Chapter 8 Girls of the Forest by L. T. Meade
MUSIC HATH CHARMS
The girls were tired when they went to bed. The life of routine had fatigued them; although, of course, it would soon cease to do so. Notwithstanding, therefore, Miss Tredgold’s startling announcement with regard to Nancy King, they slept soundly; and the next morning when nine o’clock struck they all appeared in the schoolroom, their persons neat, their hair carefully brushed, and each pair of eyes beaming with intelligence. Even Penelope looked her very best in a clean brown holland frock, and she went quite creditably through her alphabet, and did not squiggle her pot-hooks quite as much as she had done on the previous day.
Miss Tredgold was in an excellent humor. She praised the girls, told them she was much pleased with their performances, and said further that, if only they would meet her half-way by being attentive and intelligent and earnest in their work, she on her part would do all in her power to make lessons agreeable; she would teach them in a way which would be sure to arouse their interest, and she would vary the work with play, and give them as gay a time as the bright weather and their own happy hearts would permit.
The girls felt quite cheerful; they even began to whisper one to another that Aunt Sophia was developing more and more good points as days went on.
On that afternoon a great excitement was in store, for a beautiful new piano was to arrive from Broadwood’s, and Aunt Sophia announced that she meant to play on it for the benefit of the entire household that evening.
“For, my dears,” said that good lady, “I have forgotten neither my playing nor my singing. I will sing you old-fashioned songs to-night, and I quite hope that I may lure your father from his retirement. There was a time when he was musical very musical.”
“The dad musical!” cried Briar. “Aunt Sophia, what do you mean?”
“It is true, Rose. In the days long ago, when your mother and he and I spent happy times together, he played his violin better than any other amateur that I happen to know.”
“There is an old violin in one of the attics,” said Verena. “We have never touched it. It is in a case all covered with dust.”
“His Stradivarius,” murmured Miss Tredgold. “Oh dear! How are the mighty fallen! My dears, you had better say no more to me about that or I shall lose my temper.”
The girls could not imagine why Miss Tredgold’s eyes grew full of a certain mistiness and her cheeks were very pink with color. The next moment she looked full at her nieces.
“When your mother died she took a great deal away with her,” she said. “What would you have done, poor children! if I had not been able to come to the rescue? It does seem almost impossible that your father, my brother-in-law, has forgotten to play on his Stradivarius.”
“Well, aren’t you glad you comed?” said Penelope, marching up and standing before the good lady. “Don’t you like to feel you are so useful, the grand piano coming, and all the rest? Then you has us under your thumb. Don’t you like that?”
“I don’t understand you, Penny. You are talking in a very naughty way.”
“I aren’t. I are only saying what nursey said. Nursey said last night, ‘Well, well, drat it all! They are under her thumb by this time.’ I asked nursey what it meant, and she said, ’Miss Penny, little girls should be seen, and not heard.’ Nursey always says that when I ask her questions that I want special to know. But when I comed down this morning I asked Betty what being under your thumb meant, and she said, ‘Oh, lor’, Miss Penny! You had better look out, miss. It means what you don’t like, miss.’ Then she said, Aunt Sophy, that old ladies like you was fond of having little girls under their thumbs. So I ’spect you like it; and I hope you won’t squeeze us flat afore you have done.”
Miss Tredgold had turned very red.
“How old are you, Pen?” she said when the loquacious child became silent.
Penelope tossed her head. “You knows of my age quite well.”
“Then I will just repeat the remark made by your excellent nurse ’Little girls should be seen, and not heard.’ I will add to that remark by saying that little girls are sometimes impertinent. I shall not say anything more to-day; but another time, if you address me as you have just done, I shall be obliged to punish you.”
“And if I don’t dress you,” said Penelope “if I’m awful good will you give me sugar-plums?”
“That is a treat in the very far distance,” said Miss Tredgold. “But now, girls, go out. The more you enjoy this lovely air the better.”
They did all enjoy it; after their hard work for lessons were hard to them freedom was sweet. With each moment of lesson-time fully occupied, leisure was delicious. They wandered under the trees; they opened the wicket-gate which led into the Forest, and went a short way into its deep and lovely shade. When lunch-bell sounded they returned with hungry appetites.
