Chapter 26 Girls of the Forest by L. T. Meade
DECEITFUL GIRLS
Miss Tredgold was dreadfully puzzled to know what to make of the girls. The time was autumn now; all pretense of summer had disappeared. Autumn had arrived and was very windy and wet, and the girls could no longer walk in twos and twos on the pretty lawn. They had to keep to the walks, and even these walks were drenched, as day after day deluges of rain fell from the heavens. The Forest, too, was sodden with the fallen leaves, and even the ponies slipped as they cantered down the glades. Altogether it was a most chilling, disappointing autumn, winter setting in, so to speak, all at once. Verena said she never remembered such an early season of wintry winds and sobbing skies. The flowers disappeared, several of the Forest trees were rooted up in consequence of the terrible gales, and Miss Tredgold said it was scarcely safe for the children to walk there.
“The best cure for weather of this sort,” she said to herself, “is to give the young people plenty to do indoors.”
Accordingly she reorganized lessons in a very brisk and up-to-date fashion. She arranged that a good music-master was to come twice a week from Southampton. Mistresses for languages were also to arrive from the same place. A pretty little pony-cart which she bought for the purpose conveyed these good people to and from Lyndhurst Road station. Besides this, she asked one or two visitors to come and stay in the house, and tried to plan as comfortable and nice a winter as she could. Verena helped her, and the younger girls were pleased and interested; and Pen did what she was told, dashing about here and there, and making suggestions, and trying to make herself as useful as she could.
“The child is improved,” said Miss Tredgold to Verena. “She is quite obliging and unselfish.”
Verena said nothing.
“What do you think of my new plans, Verena?” said her aunt. “Out-of-door life until the frost comes is more or less at a standstill. Beyond the mere walking for health, we do not care to go out of doors in this wet and sloppy weather. But the house is large. I mean always to have one or two friends here, sometimes girls to please you other girls, sometimes older people to interest me. I should much like to have one or two savants down to talk over their special studies with your father; but that can doubtless be arranged by-and-by. I want us to have cheerful winter evenings—evenings for reading, evenings for music. I want you children to learn at least the rudiments of good acting, and I mean to have two or three plays enacted here during the winter. In short, if you will all help me, we can have a splendid time.”
“Oh, I will help you,” said Verena. “But,” she added, “I have no talent for acting; it is Paulie who can act so well.”
“I wish your sister would take an interest in things, Verena. She is quite well in body, but she is certainly not what she was before her accident.”
“I don’t understand Pauline,” said Verena, shaking her head.
“Nor do I understand her. Once or twice I thought I would get a good doctor to see her, but I have now nearly resolved to leave it to time to restore her.”
“But the other girls—can you understand the other girls, Aunt Sophy?” asked Verena.
“Understand them, my dear? What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t mean the younger ones—Adelaide and Lucy and the others. I mean Briar and Patty. They are not a bit what they were.”
“Now that you remark it, I have noticed that they are very grave; but they always do their lessons well, and I have nothing to complain of with regard to their conduct.”
“Nor have you anything to complain of with regard to Paulie’s conduct,” said Verena. “It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it, my dear?”
“It is that they are not natural. There is something on their minds. I am certain of it.”
“Verena,” said her aunt gently, “I wonder if I might confide in you.”
Verena started back; a distressed look came over her face.
“If it happens to be anything against Paulie, perhaps I had better not hear,” she said.
“I do not know if it is for her or against her. I am as much in the dark as you. I have not spoken of it yet to any one else, but I should like to mention it to you. It seems to me that light ought to be thrown on some rather peculiar circumstances or your sister will never get back her old brightness and gaiety of heart.”
“Then if you think so, please tell me, Aunt Sophy,” said Verena.
She got up as she spoke and shut the door. She was a very bright and pretty-looking girl, but her face sometimes wore too old a look for her age. Her aunt looked at her now with a mingling of affection and compassion.
“Come,” she said, “sit on this sofa, darling. We can understand each other better when we are close together. You know how much I love you, Renny.”
“There never, never was a better aunt,” said the girl.
“I am not that. But I do love you. Now, dear, I will tell you. You remember when first I came?”
“Oh, don’t I? And how angry we were!”
