wrong in ignorance. There is a great, great difference between doing a thing you know is wrong and doing a thing that is wrong without knowing it.”
A slight smile played round the lips of Mademoiselle. She was, as a rule, kindly; but she could not quite understand my nice distinction.
“The effect is the same,” she said. “Do you not know that for a young lady in this school to have a correspondence with a schoolboy, as the Comtesse Riki has done, is quite scandalous? It would ruin the school. The Comtesse must be made an example of.”
“Oh, what are they going to do with her, poor thing?”
“She will not be dismissed; that would be too disgraceful; but she is for a whole week to be confined to her own room, and no girl in the school will be allowed to speak to her. At the end of that time she will be restored to a certain amount of liberty; but her actions will be most carefully watched.”
“And Heinrich?” I said.
“Heinrich?” said Mademoiselle, with a start. “You are not interested in him, I hope?”
“Oh no, no!”
“He will receive one short letter from the Baroness, and his master at the school will receive another. I do not think anybody in the future need trouble themselves about Heinrich.”
Nothing could exceed the contempt which she threw into the word. After a time she left me.
The scene of the morning had certainly not made my cold better; but when Hermione came up I confided my troubles to her. She said she thought that I was lucky to have got off as cheaply as I had.
“Rosalind has been telling me of another girl, an English girl, who helped some Russians to get their communications into the post, and she was dismissed – sent back to England within twenty-four hours. The only reason you are not treated as harshly is because the Baroness really believes that you did what you did unwittingly.”
“I did,” I said. “Oh, I hate this school! I was never meant to be a French or German girl. I have lived such a free life, I shall die in this cage.”
“No, you won’t, you silly girl. As to your thinking that we English girls will think any the less of you, you may be certain we won’t.”
But, after all, the punishment which was so severe, which I so dreaded, which seemed to shake my nature to its very depths and to turn me at once from a happy, interested, contented girl into a mass of sulkiness and misery, was, for the time at least, to be averted – averted in a very fearful way – for that evening there came a telegram from my step-mother:
“Your father very ill; one of the teachers must bring you back immediately.”
Mademoiselle Wrex was the lady who had the task of conveying me home. There was a great fuss and bustle and distress in the school when the telegram reached me. I scarcely knew what to do with myself. Augusta was speechless with misery. She begged and implored me to take her with me.
“But I can’t,” I said. “And why should I? He is not your father.”
“No,” said the poor thing – “no.”
I really pitied her. She sank back on the sofa in our little sitting-room with a face like death.
“If you see him, can you just tell him how he has helped me?”
“I will,” I said. I pitied her now. What had seemed silly and unreasonable when the Professor was in health assumed quite a different aspect when the dear Professor was dangerously ill.
My feelings were torn between the misery of the morning and my relief at not being publicly disgraced before the other girls, and the terror and fear of returning to my home to find my father very ill.
Hermione was a host in herself. She superintended my packing; it was she who saw that I had plenty of sandwiches to eat on the journey, she who brought my fur cloak for me to wear on the steamer. Even the Baroness was very kind. She came into the hall and saw that I was warmly wrapped up.
“We will hope for the best, Rachel,” she said.
I raised my eyes to her face and wondered if I should ever see her again – if this little flash of school life was all I was to be permitted to enjoy. But had I enjoyed it? I did not know. I could scarcely tell what my own sensations were.
A minute later I was in the cab. Hermione’s face was no longer visible from the doorway; Augusta, who was standing on the balcony of our sitting-room and waving frantically, was lost to view: the school, with its brightness, its life, its strange spirit of intrigue, its curious un-English customs, seemed to vanish for ever. I flung myself back in the cab and cried as though my heart would break.