The rest of the day passed pleasantly. Even preparation hour was no longer regarded as a hardship. It brought renewed appetites to enjoy tea. And in the midst of tea a wild dissipation occurred, for a piano-van came slowly down the rutty lane which led to the front avenue. It stopped at the gates; the gates were opened, the piano-van came up the avenue, and John and two other men carried the beautiful Broadwood into the big drawing-room.
Miss Tredgold unlocked it and touched the ivory keys with loving fingers.
“I will play to you to-night when it is dusk,” she said to the girls.
After this they were so eager to hear the music that they could scarcely eat their dinner. Mr. Dale now always appeared for the evening meal. He took the foot of the table, and stared in an abstracted way at Aunt Sophia. So fond was he of doing this that he often quite forgot to carve the joint which was set before him.
“Wake up, Henry,” said Miss Sophia in her sharp voice; “the children are hungry, and so am I.”
Then the student would shake himself, seize the knife and fork, and make frantic dashes at whatever the joint might happen to be. It must be owned that he carved very badly. Miss Tredgold bore it for a day or two; then she desired the parlor-maid to convey the joint to the head of the table where she sat. After this was done the dinner-hour was wont to progress very satisfactorily. To-day it went quickly by. Then Verena went up to her aunt.
“Now, Aunt Sophy,” she said, “the gloaming has come, and music is waiting to make us all happy in the drawing-room.”
“I will play for you, my dears,” said Aunt Sophia.
She was just leaving the room when she heard Verena say:
“You love music, father. Do come into the drawing-room. Aunt Sophia has got her new piano. She means to play on it. Do come; you know you love music.”
“Indeed, I do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Dale.
He pushed his gray hair back from his forehead and looked abstractedly at Miss Sophia, who was standing in the twilight just by the open door.
“You remind me, Sophia ” said Mr. Dale.
He paused and covered his eyes with his hand.
“I could have sworn that you were she. No music, thanks; I have never listened to it since she died. Your mother played beautifully, children; she played and she sang. I liked her songs; I hate the twaddle of the present day. Now I am returning to my Virgil. My renderings of the original text become more and more full of light. I shall secure a vast reputation. Music! I hate music. Don’t disturb me, any of you.”
When Mr. Dale reached his study he sank into his accustomed chair. His lamp was already lit; it burned brightly, for Miss Tredgold herself trimmed it each morning. His piles of books of reference lay in confusion by his side. An open manuscript was in front of him. He took up his pen. Very soon he would be absorbed by the strong fascination of his studies; the door into another world would open and shut him in. He would be impervious then to this present century, to his present life, to his children, to the home in which he lived.
“I could have sworn,” he muttered to himself, “that Alice had come back. As Sophia stood in the twilight I should scarcely have known them apart. She is not Alice. Alice was the only woman I ever loved the only woman I could tolerate in my house. My children, my girls, are none of them women yet, thank the Almighty. When they are they will have to go. I could not stand any other woman but Alice to live always in the house. But now to forget her. This knotty point must be cleared up before I go to bed.”
The doors of the ancient world were slowly opening. But before they could shut Mr. Dale within their portals there came a sound that caused the scholar to start. The soft strains of music entered through the door which Verena had on purpose left open. The music was sweet and yet masterly. It came with a merry sound and a certain quick rhythm that seemed to awaken the echoes of the house. Impossible as it may appear, Mr. Dale forgot the ancient classics and the dim world of the past. He lay back in his chair; his lips moved; he beat time with his knuckles on the arms of his chair; and with his feet on the floor. So perfect was his ear that the faintest wrong note, or harmony out of tune, would be detected by him. The least jarring sound would cause him agony. But there was no jarring note; the melody was correct; the time was perfect.
“I might have known that Alice ” he began; but then he remembered that Alice had never played exactly like that, and he ceased to think of her, or of any woman, and became absorbed in those ringing notes that stole along the passage and entered by the open door and surrounded him like lightsome fairies. Into his right ear they poured their charm; in his left ear they completed their work. Virgil was forgotten; old Homer might never have existed.
Mr. Dale rose. He got up softly; he walked across the room and opened the door wide. There was a very bright light streaming down the passage. In the old days this passage was always dark; no one ever thought of lighting the lobbies and passages at The Dales. The master of the house wondered dimly at the light; but at the same time it gave him a sense of comfort.
Suddenly a voice began to sing:
“I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows.”
The voice was sweet, pure, and high. It floated towards him. Suddenly he stretched out his arms.