“Poor children! I don’t wonder. But don’t you think, Verena, I was a very brave woman to put myself into such a hornet’s nest?”
“Indeed you were wonderful. It was your bravery that first attracted me. Then I saw how good you were, and how kindly you meant, and everything else became easy.”
“But was it equally easy for Pauline?”
“I—I don’t know. I am sure I do know, however, that now she loves you very much.”
“Ah! now,” said Miss Tredgold. “But what about the early time?”
“I don’t quite know.”
“Verena, if I am to be frank with you, you must be frank with me.”
“I think perhaps she was not won round to you quite as easily as I was.”
“You are right, my dear. It was harder to win her; but she is worth winning. I shall not rest until I bring her round altogether to my side. Now, little girl, listen. You know what a very odd child we are all forced to consider your sister Pen?”
“I should think so, indeed.” Verena laughed.
“Well, your sister found out one day, not very long after I came, that I had lost a thimble.”
“Your beautiful gold thimble? Of course we all knew about that,” said Verena. “We were all interested, and we all tried to find it.”
“I thought so. I knew that Pen in particular searched for it with considerable pains, and I offered her a small prize if she found it.”
Verena laughed.
“Poor Pen!” she said. “She nearly broke her back one day searching for it. Oh, Aunt Sophy! I hope you will learn to do without it, for I am greatly afraid that it will not be found now.”
“And yet, Verena,” said Miss Tredgold—and she laid her hand, which slightly shook, on the girl’s arm—“I could tell you of a certain person in this house to whom a certain dress belongs, and unless I am much mistaken, in the pocket of that dress reposes the thimble with its sapphire base, its golden body, and its rim of pale-blue turquoise.”
“Aunt Sophy! What do you mean?”
Verena’s eyes were wide open, and a sort of terror filled them.
“Don’t start, dear. That person is your sister Pauline.”
“Oh! Pauline! Impossible! Impossible!” cried Verena.
“It is true, nevertheless. Do you remember that day when she was nearly drowned?”
“Can I forget it?”
“The next morning I was in her room, and the servant brought in the dark-blue serge dress she wore, which had been submerged so long in the salt water. It had been dried, and she was bringing it back. The girl held in her hand the thimble—the thimble of gold and sapphire and turquoise. She held the thimble in the palm of her hand, and said, ‘I found it in the pocket of the young lady’s dress. It is injured, but the jeweller can put it right again.’ You can imagine my feelings. For a time I was motionless, holding the thimble in my hand. Then I resolved to put it back where it had been found. I have heard nothing of it since from any one. I don’t suppose Pauline has worn that skirt again; the thimble is doubtless there.”
“Oh, may I run and look? May I?”
“No, no; leave it in its hiding-place. Do you think the thimble matters to me? What does matter is this—that Pauline should come and tell me, simply and quietly, the truth.”
“She will. She must. I feel as if I were in a dream. I can scarcely believe this can be true.”
“Alas! my dear, it is. And there is another thing. I know what little trinkets you each possess, for you showed them to me when first I came. Have you any reason to believe, Verena, that Pauline kept one trinket back from my knowledge?”
“Oh, no, Aunt Sophy; of course she did not. Pauline has fewer trinkets than any of us, and she is fond of them. She is not particularly fond of gay clothes, but she always did like shiny, ornamenty things.”
“When she was ill I saw round her neck a narrow gold chain, to which a little heart-shaped locket was attached. Do you know of such a locket, of such a chain?”
“No.”
Miss Tredgold rose to her feet.
“Verena,” she said, “things must come to a climax. Pauline must be forced to tell. For her own sake, and for the sake of others, we must find out what is at the back of things. Until we do the air will not be cleared. I had an idea of taking you to London for this winter, but I shall not do so this side of Christmas at any rate. I want us all to have a good time, a bright time, a happy time. We cannot until this mystery is explained. I am certain, too, that Pen knows more than she will say. She always was a curious, inquisitive child. Now, until the time of the accident Pen was always pursuing me and giving me hints that she had something to confide. I could not, of course, allow the little girl to tell tales, and I always shut her up. But from the time of the accident she has altered. She is now a child on the defensive. She watches Pauline as if she were guarding her against something. I am not unobservant, and I cannot help seeing. From what you tell me, your sisters Briar and Patty are also implicated. My dear Verena, we must take steps.”
