Chapter 31 A Bevy of Girls by L. T. Meade
The Best of them All
“It is all too wonderful,” said Nesta.
“Yes, isn’t it?” replied Penelope.
“To think,” continued Nesta, “that I should like it, that I should even on the whole be quite pleased.”
“As to me,” said Penelope, “I can scarcely contain myself. It is all on account of her, too. In fact, it is on account of both of them. They are both coming, you know.”
“Oh, it is mostly on account of her, as far as I am concerned,” said Nesta.
As Nesta spoke Penelope looked at her.
“You certainly are very much changed,” she said. “I wouldn’t know you for the same girl.”
“And I wouldn’t know you for the same girl,” retorted Nesta. “You seem to be sort of—sort of watching yourself all the time.”
Penelope smiled. She slipped her hand through Nesta’s arm.
“Let us walk up and down,” she said.
The girls disappeared out of a low French window, and paced slowly up the shrubbery at Court Prospect. When they came to the end of the shrubbery they crossed the lawn and stood for a few moments just where they could get a peep into what had been the rose garden. That old-world garden where Angela used to walk when she was a child, and where her mother had walked before her. When they reached this spot, Penelope said very slowly:
“Do you know, Nesta, it was here, just here, she found me. Here on the ground.”
“Were you really just here?” said Nesta.
“I was, and I was about as miserable a girl as could be found in the wide world. I told you all about it, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yes, and we needn’t go into it now, need we?”
“We need never talk of it any more. It is buried away deep; even God has forgotten it, at least, that is what Angela says.”
“I was a thousand times worse than you,” said Nesta, “and Angela says—by the way she found me, too, lying on the grass—I was sobbing bitterly. I had cause to sob, I was just fifty times as wicked as you. But we needn’t talk of that now.”
“Of course not,” replied Penelope, “for as Angela says, if God has forgotten, nobody else need mind.”
“But it is strange,” continued Nesta, “how different you are.”
“And how different you are, Nesta, so we both understand each other.”
They walked a little further, and then they turned. Wonderful things had happened since that day only two short months ago, when Angela St. Just had found Nesta sobbing her heart out on the banks of the pretty little river Tarn, which flowed not far from Castle Walworth.
Amongst many remarkable things Mrs Aldworth had been restored to comparative health. The great specialist who had come down from London on purpose to see her, declared that all the treatment she had hitherto undergone was wrong. He had suggested a course of electricity, which really had a miraculous effect. It strengthened her nerves and seemed to build up her whole system. Mrs Aldworth was so well that it was no longer in the least necessary for her to be confined to her bedroom. She had remained at Hurst Castle for over six weeks, and a fortnight ago had started for the continent with Molly, and Ethel, and Nurse Davenant as her companions. This was Angela’s suggestion. Angela thought that Mrs Aldworth and the girls would really enjoy a little tour in Normandy and Brittany, and afterwards they might go further south. To Mrs Aldworth it seemed like a glimpse of heaven, and Molly and Ethel were in raptures at the thought of their new dresses, and their new surroundings, and had gone off with the cheers and good will of every one concerned.
The final arrangement of all was that Nesta and Penelope were to go for a year to that excellent school at Frankfort, which Mrs Silchester presided over. Marcia was to go back again to her beloved occupation, and Angela was to spend the winter with them. Thus, indeed, was everything couleur de rose.
“For my part,” said Nesta, as she continued to talk to her companion, “I can’t imagine how I could ever take up with that common girl, Flossie Griffiths.”
“Angela says that no one is common, that if we look deep enough we shall find something to love and to care for in every human being,” said Penelope. “I never used to think so, and if any one had said that sort of thing to me some time ago, I should have set that person down as a prig, but somehow when Angela says it, I don’t seem to mind a bit. It seems to come all right. Isn’t it quite wonderful?”
“Yes, she is like no one else,” said Nesta.
But just as this moment, when they were both talking and wondering what the future would bring forth, and what golden hopes would be realised, and how many good resolutions carried into effect, there was seen crossing the lawn a stout little woman and a girl walking by her side. This person was no other than Mrs Griffiths, of Scarborough fame. Just for the moment Nesta held back. She had not seen Mrs Griffiths, and had not heard a single word from Flossie since the day she had left Scarborough. Mrs Griffiths had not even acknowledged the letter in which Nesta had returned the half-sovereign.
“Oh, there they come, and I don’t one bit want to meet them,” said Nesta to Penelope.
But Mrs Griffiths quickly waddled forward.
“Now, my dear Nesta, this is just wonderful. I am glad to see you again. Do you remember the shrimps and the wading, and how we bathed on a certain morning that shall be nameless?”
Nesta coloured and glanced at Penelope. Flossie, without taking any notice of Nesta, went straight up to Penelope.
“Well,” she said, “and how are you? What is all this fuss about? Why should you, who hoped to be a grand lady, go off to a dull German school? I am sure I should hate it.”
“I don’t,” said Penelope. “I like it very much.”
“Nesta,” said Mrs Griffiths, “just come along and have a walk with me all alone.”
Nesta was forced to comply.
“Is it true,” said Mrs Griffiths, in an awe-struck tone, “that you are hand in glove with those aristocratic St. Justs?”