Part 2, Chapter XII
The Professor’s Illness
There are two ways of taking a journey. I had come to the school with expectations bright and rosy. I had been there for a little over two months, and I was returning home close on the Easter holidays with very different feelings. As I was whirled through the darkness by the night-express which was to convey me to Calais I could not help thinking of all that had occurred. I was a totally different girl from what I had been when I started on that journey. I had seen a great deal of fresh life; I had lived in a new atmosphere; I had made new friends; I had found that the world was a larger place than even big London; that there were all sorts of different experiences; and even so, that I myself was only on the threshold of life. Could I ever regret the narrow time when my principal friends were the Swan girls, when a scolding from old Hannah was the worst thing that could occur to me, after what I had lately lived through?
But then the occurrence of that very morning came over me with a flash of intolerable shame. I was thinking more of my school than of my father; but, of course, all the time he was in the background.
We arrived at Calais, and the passage across the Channel was without incident of any sort, and we found ourselves at Victoria Station at an early hour on the following morning. It was a dreary, cold, and foggy day, and I shivered as I stood in my fur cloak on the platform while Mademoiselle ran wildly about, collecting the luggage, and trying to find a porter to convey it to the Customs. Mademoiselle evidently did not appreciate England, and I felt that the air was more bitingly cold than in Paris. We got into a cab and were driven as fast as possible through the West End towards that dreary part of the town where the old house stood.
Yes, the old house was there; I had almost expected to see that it too had slipped away into the past with all the rest, that the shadowy house as well as the shadowy times had vanished into illimitable space. But it stood firm, and there on the steps was Charley. He had opened the door as soon as ever he heard the sound of wheels drawing up on the pavement, and now he rushed down to greet me. His face was red as though he had been crying a great deal. He said:
“I thought you’d be coming about now. There’s coffee in the dining-room. Come along at once.”
“But how is the good gentleman?” said Mademoiselle.
Charley started and turned crimson at the sound of her voice. I introduced him as my brother, and Mademoiselle as Mademoiselle Wrex, a French teacher at our school. Charley mumbled something. I think he longed for Von Marlo’s presence, for Von Marlo never lost his head on any occasion whatever.
The next instant I did see his rather uncouth figure and kindly, plain face advancing through the hall to meet me.
“Now, I said you’d come; I knew you’d come without delaying one minute. How do you do. Miss Rachel?”
Mademoiselle looked at him and uttered a little cry.
“Why, Max!” she cried. “Max!”
Then she held out both her hands, and they were both engrossed with one another; they were doubtless old friends. Charley dragged me into the dining-room.
“How is father?” I said.
“Oh, he is rather bad; but there are plenty of doctors, and we hope to pull him through.”
“And my step-mother?”
“Rachel, she is a brick! She is about the best and dearest woman in all the world. I never knew her like. She has been up with him all the week, and never thinks of herself at all.”
“But, oh, here comes Alex – dear Alex!”
Alex came up to me. In this moment of universal anxiety he was delighted to see me again; he kissed me several times.
“Why, you have grown,” he said, “and you look so – ”
“She looks awfully nice,” said Von Marlo.
He had come in dragging Mademoiselle with him.
“Mademoiselle Wrex is my mother’s cousin,” he said. “I am delighted to see her.”
Mademoiselle was also all enthusiasm.
“Why, the dear, dear boy,” she said, “it is indeed a pleasure to see him in this so desolate country. It is a joy of the inconceivable.”
Her broken English made both Charley and Alex laugh; but then Alex pulled the bell, and our neat parlour-maid brought in our breakfast. I sat down to eat. I felt still as though in a dream. Was I in Paris, or in the old house, or in altogether new surroundings? I rubbed my eyes.
“You’re dead-tired,” said Von Marlo.
“I am bewildered,” I said.
“But I must catch the next train back,” said Mademoiselle.
This roused the boys from any present thought of me. They were all bustle and activity, seeing to Mademoiselle’s wants. She had very little time to spare. She would take the ten o’clock express from Victoria, and be back in Paris in less than twenty-four hours after she had left it.
As I bade her good-bye it seemed to me that I was slipping more and more from the old landmarks.
“Give my love to Hermione and Augusta,” I said.
“And to, perhaps, poor Riki?” said Mademoiselle.
“Yes, if she will have it,” I answered.
“Things will go well with you now, and when you return there will be rejoicing,” said Mademoiselle.