“Yes,” said Verena. “But what steps?”
“Let me think. It has relieved my mind to tell you even this much. You will keep your own counsel. I will talk to you again to-morrow morning.”
Verena felt very uncomfortable. Of all the Dales she was the most open, in some ways the most innocent. She thought well of all the world. She adored her sisters and her father, and now also her aunt, Miss Tredgold. She was the sort of girl who would walk through life without a great deal of sorrow or a great deal of perplexity. The right path would attract her; the wrong would always be repellent to her. Temptation, therefore, would not come in a severe guise to Verena Dale. She was guarded against it by the sweetness and purity and innocence of her nature. But now for the first time it seemed to the young girl that the outlook was dark. Her aunt’s words absolutely bewildered her. Her aunt suspected Pauline, Pen, Briar, and Patty of concealing something. But what had they to conceal? It is true that when Aunt Sophia first arrived they had felt a certain repugnance to her society, a desire to keep out of her way, and a longing for the old wild, careless, slovenly days. But surely long ere this such foolish ideas had died a natural death. They all loved Aunt Sophia now; what could they have to conceal?
“I dare not talk about it to the younger girls. I don’t want to get into Pen’s confidence. Pen, of all the children, suits me least. The people to whom I must appeal are therefore Briar or Patty, or Pauline herself. Patty and Briar are devoted to each other. The thought in one heart seems to have its counterpart in that of the other. They might even be twins, so deeply are they attached. No; the only one for me to talk to is Pauline. But what can I say to her? And Pauline is not well. At least, she is well and she is not well. Nevertheless I will go and see her. I will find her now.”
Verena went into the nursery. Pauline was sometimes there. She was fond of sitting by the cosy nursery fire with a book in her hand, which of late she only pretended to read. Verena opened the nursery door and poked in her bright head and face.
“Come in, Miss Renny, come in,” said nurse.
“I am not going to stay, nurse. Ah, Marjorie, my pet! Come and give me a sweet kiss.”
The little baby sister toddled across the floor. Verena lifted her in her arms and kissed her affectionately.
“I thought perhaps Miss Pauline was here, nurse. Do you happen to know where she is?”
“Miss Pauline has a very bad headache,” said nurse—“so bad that I made her go and lie down; and I have just lit a bit of fire in her bedroom, for she is chilly, too, poor pet! Miss Pauline hasn’t been a bit herself since that nasty accident.”
“I am sure she hasn’t; but I did not know she was suffering from headache. I will go to her.”
Verena ran along the passage. Her own room faced south; Pauline’s, alongside of it, had a window which looked due east. Verena softly opened the door. The chamber was tiny, but it was wonderfully neat and cheerful. A bright fire burned in the small grate. Pauline was lying partly over on her side; her face was hidden. Her dark hair was tumbled about the pillow.
“Paulie, it is I,” said Verena. “Are you awake?”
“Oh, yes,” said Pauline.
She turned round almost cheerfully. A cloud seemed to vanish from her face.
“I am so glad you have come, Renny,” she said. “I see so little of you lately. Get up on the bed, won’t you, and lie near me?”
“Of course I love to be with you, but I thought——”
“Oh! don’t think anything,” said Pauline. “Just get on the bed and cuddle up close, close to me. And let us imagine that we are back in the old happy days before Aunt Sophy came.”
Verena did not say anything. She got on the bed, flung her arms round Pauline’s neck, and strained her sister to her heart.
“I love you so much!” she said.
“Do you, Renny? That is very, very sweet of you.”
“And you love me, don’t you, Paulie?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Pauline! You don’t know? You don’t know if you love me or not?”
“I don’t think that I love anybody, Renny.”
“Oh, Paulie! then there must be something dreadfully bad the matter with you.”
Pauline buried her face in Verena’s soft white neck and lay quiet.
“Does your head ache very badly, Paulie?”
“Pretty badly; but it is not too bad for us to talk—that is, if you will keep off the unpleasant subjects.”
