Part II Chapter 10 Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl by L. T. Meade
LOOKING AT HERSELF
That night, which was long remembered in the annals of the Maybright family as one of the dreariest and most terrible they had ever passed through, came to an end at last. With the early dawn Polly was brought home, and about the same time Nurse and Maggie reappeared with baby on the scene.
Flower, after she had briefly told her tidings, went straight up to her own room, where she locked the door, and remained deaf to all entreaties on David’s part that he might come in and console her.
“She’s always dreadful after she has had a real bad passion,” he explained to Fly, who was following him about like a little ghost. “I wish she would let me in. She spends herself so when she is in a passion that she is quite weak afterwards. She ought to have a cup of tea; I know she ought.”
But it was in vain that David knocked, and that little Fly herself, even though she felt that she hated Flower, brought the tea. There was no sound at the other side of the locked door, and after a time the anxious watchers went away.
At that moment, however, had anybody been outside, they might have seen pressed against the window-pane in that same room a pale but eager face. Had they looked, too, they might have wondered at the hard lines round the young, finely-cut lips, and yet the eager, pleading watching in the eyes.
There was a stir in the distance—the far-off sound of wheels. Flower started to her feet, slipped the bolt of her door, ran downstairs, and was off and away to meet the covered carriage which was bringing baby home.
She called to George, who was driving it, to stop. She got in, and seated herself beside Nurse and baby.
“How is she? Will she live?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“God grant it!” replied the Nurse. “What are you doing, Miss Flower? No, you shan’t touch her.”
“I must! Give her to me this moment. There is Dr. Maybright. Give me baby this moment. I must, I will, have her!”
She almost snatched the little creature out of Nurse’s astonished arms, and as the carriage drew up at the entrance steps sprang out, and put the baby into Dr. Maybright’s arms.
“There!” she said; “I took her away, but I give her back. I was in a passion and angry when I took her away; now I repent, and am sorry, and I give her back to you? Don’t you see, I can’t do more than give her back to you? That is our way out in Victoria. Don’t you slow English people understand? I was angry; now I am sorry. Why do you all stand round and stare at me like that? Can anybody be more than sorry, or do more than give back what they took?”
“It is sometimes impossible to give back what we took away, Flower,” replied the Doctor, very gravely.
He was standing in the midst of his children; his face was white; his eyes had a strained look in them; the strong hands with which he clasped little Pearl trembled. He did not look again at Flower, who shrank away as if she had received a blow, and crept upstairs.
For the rest of the day she was lost sight of; there was a great deal of commotion and excitement. Polly, when she was brought home, was sufficiently ill and suffering to require the presence of a doctor; little Pearl showed symptoms of cold, and for her, too, a physician prescribed.
Why not Dr. Maybright? The children were not accustomed to strange faces and unfamiliar voices when they were ill or in pain. Polly had a curious feeling when the new doctor came to see her; he prescribed and went away. Polly wondered if the world was coming to an end; she was in greater pain than she had ever endured in her life, and yet she felt quiet and peaceful. Had she gone up a step or two of the mountain she so longed to climb? Did she hear the words of her mother’s favorite song, and was a Guide—the Guide—holding her childish hand?
The hour of the long day passed somehow.
If there was calm in Polly’s room, and despair more or less in poor Flower’s, the rest of the house was kept in a state of constant excitement. The same doctor came back again; doors were shut and opened quickly; people whispered in the corridors. As the hours flew on, no one thought of Flower in her enforced captivity, and even Polly, but for Maggie’s ceaseless devotion, might have fared badly.
All day Flower Dalrymple remained in her room. She was forgotten at meal-times. Had David been at home, this would not have been the case; but Helen had sent David and her own little brothers to spend the day at Mrs. Jones’s farm. Even the wildest spirits can be tamed and brought to submission by the wonderful power of hunger, and so it came to pass that in the evening a disheveled-looking girl opened the door of her pretty room over the porch, and slipped along the passages and downstairs. Flower went straight to the dining-room; she intended to provide herself with bread and any other food she could find, then to return to her solitary musings. She thought herself extremely neglected, and the repentance and sense of shame which she had more or less experienced in the morning and the memory of Dr. Maybright’s words and the look in has grave eyes had faded under a feeling of being unloved, forsaken, forgotten. Even David had never come near her—David, who lived for her. Was she not his queen as well as sister? Was he not her dutiful subject as well as her little brother?
All the long day that Flower had spent in solitude her thoughts grew more and more bitter, and only hunger made her now forsake her room. She went into the dining-room; it was a long, low room, almost entirely lined with oak. There was a white cloth on the long center table, in the middle of which a lamp burnt dimly; the French windows were open; the blinds were not drawn down. As Flower opened the door, a strong cold breeze caused the lamp to flare up and smoke, the curtains to shake, and a child to move in a restless, fretful fashion on her chair. The child was Firefly; her eyes were so swollen with crying that they were almost invisible under their heavy red lids; her hair was tossed; the rest of her little thin face was ghastly pale.
“Is that you, Flower?” she exclaimed. “Are you going to stay here? If you are, I’ll go away.”
“What do you mean?” said Flower. “You go away? You can go or stay, just as you please. I have come here because I want some food, and because I’ve been shamefully neglected and starved all day. Ring the bell, please, Fly. I really must order up something to eat.”
Fly rose from her chair. She had long, lanky legs and very short petticoats, and as she stood half leaning against the wall, she looked so forlorn, pathetic, and yet comical, that Flower, notwithstanding her own anger and distress, could not help bursting out laughing.
