Chapter 20 Three Girls from School by L. T. Meade
A Confession and a Friend
It is quite true that very clever people are sometimes apt to overstep the bounds of reason and prudence; and whether all that befell Annie Brooke and all that retribution which she so richly merited would have fallen so quickly and so decisively on her devoted head had she not been anxious to get rid of poor Priscilla must remain an unsolved question. But certain it is that Priscilla Weir’s departure in the company of Mr Manchuri was the first step in her downfall. Annie, with eighty pounds in her pocket and with all fear of Mrs Priestley laid at rest, felt that she had not a care in the world.
But Priscilla, when she stepped into the first-class carriage which was to convey her en route for England, was one of the most perplexed and troubled girls who could be found anywhere. Mr Manchuri, with all his faults, his love of securing a bargain, his sharpness, had a kindly heart. He saw that the girl was in trouble, and took no notice at all of her for more than an hour of the journey.
It so happened, however, that very few people were returning to England so early in the season, and the pair had the railway carriage for a long time to themselves. When Priscilla had sat quite silent for a considerable time, her eyes gazing straight out into the ever-gathering darkness, Mr Manchuri could contain himself no longer.
He had scarcely ever glanced at Priscilla Weir when she was at the hotel. She was not pretty; she was not showily dressed; she was a queer girl. He knew that she belonged to Lady Lushington’s party, but beyond that he was scarcely aware of her existence. Now, however, he began to study her, and as he did so he began to see marks of what he considered interest in her face. What was more, he began to trace a likeness in her to some one else.
Once, long ago, this queer, dried-up old man had a young daughter, a daughter whom he loved very passionately, but who died just when she was grown up. The girl had been tall and slender, like Priscilla, and strangely unworldly and fond of books, and, as the old man described it, good at star-gazing. He did not know why the memory of Esther, who had been in her grave for so many years, returned to him now. But, be that as it may, Priscilla, without being exactly like Esther, gave him back thoughts of his daughter, and because of that he felt inclined to be kind to the lonely girl. So, changing his seat which he had taken at the farther end of the carriage, he placed himself opposite to her and said in a voice which she scarcely recognised:
“Cheer up now, won’t you? There is no good in fretting.”
Priscilla was startled at the kindness of the tone. It shook her out of a dream. She turned her intensely sorrowful eyes full upon Mr Manchuri and said:
“I shall get over my disappointment, I am sure; please don’t take any notice of me.”
“But, come now,” said Mr Manchuri, “what are you fretting about? You are going home, I understand.”
“Oh no, I am not,” said Priscilla; “I am going back to school.”
“Oh, so you are a schoolgirl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How old are you, my dear?”
“I am nearly seventeen,” said Priscilla.
Now Esther had been nearly seventeen when she died; she was not quite seventeen. Mr Manchuri felt glad that Priscilla was not quite seventeen.
“I thought of course, you were going home,” he said—“that perhaps you had some one who wanted you very much. Why should you, I wonder, leave Lady Lushington’s party?”
“There was not room for all of us at the hotel at Zermatt, so I am going back to England.”
“But why you?” said Mr Manchuri. He felt quite angry. How furious he would have been if any one had treated his Esther like that!—and this girl had a voice very like Esther’s. “Why you? Why should this be your lot?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Priscilla. “Some one had to do it.”
“I see; that little Annie Brooke would not go, for instance—not she; she is far too clever.”
“She offered to go,” said Priscilla, who would not allow even Annie to appear at a disadvantage.
Mr Manchuri laughed.
“There is a way of offering, isn’t there, Miss— Forgive me, my dear; I have not caught your name. What is it?”
“Priscilla Weir.”
“I like the name of Priscilla; it is so quaint and old-fashioned. Do you know that I once had a girl called Esther. She was my only child. That is a quaint name too, if you like. Don’t you think so? Don’t you think that Esther is a very pretty name?”
“Very,” said Priscilla. “It is a beautiful name,” she added; “and that story about Queen Esther is so, so lovely!”
“Isn’t it?” said Mr Manchuri. “And my girl was like her—a sort of queenly way about her. Do you know, miss—you don’t mind if I call you Priscilla?”
“Please do,” said Priscilla.
“Do you know that in a sort of manner you remind me of my dear Esther. She was darker than you; but she was like you. God took her. Shall I tell you why?”
“Please,” said Priscilla. She had come back to the present world now, and was gazing, with all her heart in her eyes, at the queer old man.