“But what unpleasant subjects can there be? I don’t understand you, Paulie. I cannot think of anything specially unpleasant to talk of now.”
“You are a bit of a goose, you know,” replied Pauline with a smile.
“Am I? I didn’t know it. But what are the subjects we are not to talk about?”
“Oh, you must know! Aunt Sophia, for instance, and that awful time at Easterhaze, and the most terrible of all terrible days when I went to the White Bay, and Nancy King, and—and my birthday. I can’t talk of these subjects. I will talk of anything else—of baby Marjorie, and how pretty she grows; how fond we are of nurse, and of father, and—oh!”
Pauline burst into a little laugh.
“Do you know that John is courting Betty? I know he is. He went up to her the other day in the garden and put his hand on her shoulder, and when he thought no one was by he kissed her. I hid behind the hedge, and I had the greatest difficulty to keep back a shout of merriment. Isn’t it fun?”
“I suppose so,” said Verena. “But, Pauline, what you say makes me unhappy. I wish I might talk out to you.”
Pauline raised herself on her elbow and looked full into Verena’s face.
“What about?” she asked.
Verena did not speak for a minute.
“Where are your dresses?” she asked suddenly.
“My dresses! You silly girl! In that cupboard, of course. I am getting tidy. You know I would do anything I possibly could to please Aunt Sophy. I can’t do big things to please her—I never shall be able to—so I do little things. I am so tidy that I am spick-and-span. I hate and loathe it; but I wouldn’t leave a pin about for anything. You open that door and look for yourself. Do you see my skirts?”
Verena got off the bed and opened the cupboard door. Pauline had about half-a-dozen skirts, and they all hung neatly on their respective hooks. Amongst them was the thick blue serge which she had worn on the day when she had gone to the White Bay. Verena felt her heart beating fast. She felt the color rush into her cheeks. She paused for a moment as if to commune with her own heart. Then her mind was made up.
“What are you doing, Renny?” said her sister. “How funny of you to have gone into the cupboard!”
For Verena had absolutely vanished. She stood in the cupboard, and Pauline from the bed heard a rustle. The rustling grew louder, and Pauline wondered what it meant. A moment later Verena, her face as red as a turkey-cock, came out.
“Paulie,” she said—“Paulie, there is no good going on like this. You have got to explain. You have got to get a load off your mind. You have got to do it whether you like it or not. How did you come by this? How—did—you—come—by—this?”
As Verena spoke she held in her open palm the long-lost thimble. Poor Pauline had not the most remote idea that the thimble was still in the pocket of the blue serge dress. She had, indeed, since the day of her accident, forgotten its existence.
“Where did you get it?” she asked, her face very white, her eyes very startled.
“In the pocket of the dress you wore on the day you were nearly drowned in the White Bay.”
“I told you not to mention that day,” said Pauline. Her whole face changed. “I remember,” she said slowly, but she checked herself. The words reached her lips, but did not go beyond them. “Put it down, Verena,” she said. “Put it there on the mantelpiece.”
“Then you won’t tell me how you got it? It is not yours. You know it belongs to Aunt Sophy.”
“And it is not yours, Renny, and you have no right to interfere. And what is more, I desire you not to interfere. I don’t love anybody very much now, but I shall hate you if you interfere in this matter.”
Verena laid the thimble on the mantelpiece.
“You can leave me, Renny. I am a very bad girl; I don’t pretend I am anything else, but I won’t talk to you now.”
“Oh!” said poor Verena. “Oh!”
Before she reached the door of the room she had burst into tears. Her agony was so great at Pauline’s behavior to her that her tears became sobs, and her sobs almost cries of pain. Pauline, lying on the bed, did not take the least notice of Verena. She turned her head away, and when her sister had left the room and shut the door Pauline sprang from the bed and turned the key in the lock.
“Now, I am safe,” she thought. “What is the matter with me? There never was anything so hard as the heart that is inside me. I don’t care a bit whether Renny cries or whether she doesn’t cry. I don’t care a bit what happens to any one. I only want to be let alone.”
At dinner-time Pauline appeared, and tried to look as though nothing had happened. The other girls looked neat and pretty. They had not the least idea through what a tragedy Verena and Pauline were now living. Verena showed marks of her storm of weeping, and her face was terribly woebegone. Miss Tredgold guessed that things were coming to a crisis, and she was prepared to wait.