“What is the matter?” she said. “What an extraordinary little being you are! You look at me as if you were quite afraid of me. For pity’s sake, child, don’t stare at me in that grewsome fashion. Ring the bell, as I tell you, and then if you please you can leave the room.”
There was a very deep leather arm-chair near the fireplace. Into this now Flower sank. She leant her head comfortably against its cushions, and gazed at Firefly with a slightly sarcastic expression.
“Then you don’t know!” said Fly, suddenly. “You sit there and look at me, and you talk of eating, as if any one could eat. You don’t know. You wouldn’t sit there like that if you really knew.”
“I think you are the stupidest little creature I ever met!” responded Flower. “I’m to know something, and it’s wonderful that I care to eat. I tell you, child, I haven’t touched food all day, and I’m starving. What’s the matter? Speak! I’ll slap you if you don’t.”
“There’s bread on the sideboard,” said Fly. “I’m sorry you’re starving. It’s only that father is ill; that—that he’s very ill. I don’t suppose it is anything to you, or you wouldn’t have done it.”
“Give me that bread,” said Flower. She turned very white, snatched a piece out of Fly’s hand, and put it to her lips. She did not swallow it, however. A lump seemed to rise in her throat.
“I’m faint for want of food,” she said in a minute. “I’d like some wine. If David was here, he’d give it to me. What’s that about your father? Ill? He was quite well this morning; he spoke to me.”
She shivered.
“I’m awfully faint,” she said in a moment. “Please, Fly, be merciful. Give me half a glass of sherry.”
Fly started, rushed to the sideboard, poured a little wine into a glass, and brought it to Flower.
“There!” she said in a cold though broken-hearted voice. “But you needn’t faint; he’s not your father; you wouldn’t have done it if he was your father.”
Flower tossed off the wine.
“I’m better now,” she said.
Then she rose from the deep arm-chair, stood up, and put her two hands on Fly’s shoulder.
“What have I done? What do you accuse me of?”
“Don’t! You hurt me, Flower; your hands are so hard.”
“I’ll take them off. What have I done?”
“We are awfully sorry you came here. We all are; we all are.”
“Yes? you can be sorry or glad, just as you please! What have I done?”
“You have made father, our own father—you have made him ill. The doctor thinks perhaps he’ll die, and in any case he will be blind.”
“What horrid things you say, child! I haven’t done this.”
“Yes. Father was out all last night. You took baby away, and he went to look for her, and he wasn’t well before, and he got a chill. It was a bad chill, and he has been ill all day. You did it, but he wasn’t your father. We are all so dreadfully sorry that you came here.”
Flower’s hands dropped to her sides. Her eyes curiously dilated, looked past Fly, gazing so intently at something which her imagination conjured up that the child glanced in a frightened way over her shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Flower? What are you looking at?”
“Myself.”
“But you can’t see yourself.”
“I can. Never mind. Is this true what you have been telling me?”
“Yes, it’s quite true. I wish it was a dream, and I might wake up out of it.”
“And you all put this thing at my door?”
“Yes, of course. Dr. Strong said—Dr. Strong has been here twice this evening—he said it was because of last night.”
“Sometimes we can never give back what we take away.” These few words came back to Flower now.
“And you all hate me?” she said, after a pause.
“We don’t love you, Flower; how could we?”
“You hate me?”
“I don’t know. Father wouldn’t like us to hate anybody.”
“Where’s Helen?”
“She’s in father’s room.”
“And Polly?”
“Polly is in bed. She’s ill, too, but not in danger, like father. The doctor says that Polly is not to know about father for at any rate a day, so please be careful not to mention this to her, Flower.”
“No fear!”
“Polly is suffering a good deal, but she’s not unhappy, for she doesn’t know about father.”
“Is baby very ill, too?”
“No. Nurse says that baby has escaped quite wonderfully. She was laughing when I saw her last. She has only a little cold.”
“I am glad that I gave her to your father myself,” said Flower, in a queer, still voice. “I’m glad of that. Is David anywhere about?”
“No. He’s at the farm. He’s to sleep there to-night with Bob and Bunny, for there mustn’t be a stir of noise in the house.”
“Well, well, I’d have liked to say good-by to David. You’re quite sure, Fly, that you all think it was I made your father ill?”
“Why, of course. You know it was.”
“Yes, I know. Good-by, Fly.”
“Good-night, you mean. Don’t you want something to eat?”
“No. I’m not hungry now. It isn’t good-night; it’s good-by.”
Flower walked slowly down the long, low, dark room, opened the door, shut it after her, and disappeared.
Fly stood for a moment in an indifferent attitude at the table. She was relieved that Flower had at last left her, and took no notice of her words.
Flower went back to her room. Again she shut and locked her door. The queer mood which had been on her all day, half repentance, half petulance, had completely changed. It takes a great deal to make some people repent, but Flower Dalrymple was now indeed and in truth facing the consequences of her own actions. The words she had said to Fly were quite true. She had looked at herself. Sometimes that sight is very terrible. Her fingers trembled, her whole body shook, but she did not take a moment to make up her mind. They all hated her, but not more than she hated herself. They were quite right to hate her, quite right to feel horror at her presence. Her mother had often spoken to her of the consequences of unbridled passion, but no words that her mother could ever have used came up to the grim reality. Of course, she must go away, and at once. She sat down on the side of her bed, pressed her hand to her forehead, and reflected. In the starved state she was in, the little drop of wine she had taken had brought on a violent headache. For a time she found it difficult to collect her thoughts.