Chapter 24 Girls of the Forest by L. T. Meade
PLATO AND VIRGIL
Mr. Dale returned home to find metamorphosis; for Betty and John, egged on by nurse, had taken advantage of his day from home to turn out the study. This study had not been properly cleaned for years. It had never had what servants are fond of calling a spring cleaning. Neither spring nor autumn found any change for the better in that tattered, dusty, and worn-out carpet; in those old moreen curtains which hung in heavy, dull folds round the bay-window; in the leathern arm-chair, with very little leather left about it; in the desk, which was so piled with books and papers that it was difficult even to discover a clear space on which to write. The books on the shelves, too, were dusty as dusty could be. Many of them were precious folios—folios bound in calf which book-lovers would have given a great deal for—but the dust lay thick on them, and Betty said, with a look of disgust, that they soiled her fingers.
“Oh, drat you and your fingers!” said nurse. “You think of nothing but those blessed trashy novels you are always reading. You must turn to now. The master is certain to be back by the late afternoon train, and this room has got to be put into apple-pie order before he returns.”
“Yes,” said John; “we won’t lose the chance. We’ll take each book from its place on the shelf, dust it, and put it back again. We have a long job before us, so don’t you think any more of your novels and your grand ladies and gentlemen, Betty, my woman.”
“I have ceased to think of them,” said Betty.
She stood with her hands hanging straight to her sides; her face was quite pale.
“I trusted, and my trust failed me,” she continued. “I was at a wedding lately, John—you remember, don’t you?—Dick Jones’s wedding, at the other side of the Forest. There was a beautiful wedding cake, frosted over and almond-iced underneath, and ornaments on it, too—cupids and doves and such-like. A pair of little doves sat as perky as you please on the top of the cake, billing and cooing like anything. It made my eyes water even to look at ’em. You may be sure I didn’t think of Mary Dugdale, the bride that was, nor of poor Jones, neither; although he is a good looking man enough—I never said he wasn’t. But my heart was in my mouth thinking of that dear Dook of Mauleverer-Wolverhampton.”
“Who in the name of fortune is he?” asked nurse.
“A hero of mine,” said Betty.
Her face looked a little paler and more mournful even than when she had begun to speak.
“He’s dead,” she said, and she whisked a handkerchief out of her pocket and applied it to her eyes. “It was bandits as carried him off. He loved that innocent virgin he took for his wife like anything. Over and over have I thought of them, and privately made up my mind that if I came across his second I’d give him my heart.”
“Betty, you must be mad,” said nurse.
“Maybe you are mad,” retorted Betty, her face flaming, “but I am not. It was a girl quite as poor as me that he took for his spouse; and why shouldn’t there be another like him? That’s what I thought, and when the wedding came to an end I asked Mary Dugdale to give me a bit of the cake all private for myself. She’s a good-natured sort is Mary, though not equal to Jones—not by no means. She cut a nice square of the cake, a beautiful chunk, black with richness as to the fruit part, yellow as to the almond, and white as the driven snow as to the icing. And, if you’ll believe it, there was just the tip of a wing of one of those angelic little doves cut off with the icing. Well, I brought it home with me, and I slept on it just according to the old saw which my mother taught me. Mother used to say, ‘Betty, if you want to dream of your true love, you will take a piece of wedding-cake that belongs to a fresh-made bride, and you will put it into your right-foot stocking, and tie it with your left-foot garter, and put it under your pillow. And when you get into bed, not a mortal word will you utter, or the spell is broke. And that you will do, Betty,’ said my mother, ‘for three nights running. And then you will put the stocking and the garter and the cake away for three nights, and at the end of those nights you will sleep again on it for three nights; and then you will put it away once more for three nights, and you will sleep on it again for three nights. And at the end of the last night, why, the man you dream of is he.’”
“Well, and did you go in for all that gibberish?” asked nurse, with scorn.
She had a duster in her hand, and she vigorously flicked Mr. Dale’s desk as she spoke.
“To be sure I did; and I thought as much over the matter as ought to have got me a decent husband. Well, when the last night come I lay me down to sleep as peaceful as an angel, and I folded my hands and shut my eyes, and wondered what his beautiful name would be, and if he’d be a dook or a marquis. I incline to a dook myself, having, so to speak, fallen in love with the Dook of Mauleverer-Wolverhampton of blessed memory. But what do you think happened? It’s enough to cure a body, that it is.”