“I am not,” said Nesta, who with all her faults was very downright. “Only Angela, one of the family, has been very kind to me, more than kind. She wouldn’t have noticed me but for Marcia, dear Marcia. I owe it all to her.”
“To your sister Marcia, that priggish girl, the old maid of the family as you used to call her? Miss Mule Selfish?”
Mrs Griffiths laughed.
“I did roar over that name,” she said. “I told Griffiths about it, and I thought he wouldn’t never stop laughing. He said it was the best and very smartest thing he had ever heard any girl say. It was you who gave it, wasn’t it?”
“I did; I am horrible sorry, for she isn’t Miss Mule Selfish at all. The name fits me best,” said Nesta.
“Oh, my word,” said Mrs Griffiths. “How queer you are. You are much changed; I doubt if you are improved. Flossie, come along here this minute.”
Flossie ran forward.
“What do you think Nesta calls herself now?”
“What?” said Flossie, who was not specially inclined to be friendly.
“Why, she says she was all wrong about that fine-lady sister of hers, and that she herself is Miss Mule Selfish.”
“Very likely,” said Flossie. “I always did think Nesta a remarkably selfish girl, even when she was supposed to be my great friend. Mother, have you told her?”
“No,” said Mrs Griffiths, “I have been asking her about herself. She is going to the German school, and she seems quite pleased.”
“Yes, I am delighted,” said Nesta.
“Well then, you may as well tell her now,” said Flossie.
“It’s this,” said Mrs Griffiths, slightly mincing her words and speaking in a rather affected tone, “that Floss and I are going to London, for father—we always call him father, don’t we, Floss?—that is Mr Griffiths, you know, has got a splendid opening there, and he is taking a very fine house in Bayswater, and we are to live there, and Flossie will have masters for music and dancing, and she will come out presently, and perhaps make a great match, for I am given to understand that the men admire her very much, with her black eyes and her rosy cheeks.”
“Oh, don’t,” said Flossie, flushing, it is true, but at the same time flashing her eyes with a delighted glance from Nesta to Penelope. “We’ll be very rich in the future,” she said, in a modest tone, and then she dropped her eyes.
There was a dead pause for a minute or two.
“Father has been having some luck lately,” said Mrs Griffiths, “and so perhaps he’ll ride over the heads even of the grand Aldworths, and even of you Carters, although you do own a fine place like Court Prospect.”
“We are very glad,” said Nesta.
“I thought, perhaps,” said Flossie, “it would be best to say that seeing the change in my circumstances, I wish to have nothing more to do with you, Nesta Aldworth.”
“It seems unkind,” said Mrs Griffiths. “I didn’t much like coming up here to say it, but Flossie was determined.”
“It was father and I who settled it last night,” said Flossie. “I spoke to him about it, and he said that such a very deceitful girl could have nothing to do with me in the future; so this is good-bye. I wish you well, of course. I would not wish my worst enemy anything but well, but whatever happens in the future I cannot know you.”
“Very well; of course I am sorry. I know I behaved like a perfect horror,” said Nesta.
“You say that!” cried Flossie. There was a queer look in her black eyes. She fully expected that Nesta would make a scene and get, in short, into one of her celebrated tantrums; but Nesta’s eyes kept on being sorry, and Penelope said:
“Oh, don’t let’s talk about disagreeables. If we are all happy in our own way, why should we nag and jar at one another? Do come into the house, Mrs Griffiths, and have some tea, and if father is anywhere round I’ll ask him to have a chat with you. I am sure he will be delighted to hear that Mr Griffiths had made a lot of money.”
“Not so much made, my dear,” said Mrs Griffiths, going on in front with Penelope, “but in the making. That’s it—it’s in the making. We are likely to be richer and richer. Father is so excited you can scarcely hold him in bounds. But there, my dear, there. I am sorry Flossie is so rude, but the child’s head is turned by her fine prospects.”
When they got near the house Nesta turned and looked at Flossie.
“So you are never going to speak to me again, even though—”
“Well?” said Flossie.
“Even though we were such friends always.”
“You never really loved me; I don’t believe it a bit,” was Flossie’s response. “Did you, now?”
“I think I did,” said Nesta; “in a horribly selfish way perhaps.”
“Well, you were fairly generous, that I will say,” continued Flossie, “with regard to your yellow-boy. Anyhow, I’ll try to think kindly of you. Take a kiss and we’ll say no more about it.”
Nesta thought that to kiss Flossie at that moment was one of the hardest things she had to do. But then she was doing a great many hard things just then, and she found as life went on that she had to go on doing hard things, harder and harder each day; a fault to be struggled with each day, a lesson to be learnt, for hers was by no means an easy character. She was not naturally amiable; she was full of self-will, pride, and obstinacy; but nevertheless, that sweet germ of love which Angela had planted in her heart that day down by the river, kept on growing and growing, sometimes, it is true, very nearly nipped by the frosts of that wintry side of her nature, or scorched by the tempests of her violent passions, but nevertheless, the fires of summer, and the frosts of winter could not quite destroy it, for it was watered by something higher than anything Nesta could herself impart to it.
“Nesta is the best of them all,” said Marcia, a long time afterwards to Angela, “and she owes it to you.”
“No,” said Angela, “she owes it to God.”
The End.