But I did not think, somehow, that I should ever return; and Mademoiselle got into the cab and was whirled away.
It was not until I saw my step-mother that I fully realised what the real threshold of the place where I was standing really meant; for in that house, with its comforts, its proprieties, its almost luxuries – that house so well furnished, with such good servants, with every comfort that life could give – there was, we knew, a visitor hourly and momentarily expected: that grim and solemn visitor who goes by the name of Death. Kindly Death he is to some, terrible to others; a gentle and beloved friend to those who are worn-out with misery – a rest for the weary. But there are times when Death is not longed for, and this was one of those times. We children felt as we sat huddled together in the parlour, now such a comfortable room, that we had never wanted the Professor as we did then. He was a man in the prime of life, and great were his attainments.
“It is wonderful what he is thought of,” Alex kept repeating, and he kept on telling me and telling me all about father and what people said of him.
But, indeed, I was learning that myself for the first time that day, for the carriages that drew softly up over the straw in the street to look at the bulletin on the door might have told me what the great world thought of him; and the boys who came up each moment to glance at the solemn message might have told me what his scholars thought of him; and many poor people whom he had helped were seen crossing the street to glance at the writing. I stood fascinated behind the window-curtain, where I could see without being seen, and it seemed to me that all these people were repeating in a marvellous fashion the true meaning of my father’s life. To me he had hardly ever been a true father in any sense; but these people had regarded him as a great light, as a teacher, as one whom they must ever respect.
“He will be a loss to the world,” said Alex – “a great, great loss to the world!”
“There will be his life in all the papers,” said Charley; and then the two poor boys put their arms round each other and burst into sobs. I sobbed with them, and wished for old Hannah. And hardly had the wish come to me before she entered the room very quietly and stood beside us; and when she saw us all crying she said, “Oh, you poor dears – you poor dears!” and she sobbed and cried herself. Really it was quite dreadful. I hardly knew how to bear my pain.
But when Mrs Grant came down just in the dusk of the evening, and entered the room very quietly and sat down near us, I went up to her.
“May I see father?” I asked.
She looked at me, and then said:
“Dumps, if he gets worse, if the doctor on his next visit says there is no hope, then you shall see him. The doctor is coming here at eight o’clock with Dr Robinson, the very greatest authority in London. If he gives no hope you must all see him to say good-bye; but not otherwise, for any excitement is bad for him now.”
“I don’t think I should excite father,” I said.
Perhaps there was reproach in my tones, but I did not mean it.
Then my step-mother went away.
“She will feel it awfully; she is just devoted to him,” said Alex.
Part 2, Chapter XIII
Waiting to be Called
We sat on and on in the dusk. After a time Hannah went away. We scarcely noticed her when she got up. She stooped and kissed us, and said, “Poor children!” and it seemed to me as she left the room as though she were our old nurse back again, caring for us as she used to do when we were motherless and too young to see after ourselves. But she went, and she had scarcely disappeared through the door before we forgot her, we were so absorbed waiting for the message which might come to us any moment from upstairs.
Hannah had not been gone ten minutes before we heard a carriage with a pair of horses dash up to the door. It stopped. We heard the muffled thud of the wheels on the thick straw outside, and we heard the door of the carriage being opened, and two men got out. They were not kept waiting an instant at the door. Muriel, our parlour-maid, must have been expecting them. We heard them enter, and they went upstairs quite softly, making little sound on the thick carpets.
Then there was silence. Alex clasped my hand and squeezed it very hard; and as to Charley, he rumpled up his hair and finally buried his head in my lap and began to sob afresh. I was glad to be with them both; I felt very close to them. All else was forgotten except the two boys who belonged to me, who were my very, very own, and the father who might be dying upstairs.
By-and-by the doctors went away; the carriage disappeared, and there was silence again in the house, only the muffled sound of carts and carriages going over the street outside; but nobody came near us.
“It looks bad,” said Alex.
He raised his face. The room was quite dark. Muriel had not come in to turn on the gas or to build up the fire. We were glad she had not done so. We thought it kind of her. A piece of coal fell into a great chasm of red now, and broke into a flame, and I saw Alex’s face; it was ghastly white.