“Well, what?” asked nurse.
“I dreamt of no man in the creation except John there. If that isn’t enough to make a body sick, and to cure all their romance once and for ever, my name ain’t Betty Snowden.”
John laughed and turned a dull red at this unexpected ending to Betty’s story.
“Now let’s clean up,” she said; “and don’t twit me any more about my dreams. They were shattered, so to speak, in the moment of victory.”
The children were called in, particularly Briar and Patty, and the room was made quite fresh and sweet, the carpet taken up, the floor scrubbed, a new rug (bought long ago for the auspicious moment) put down, white curtains hung at the windows in place of the dreadful old moreen, every book dusted and put in its place, and the papers piled up in orderly fashion on a wagonette which was moved into the room for the purpose. Finally the children and servants gazed around them with an air of appreciation.
“He can’t help liking it,” said Briar.
“I wonder if he will,” said Patty.
“What nonsense, Patty! Father is human, after all, and we have not disturbed one single blessed thing.”
Soon wheels were heard, and the children rushed out to greet their returning parent.
“How is Pauline, father?” asked Briar in an anxious voice.
“Pauline?” replied Mr. Dale, pushing his thin hand abstractedly through his thin locks. “What of her? Isn’t she here?”
“Nonsense, father!” said Patty. “You went to see her. She was very ill; she was nearly drowned. You know all about it. Wake up, dad, and tell us how she is.”
“To be sure,” said Mr. Dale. “I quite recall the circumstance now. Your sister is much better. I left her in bed, a little flushed, but looking very well and pretty. Pauline promises to be quite a pretty girl. She has improved wonderfully of late. Verena was there, too, and Pen, and your good aunt. Yes, I saw them all. Comfortable lodgings enough for those who don’t care for books. From what I saw of your sister she did not seem to be at all seriously ill, and I cannot imagine why I was summoned. Don’t keep me now, my dears; I must get back to my work. The formation of that last sentence from Plato’s celebrated treatise doesn’t please me. It lacks the extreme polish of the original. My dear Briar, how you stare! There is no possible reason, Briar and Patty, why the English translation should not be every bit as pure as the Greek. Our language has extended itself considerably of late, and close application and study may recall to my mind the most fitting words. But there is one thing certain, my dear girls—— Ah! is that you, nurse? Miss Pauline is better. I was talking about Plato, nurse. The last translation I have been making from his immortal work does not please me; but toil—ceaseless toil—the midnight oil, et cetera, may evoke the spirit of the true Muse, and I may be able to put the matter before the great English thinking public in a way worthy of the immortal master.”
Mr. Dale had now pushed his hat very far back from his forehead. He removed it, still quite abstractedly, and retired with long, shuffling strides to his beloved study.
“No food until I ring for it,” he said when he reached the door, and then he vanished.
“Blessed man!” said Betty, who was standing in the far distance. “He might be a dook himself for all his airs. It was lovely the way he clothed his thoughts that time. What they be themselves I don’t know, but his language was most enthralling. John, get out of my way. What are you standing behind me like that for? Get along and weed the garden—do.”
“You’ll give me a cup of tea, and tell me more about that dream of yours,” was John’s answer.
Whereupon Betty took John by the hand, whisked into her kitchen, slammed the door after her, and planted him down on a wooden seat, and then proceeded to make tea.
But while John and Betty were happily engaged in pleasant converse with each other, Mr. Dale’s condition was by no means so favorable. At first when he entered his study he saw nothing unusual. His mind was far too loftily poised to notice such sublunary matters as white curtains and druggets not in tatters; but when he seated himself at his desk, and stretched out his hand mechanically to find his battered old edition of Plato, it was not in its accustomed place. He looked around him, raised his eyes, put his hand to his forehead, and, still mechanically, but with a dawning of fright on his face, glanced round the room. What did he see? He started, stumbled to his feet, turned deathly white, and rushed to the opposite bookcase. There was his Plato—his idol—actually placed in the bookshelf upside-down. It was a monstrous crime—a crime that he felt he could never forgive—that no one could expect him to forgive. He walked across to the fireplace and rang the bell.
“You must go, Miss Patty,” said nurse. “I was willing to do it, but I can’t face him. You must go; you really must.”