Now, Miss Tredgold was a very good woman; she was also a very wise and a very temperate one. She was filled with a spirit of forbearance, and with the beautiful grace of charity. She was all round as good a woman as ever lived; but she was not a mother. Had she been a mother she would have gone straight to Pauline and put her arms round her, and so acted that the hard little heart would have melted, and the words that could not pass her lips would have found themselves able to do so, and the misery and the further sin would have been averted. But instead of doing anything of this sort, Miss Tredgold resolved to assemble the children after breakfast the next day, and to talk to them in a very plain way indeed; to assemble all before her, and to entreat the guilty ones to confess, promising them absolute forgiveness in advance. Having made up her mind, she felt quite peaceful and happy, and went down to interview her brother-in-law.
Mr. Dale still continued to like his study. He made no further objection to the clean and carefully dusted room. If any one had asked him what was passing in his mind, he might have said that the spirits of Homer and Virgil approached the sacred precincts where he wrote about them and lived for them night after night, and that they put the place in order. He kept the rough words which he had printed in large capitals on the night when he had returned to his study still in their place of honor on the wall, and he worked himself with a new sense of zest and freedom.
Miss Tredgold entered the room without knocking.
“Well, Henry,” she said, “and how goes the world?”
“The world of the past comes nearer and nearer,” was his reply. “I often feel that I scarcely touch the earth of the nineteenth century. The world of the past is a very lovely world.”
“Not a bit better than the world of the present,” said Miss Sophia. “Now, Henry, if you can come from the clouds for a minute or two——”
“Eh? Ah! What are you saying?”
“From the clouds, my dear brother, right down to this present prosaic and workaday world. Can you, and will you give me five minutes of your attention?”
“Eh? Yes, of course, Sophia.”
Mr. Dale sat very still, drumming with his right hand on his pad of blotting-paper. Miss Tredgold looked at him; then she crossed the room, took away the pad, his pen and ink, the open volume of Homer, and removed them to another table.
“Sit with your back to them; keep your mind clear and listen to me, Henry.”
“To be sure.”
“I want you to come into the schoolroom after breakfast to-morrow morning.”
“To the schoolroom?”
“I have a reason. I should like you to be present.”
“But it is just my most important hour. You commence lessons with the girls—when, Sophia?”
“We sit down to our work at nine o’clock. Prayers take ten minutes. I should like you to be present at prayers—to conduct Divine worship in your own house on that occasion.”
“Oh, my dear Sophia! Not that I have any objection—of course.”
“I should hope you have no objection. You will take prayers, and afterwards you will assist me in a most painful task which lies before me.”
“Painful, Sophia? Oh, anything I can do to help you, my dear sister, I shall be delighted to undertake. What is it? I beg of you to be brief, for time does fly. It was only a quarter of an hour ago that I found Homer——”
“I could say a very ugly word about Homer,” said Miss Tredgold. “Sometimes I wish that I were a man in order that I might swear hard at you, Henry Dale. As I am a woman I must refrain. Do you know that your daughter Pauline, your daughter Briar, your daughter Patty, and your extraordinary daughter Penelope are all of them about as naughty children as they can be. Indeed, in the case of Pauline I consider her worse than naughty. What she has done I don’t know, and I don’t know what the others have done; but there is a weight on their minds, and those four girls must be got to confess. And you must be present, and you must speak as a father to them. Now do you understand?”
“I am to be in the schoolroom to-morrow,” said Mr. Dale, “and four of my girls are turning wicked, and I am not to know what they have done. I will be in the schoolroom at nine o’clock to-morrow, Sophia. May I thank you to hand me back my blotting-pad, my pen and bottle of ink, and my beloved Homer? Take care of the volume. Take it tenderly. Put both hands under the binding. Ah! that is so. You will have the goodness to leave me now, Sophia. To-morrow morning at nine o’clock precisely.”
Miss Tredgold went out of the room.
“How my poor dear sister ever brought herself to marry that man,” she whispered under her breath, “I know not. But he is capable of being roused, and I rather fancy I shall manage to rouse him to-morrow.”