“I am coming, Alice,” he said aloud. “Yes, I am coming. Don’t call me with such insistence. I come, I tell you; I come.”
He ran down the passage; he entered the central hall; he burst into the drawing-room. His eyes were full of excitement. He strode across the room and sank into a chair close to the singer.
Miss Tredgold just turned and glanced at him.
“Ah, Henry!” she said; “so you are there. I hoped that this would draw you. Now I am going to sing again.”
“A song of the past,” he said in a husky voice.
“Will this do?” she said, and began “Annie Laurie.”
Once again Mr. Dale kept time with his hand and his feet. “Annie Laurie” melted into “Home, Sweet Home”; “Home, Sweet Home” into “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonny Doon”; “Ye Banks and Braes” wandered into the delicious notes of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Suddenly Miss Tredgold rose, shut and locked the piano, and then turned and faced her audience.
“No more to-night,” she said. “By-and-by you girls shall all play on this piano. You shall also sing, for I have not the slightest doubt that most of you have got voices. You ought to be musical, for music belongs to both sides of your house. There was once a time when your father played the violin as no one else, in my opinion, ever played it. By the way, Henry, is that violin still in existence?”
“Excuse me,” said Mr. Dale; “I never touch it now. I have not touched it for years. I would not touch it for the world.”
“You will touch it again when the time is ripe. Now, no more music to-night. Those who are tired had better go to bed.”
The girls left the room without a word. Miss Tredgold then went up to Mr. Dale.
“Go back to your study and your Virgil,” she said. “Don’t waste your precious time.”
He looked exactly as though some one had whipped him, but he took her at her word and returned to his study.
The music was henceforth a great feature in the establishment. Miss Tredgold enhanced its value by being chary in regard to it. She only played as a special treat. She would by no means give them the great pleasure of her singing and playing every night.
“When you have all had a good day I will sing and play to you,” she said to the girls; “but when you neglect your work, or are idle and careless, or cross and sulky, I don’t intend to amuse you in the evenings. I was brought up on a stricter plan than the girls of the present day, and I mean while I am with you to bring you up in the same way. I prefer it to the lax way in which young people are now reared.”
For a time Miss Tredgold’s plans went well. Then there came a day of rebellion. Pauline was the first to openly rebel against Aunt Sophia. There came a morning when Pauline absolutely refused to learn her lessons. She was a stoutly built, determined-looking little girl, very dark in complexion and in eyes and hair. She would probably be a handsome woman by-and-by, but now she was plain, with a somewhat sallow face, heavy black brows, and eyes that could scowl when anything annoyed her. She was the next eldest to Verena, and was thirteen years of age. Her birthday would be due in a fortnight. Even at The Dales birthdays were considered auspicious events. There was always some sort of present, even though it was worth very little in itself, given by each member of the family to the possessor of the birthday. Mr. Dale generally gave this happy person a whole shilling. He presented the shilling with great pomp, and invariably made the same speech:
“God bless you, my dear. May you have many happy returns of the day. And now for goodness’ sake don’t detain me any longer.”
A shilling was considered by the Dale girls as valuable as a sovereign would be to girls in happier circumstances. It was eked out to its furthest dimensions, and was as a rule spent on good things to eat. Now, under Miss Tredgold’s reign, Pauline’s birthday would be a much more important event. Miss Tredgold had long ago taken Verena, Briar, Patty, Josephine, and Adelaide into her confidence. Pauline knew quite well that she was talked about. She knew when, the girls retired into corners that she was the object of their eager conversations. The whole thing was most agreeable to her sense of vanity, and when she suddenly appeared round a corner and perceived that work was put out of sight, that the eager whisperers started apart, and that the girls looked conscious and as if they wished her out of the way, she quite congratulated herself on the fact that hers was the first birthday in the immediate future, and that on that day she would be a very great personage indeed. As these thoughts came to her she walked with a more confident stride, and thought a great deal of her own importance. At night she lay awake thinking of the happy time, and wondering what this coming birthday, when she would have been fourteen whole years in the world, would bring forth.
There came a lovely morning about a week before the birthday. Pauline had got up early, and was walking by herself in the garden. She felt terribly excited, and almost cross at having to wait so long for her pleasure.
“After all,” thought Pauline, “Aunt Sophia has done something for us. How horrid it would be to go back to the old shilling birthdays now!”