“Well, I’m not frightened,” said Patty. “Come on, Briar.”
The two little girls walked down the passage. Mr. Dale’s bell was heard to ring again.
“Aren’t you the least bit frightened, Patty?” asked Briar.
“No,” answered Patty, with a sigh. “If only I could get the real heaviness off my mind, nothing else would matter. Oh, Briar, Briar!”
“Don’t talk of it now,” said Briar. “To-night when we are alone, when we are by ourselves in our own room, but not now. Come, let us answer father’s bell.”
They opened the door and presented themselves—two pretty little figures with rosy faces and bright eyes—two neatly dressed, lady-like little girls.
“Do you want anything, father?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Dale. “Come in and shut the door.”
The girls did what he told them.
“Who did this?” asked the master of The Dales. He swept his hand with a certain majesty of gesture round the restored room. “Who brushed the walls? Who put those flimsies to the windows? Who touched my beloved books? Who was the person? Name the culprit.”
“There were quite a lot of us, father. We all did it,” said Briar.
“You all did it? You mean to tell me, little girl, that you did it?”
“I dusted a lot of the books, father. I didn’t injure one of them, and I put them back again just in the same place. My arms ached because the books were so heavy.”
“Quite right that they should ache. Do you know what injury you have done me?”
“No,” said Patty suddenly. “We made the room clean, father. It isn’t right to live in such a dirty room. Plato wouldn’t have liked it.”
“Now what do you mean?”
Mr. Dale’s white face quieted down suddenly; for his daughter—his small, young, ignorant daughter—to dare to mention the greatest name, in his opinion, of all the ages, was too much for him.
“You are always talking to us about Plato,” said Patty, who grew braver and braver as she proceeded. “You talk of Plato one day, and Virgil another day, and you always tell us how great they were; but if they were really great they would not be dirty, and this room was horrid and dirty, father. It really was. Nice, great, good, noble people are clean. Aunt Sophy says so, and she knows. Since Aunt Sophy came we have been very happy, and the house has been clean and nice. And I love Aunt Sophy, and so does Briar. I am very sorry, father, but I think when we made your room sweet and pretty as it is now we pleased Plato and Virgil—that is, if they can see us.”
“If Plato and Virgil can see mites like you?” said Mr. Dale.
He took up his spectacles, poised them on his forehead, and gazed at the children.
“There is the door,” he said. “Go.”
They vanished. Mr. Dale sank into a chair.
“Upon my word!” he said several times. “Upon—my—word! So Plato liked things clean, and Virgil liked things orderly. Upon—my—word!”
He sat perfectly motionless for a time. His brain was working, for his glasses were sometimes removed and then put on again, and several times he brushed his hand through his hair. Finally he took up his hat, and, gazing at the frills of the white window-curtains, he opened the French windows, and, with an agile leap, found himself in the open air. He went for a walk—a long one. When he came back he entered his clean study, to find the lamp burning brightly, his Plato restored to its place by his left-hand side, and a fresh pad of blotting-paper on the table. His own old pen was not removed, but the inkpot was clean and filled with fresh ink. He took his pen, dipped it into the ink, and wrote on a sheet of paper, “Plato likes things clean, and Virgil likes things orderly,” and then pinned the paper on the opposite wall.
For the rest of the evening the astonished household were much beguiled and overcome by the most heavenly strains from Mr. Dale’s violin. He played it in the study until quite late at night; but none of the household went to bed, so divine, so restoring, so comforting was that music.
About eleven o’clock Patty and Briar found themselves alone.
“Well,” said Patty suddenly, “I have made up my mind.”
“Yes,” said Briar, “I thought you had.”
“When Aunt Sophy comes back I am going to tell her everything.”
Briar went up to her sister, put her arms round her neck, and kissed her.
“I wonder what she will say,” said Briar.
“Say!” echoed Patty. “She will be hurt. Perhaps she’ll punish us; but that doesn’t matter, for in the end she is quite, quite certain to forgive us. I am going to tell her. I couldn’t go through another night like last night again.”
“Nor could I,” said Briar. “I stayed awake and thought of Paulie, and I seemed to see her face as it might look if she were really dead. I wish they’d all come back, for Paulie is better. And then we’d have just a dreadful ten minutes, and everything would be all right.”
“That’s it,” said Patty. “Everything would be all right.”