“She was too good for earth,” said Mr Manchuri; “that is why God took her. He wanted her to bloom in the Heavenly Gardens. She wasn’t a bit like me. I am all for money and bargains—I made a rare one to-day; but I mustn’t talk of that. That is a secret. I am a rich man—very rich; and when I die I will leave my money to different charities. I have not kith or kin to leave it to—neither kith nor kin, for Esther is with God and the angels. But, all the same, I can’t help making money. It is the one pleasure I have. If a week goes by when I can’t turn over a cool hundred or even sometimes a thousand I am put out and miserable. You don’t understand that feeling, do you?”
“No; I don’t,” said Priscilla.
“No more did Esther; I could not get it into her. I tried to with all my might, but not one little bit of it would get through that pure white armour she wore—the armour of righteousness, I take it.”
“Tell me more about her,” said Priscilla, bending forward and looking full into Mr Manchuri’s eyes.
“I could talk about her for ever to you,” was the answer; “although, as a matter of fact, I have not mentioned my child’s name to a living soul for going on thirty years. It is thirty years since she went to God, and she is as young as ever in the Heavenly Gardens—not seventeen yet; just like you.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “It is very, very interesting,” she added. “It seems to me,” she continued, “as if I knew now why I am taking this journey, and why God did not want me to see the lovely mountains that surround Zermatt.”
“You are more and more like Esther the more you talk,” said Mr Manchuri. “She was all for star-gazing and that sort of thing. I take it, that includes mountain-gazing and going into raptures at sunsets and at sunrises, and going into fits at shadows on the hills and lights across the valleys, and little flowers growing in clumps by brooks, and living things that you can see if you look deep into running water, and the songs of birds, and the low hum of insects on a summer evening. After these things, which she liked best of all, she loved books that made her think, and I could not get her to take the slightest interest in what she wore, or in money, bless you! But she was sweet beyond words with children, and with people who were in trouble; and there were girls of her own class in life who adored her. They are elderly women now—oldish, almost—with children of their own; but two or three of them have called their girls Esther after her, although they don’t resemble her one little bit. You are the first girl I ever came across who in the very least resembles her. I wish I could see your face in the light.”
“I love the things she loved,” said Priscilla.
“Hers must have been a most beautiful nature.” Then she added fervently, “It was very lucky for her that she died.”
“Why do you say that?” said Mr Manchuri. “Lucky for her? Well, perhaps so, for God and the angels and the Gardens of Heaven must be the very best company and place for one like my Esther; but nevertheless, she would have had a good time down here.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” said Priscilla stoutly. “The world is not made for people like her.”
“Then you don’t find the world a good place?” said Mr Manchuri, speaking in an interested voice.
Priscilla took a long time before she replied. Then she said very gravely:
“I don’t find the world a good place—I mean the people in it; and I want to say something”—her voice broke and changed—“I must say something; please let me.”
“Of course you shall, my dear Priscilla. My dear girl, don’t agitate yourself; say anything you like.”
“You have been so kind comparing me to your child—to your beautiful child,” said Priscilla. “But I must undeceive you. Although I love the mountains and the things of nature, and although I cry in my heart for goodness, and although I am the same age as your Esther was when she went away to God, I am not a bit like her, for I am not good. I am—wicked.”
Mr Manchuri was startled at this statement, which he took to be the exaggeration of a young and sensitive girl.
“You must not be too introspective,” he said after a pause. “That is very bad for all young things. Esther was not. She had a beautiful belief in God, and in goodness, and in joy. She was never, never discontented—never once. If you are not like her in that, you must try to grow like her. I tell you what; you interest me tremendously. You shall come to see me in London, and I will show you Esther’s portrait.”
“I can’t come,” said Priscilla. “You talk to me out of your kind, very kind heart; but you don’t know. I am not a good girl. I have done something far and away beyond the ordinary bad things that girls do, and I cannot possibly come to you under false colours. If I could, I would be friendly with worldly people, but I am not in touch with them; and good people I can have nothing to do with. So I must stand alone. I shall never see your Esther; I know that; but thank you all the same for telling me about her; and—and—I shall never forget the picture you have given me of her most lovely character.”