As she thought these thoughts, Patty and Josephine, arm-in-arm and talking in low tones, crossed her path. They did not see her at first, and their words reached Pauline’s ears.
“I know she’d rather have pink than blue,” said Patty’s voice.
“Well, mine will be trimmed with blue,” was Josephine’s answer.
Just then the girls caught sight of Pauline, uttered shrieks, and disappeared down a shady walk.
“Something with pink and something with blue,” thought Pauline. “The excitement is almost past bearing. Of course, they’re talking about my birthday presents. I do wish my birthday was to-morrow. I don’t know how I shall exist for a whole week.”
At that moment Miss Tredgold’s sharp voice fell on her ears:
“You are late, Pauline. I must give you a bad mark for want of punctuality, Go at once into the schoolroom.”
To hear these incisive, sharp tones in the midst of her own delightful reflections was anything but agreeable to Pauline. She felt, as she expressed it, like a cat rubbed the wrong way. She gave Miss Tredgold one of her most ungracious scowls and went slowly into the house. There she lingered purposely before she condescended to tidy her hair and put on her house-shoes. In consequence she was quite a quarter of an hour late when she appeared in the schoolroom. Miss Tredgold had just finished morning prayers.
“You have missed prayers this morning, Pauline,” she said. “There was no reason for this inattention. I shall be obliged to punish you. You cannot have your usual hour of recreation before dinner. You will have to write out the first page of Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel; and you must do it without making any mistake either in spelling or punctuation. On this occasion you can copy from the book. Now, no words, my dear no words. Sit down immediately to your work.”
Pauline did sit down. She felt almost choking with anger. Was she, an important person who was soon to be queen of a birthday, one about whom her sisters talked and whispered and made presents for, to be treated in this scant and ungracious fashion? She would not put up with it. Accordingly she was very inattentive at her lessons, failed to listen when she should, played atrociously on the piano, could not manage her sums, and, in short, got more and more each moment into Miss Tredgold’s black books.
When recreation hour arrived she felt tired and headachy. The other girls now went out into the pleasant sunshine. Pauline looked after them with longing. They would sit under the overhanging trees; they would eat fruit and talk nonsense and laugh. Doubtless they would talk about her and the birthday so near at hand. At noon the schoolroom was hot, too, for the sun beat hard upon the windows, and Pauline felt more stifled and more headachy and sulky than ever.
“Oh! please,” she said, as Miss Tredgold was leaving the room, “I can’t do this horrid writing to-day. Please forgive me. Do let me go out.”
“No, Pauline; you must take your punishment. You were late this morning; you disobeyed my rules. Take the punishment which I am obliged to give you as a lady should, and make no more excuses.”
The door was shut upon the angry girl. She sat for a time absolutely still, pressing her hand to her aching brow; then she strolled across the schoolroom, fetched some paper, and sat down to her unwelcome task. She wrote very badly, and when the hour was over she had not half copied the task assigned to her. This bad beginning went on to a worse end. Pauline declined to learn any lessons in preparation hour, and accordingly next morning she was absolutely unprepared for her tasks.
Miss Tredgold was now thoroughly roused.
“I must make an example,” she said to herself. “I shall have no influence over these girls if I let them think I am all softness and yielding. The fact is, I have shown them the south side of my character too long; a little touch of the northeast will do them no harm.”
Accordingly she called the obstinate and sulky Pauline before her.
“I am very much displeased with you. You have done wrong, and you must be punished. I have told you and your sisters that there is such a place as Punishment Land. You enter it now, and live there until after breakfast to-morrow morning.”
“But what do you mean?” said Pauline.
“I mean exactly what I say. You have been for the last twenty-four hours extremely naughty. You will therefore be punished for the next twenty-four hours. You are a very naughty girl. Naughty girls must be punished, and you, Pauline, are now under punishment. You enter Punishment Land immediately.”
“But where is it? What is it? I don’t understand.”
“You will soon. Girls, I forbid you to speak to your sister while she is under punishment. Pauline, your meals will be sent to you in this room. You will be expected to work up your neglected tasks and learn them thoroughly. You must neither play with nor speak to your sisters. You will have no indulgence of any sort. When you walk, I wish you to keep in the north walk, just beyond the vegetable garden. Finally, you will go to bed at seven o’clock. Now leave the room. I am in earnest.”