“It is quite awful, isn’t it?” he said.
“She certainly said she would come down if there was no hope,” I said.
“But oughtn’t she to let us know, Dumps?”
“She would certainly come if she could,” I answered.
After a time my cramped limbs compelled me to rise. I stood up, and the two boys looked at me reflectively.
“Where are you going, Rachel? Where are you going?”
“I can’t stand it any longer,” I said. “I am his daughter, and you are his sons, and I think we ought to be there. I do – I do.”
“No,” said Alex firmly; “I am not going against her. She has managed him all along. It would be frightfully unkind to do anything to risk giving him a start or anything of that sort. She said she’d bring us to him if it were necessary. I am not going to stir.”
“Will you come, Charley?” I said.
“No; I’ll stick to Alex,” he responded.
He went closer to his brother as he spoke, and flung his arm round him with all the abandon of one who was altogether carried out of himself.
I did not speak. I felt alone again, outside my brothers and their love; but just because I was so alone I thought more than ever of my father. I had rushed away from Paris to be in time; I would see him again. I left the room and crept softly upstairs. All day long I had been wearing my travelling-boots; it did not seem worth while to take them off; nobody had given me a thought. For the first time since my step-mother came I had been neglected in our now comfortable home.
When I reached the landing where the great, desolate room which had been made so comfortable by my step-mother was situated, I took off my shoes and stood very quiet. I saw that the door of my father’s room was slightly ajar. Inside there was the flickering light of a fire – not a very big fire; there was a screen round the bed. I felt more and more a keen and passionate desire to enter the room. I could bear it no longer. I crept inside the door and round by the screen. Then I saw that the room had been changed since I had noticed it last. The great four-poster was removed, and a man was lying on a little iron bedstead drawn out almost into the middle of the room. There was a woman seated close to him. She sat very still; she did not seem to move. The man also, who was lying on his back, was motionless. A wild terror seized me. Was he dead? Oh! I feared death at that moment, but still that impulse, uncontrollable, growing stronger each moment, compelled me forward, and still more forward, and at last I came very near the woman. She roused herself when she saw me. There was no reproach of any sort on her face. It was very white, but her eyes had never looked sweeter.
Just for an instant I wondered if she would rise and take me by the hand and lead me from the room; but, instead of that, she held out her hand to me and drew me close, and motioned to me to kneel by the bed. I did kneel. I heard the quick breathing, and noticed the cadaverous, worn face, the dark lashes lying on the cheeks, the hair tossed back from the lofty and magnificent brow. Something seemed to clutch at my heart; then my step-mother’s voice sounded in my ears:
“You and I will watch by him together.”
After that I felt that nothing really mattered; and I knew also that the barrier between my step-mother’s heart and mine had vanished. I looked at her; my eyes were full; I took her hand and, stooping, kissed it several times. Then she too dropped on her knees, and we remained motionless together.
All night long we knelt by the Professor’s side, and all night long he slept. It was about five in the morning when he opened his eyes. Dr Robinson was standing by the other side of the bed; he was holding his hand and feeling his pulse.
“Come,” said the doctor in a cheerful tone, “you have had a famous sleep. You are better; and now you must take this;” and he put a strong restorative between my father’s white lips.
“Take me away —mother!” I said.
I could not contain myself. She led me as far as the door. I do not think she said a word; but she herself returned to the room. I rushed up to my own room, and there I flung myself on my bed and cried as though my very heart would break.
Oh, shadow, shadow of my own mother, were you really angry with me then? Or did you, in the light of God’s Presence, understand too well what love really meant ever to be angry any more? For everything that was not love, that was not gratitude towards the new mother who had come into my life, had vanished for ever and ever while I knelt that night by my father’s bedside.
By-and-by, in the course of that day, I kissed her and told her something of what I felt. She understood, as I think she always did understand even my thoughts before they were uttered.
And so I turned over a new page in life, and my father was spared to us after all.
The End.