Mr Manchuri was considerably startled at Priscilla’s words, and in some extraordinary way, as she spoke, the image of Annie Brooke when she looked at him with that crafty expression in her eyes returned to him, and he said to himself:
“I will get to the bottom of the secret that is troubling the girl who is like my Esther; and I have a very shrewd suspicion that Miss Brooke is mixed up in the affair.” Priscilla closed her eyes after she had uttered the last words, as though she were too tired to say any more, and Mr Manchuri sat and watched her. She had very handsome, long, thick, black eyelashes, and the likeness to his Esther was even more apparent in her face when her eyes were shut than when they were open. The more the old man looked at her, the more did his heart go out to her. It had been for long years a withered heart—a heart engrossed in that most hardening of all things—money-making. To make money just for the love of making it is enough to crush the goodness and frankness out of all lives, and Mr Manchuri had twenty times too much for his own needs. Still, his excitement over a bargain or a good speculation was as keen as ever; and even now, at this very moment, was he not wearing inside his waistcoat that curious necklace which he had bought from Annie Brooke that day? He would make, after paying the hundred pounds which he had given Annie, at least one hundred and fifty pounds on the necklace.
Yes; he lived for that sort of thing. He had a very handsome house, however, at the corner of Park Lane, and this house was filled with rich furniture, and he had a goodly staff of servants, and many friends as rich as himself came to see him, and he drank the most costly wines and ate the most expensive dinners, and never spent a penny on charity or did one good thing with all his gold. There was one room, however, in that house which was kept sacred from the faintest touch of worldliness. This room contained the portrait of the child who was taken away from him in her first bloom. It was a simple room, having a little white bed and the plainest furniture that a girl could possibly use. There were a few of Esther’s possessions lying about—her work-box, her little writing-desk, a pile of books, most of them good and worth reading; and Mr Manchuri kept the key of that room and never allowed any one to enter it. It was the sacred shrine in that worldly house. It was, in short the heart of the house.
But now Mr Manchuri discovered on this midnight journey that that withered heart of his own, which he had supposed to be dead to all the world, was suddenly alive and keenly interested in a girl of the age of his Esther—a girl who absolutely told him that she was not good, and that because she was not good she must stand alone.
“I will get her secret out of the poor young thing,” he said to himself; “and what is more—what is more, I will help her a little bit for the sake of my Esther.”
Priscilla was really very tired. She slept a good deal during the night, all of which time they had the carriage to themselves. But in the morning some fresh travellers entered their compartment, and Mr Manchuri had no opportunity of saying a word in private to Priscilla until they were on their way to London. When, however, they had crossed the Channel, the first thing he did was to engage a private coupé on the express train, and soon, as they were whirling away towards the great centre of life and commerce, he was once again alone with his young companion.
“Now, my dear,” he said, “you will just forgive me for asking you a plain question.”
“I am sure I will, Mr Manchuri,” said Priscilla. “You have been most, most kind to me.”
“We shall arrive in London,” said Mr Manchuri, “at five o’clock. Now, may I ask where you intend to go for the night?”
“I will send a telegram to my schoolmistress, Mrs Lyttelton, and then take the next train to Hendon,” was Priscilla’s remark.
“But is your schoolmistress at home?”
“I do not know; but somebody will be.”
“Do you want to go back to school in the holidays?”
“Not very specially; but I must go, so there is no use talking about it. I felt so bewildered yesterday that I did not send a telegram, as I might have done. But I know the servants can put me up, and it will be all right—and you have been, oh! so kind, Mr Manchuri.”
“Not at all, my dear Priscilla; not at all. The fact is, I have never enjoyed a journey so much; your company has given me real pleasure. And now what do you say—”
“Yes?” interrupted Priscilla.
“To coming to me to my house for a few days—even for a night or so—instead of going back to Hendon?”
“To your house, Mr Manchuri?”
“Yes, my dear; you will have a hearty welcome there, and I assure you it is quite large enough. I have got excellent servants, who will look after you, and you won’t see much of me except in the evening, and then perhaps you will cheer me up a bit; and—and I want to show you what you know, my dear—”
Priscilla turned first red and then white.
“I have told you why I cannot see that,” she said.
“That is the subject I want to discuss with you more fully. Will you come back with me to Park Lane, and to-night? I am an old man and lonely, and you, my dear little girl, have stirred something within me which has never been stirred for thirty years, and which I thought was quite dead. You won’t refuse me, will you? That, indeed, would be a sin. That would be putting a heart back once more into its grave.”
Priscilla was startled at the words, and still more at the expression in the old face; there was such a hungry, pleading look in the eyes.
“Oh no,” she said simply, “I am not so bad as that. If you want me like that—I, who am not wanted by any one else—indeed, I will come.”