Chapter 22 The Girls of St. Wode's by L. T. Meade
THE PROMISE
Annie dragged her companion in the direction of the boat-house. A man was standing in the deepest shadow. When the girls came up he took a step forward, then, seeing two, he started back.
“It is all right, Rupert,” cried Annie. “I – I have got the money.”
Leslie, who was watching him attentively, saw him change color. He had a bronzed cheek and a keen, dark eye. The bronze left his cheek now, and his eyes flashed fire.
“Is it true?” he said.
Annie held out both her hands to him. He clasped them so tight that it was with difficulty she could repress a cry; but as he did so he looked beyond her at Leslie. There was alarm and incredulity in his glance.
“It is all right; I brought her here, or, rather, she would come. It is through her I got it. All my life I must thank her for what she has done for you.”
“This is more than I can bear,” cried Leslie. “I have come here, it is true, Mr. Colchester; but not for the purpose you think. I have come here to tell you what I think of you. I do not know what trouble you have got into, nor do I wish to know; but I do know what your sister has done. I blame her – yes, I blame her most bitterly; but I blame you more.”
“Don’t tell, don’t tell!” cried Annie. She came up to Leslie, and tried to put her hand across her mouth.
“I will tell him; but no one else,” said Leslie. “He must know; he drove you to it, and he must know. Listen,” she added. She came up close to Rupert Colchester, and stared him full in the face.
“Your sister wrote a letter in my name to my best friend. She wrote it to the man who is kinder to me than anyone else in the world. She signed the letter with my signature, and he thought that it came from me. Having written the letter, she made an excuse to go to London yesterday, and took it to him. It contained a request to give me, because I had gone into debt, sixty pounds. The money was to be given in notes and gold. She brought the money back, and now she, not I, is giving it to you.”
“Indeed!” said the man. He started back. He looked from Annie to Leslie.
“I didn’t know you were clever enough for that,” he said; “it seems to run in our blood – I mean the capacity for thieving. I did not know you could do it. You are clever enough, Annie, and you have cheek enough; but to do that, to commit a forgery, and to drag another girl in!”
“It was done for you, and you of all people ought not to blame her,” said Leslie.
“You had cheek,” repeated Colchester. He laid his hand lightly on his sister’s shoulder. “I thank you from my heart, of course, and you, too, Miss – Miss – I don’t know your name.”
“You had better not know it; I don’t want you to. Yes, she did it, and Mr. Parker thinks that I am guilty. Do you quite realize, both of you, what Annie Colchester has done?”
“I realize it fast enough,” said Colchester; “but you are a merciful girl. I see it in your eyes.”
“Nevertheless, I will state the position quite plainly. Your sister, by writing such a letter, committed forgery.”
Annie uttered a deep groan, and covered her face. After a moment she raised her eyes, and glanced at Rupert. He was not looking at her; he was staring at Leslie.
“Try and keep quiet, Annie, and allow me to speak,” continued Leslie. “I do not intend to betray her. But I want you to know, Mr. Colchester, what it has cost me; it has nearly driven me mad. Think what it must mean to me. Mr. Parker imagines that I am the sort of girl who will go into debt, and then come to him to clear me. Do you know that because of this he came to Wingfield to-day? He sought me out; he spoke to me; he was in the deepest distress.”
“And you – you confided in him?” said Rupert Colchester. “Few girls would be noble enough – ”
“Oh, you do her injustice!” interrupted Annie. “She has not told; she has not betrayed us. Is it not brave of her?”
“I have not told,” said Leslie; “but I have had an awful struggle. If I told what Annie has really done it might get her into such fearful trouble that she would be ruined. She would have to leave St. Wode’s; her career would be practically over. Even if the law did not punish her, she would never do any good in this country again. I have saved her from that; but it was a great effort. I have come here to-night, Mr. Colchester, to tell you that you are the one most to blame. I am going to keep this thing to myself; but only on a condition. This is the most bitter moment of my life; this thing that Annie has done on account of you has turned both my present and my future into gall and bitterness. I was the happiest of girls yesterday; now I am the most miserable. My best friend thinks badly of me, and I can never set myself right with him. But I promise here willingly, before God, that I will not tell what Annie has done, if you, on your part, will make me a promise.”
“What is it?” said Colchester. “’Pon my word! you’re a brave sort of girl, and I don’t mind – that is, short of ruining myself.”
“It will not ruin you; it will save you. I want you to promise me to leave Annie alone in the future.”
Annie uttered a sharp cry.
“But I don’t wish to be left alone,” she said. “I cannot live without Rupert.”
“That you will leave Annie alone in the future,” continued Leslie; “that you will never again take money from her. That sixty pounds is my present to you. I exonerate Annie from all blame in the matter. She shall never get into trouble on my account if you, on your part, will keep your word.”
“You are plucky,” said Colchester. He was impressed by Leslie’s manner and by her remarkable beauty. The moon was shining full upon her face, which looked clear and pale and unearthly.
“You are a very plucky girl,” he repeated; “and Annie is in luck to have made you her friend. Yes, I am all right now. This little girl, or, rather, you, Miss” – he paused, but Leslie did not supply the name – “have made it all right for me.”
“Very well; I promise not to tell what Annie has done if you make me a promise not to blackmail her again.”
“Blackmail! that is an ugly word,” said Colchester; “after all, she is my sister.”
“The more shame on you to get your sister into trouble. I have a brother. Do you think he – but there, I cannot speak of him in the same breath with you. If you attempt to blackmail Annie any more I will tell Mr. Parker all about this matter. I will consider that the promise I have made to-day is no longer binding. Now, it rests with yourself. Bid your sister good-by, and go.”
“Oh, I cannot, cannot part with you, Rupert!” cried Annie.
She burst into a bitter flood of tears, flung her arms round her brother’s neck, and laid her head on his shoulder.
“There is nothing – nothing I would not do for you,” she sobbed.
Leslie moved away to a little distance. She had spoken with emphasis and spirit, but never in the whole course of her life had she felt so cold, so bitter. Although she had promised before God not to betray her miserable companion, yet she knew no sense of happiness. It seemed to her that she was setting the seal to her degradation. Never again could she be happy. Always now there would be one person who would think of her as a girl capable of any meanness, any smallness, any deceit. The mere knowledge that someone would so regard her troubled her so much that she wondered if, in the future, she could lead an upright life. And why was she doing it? For Annie did not appreciate her sacrifice, except in as far as it saved Rupert; and as to Rupert himself, it needed only to look into his face to see how weak and worthless he was.
Wrapped in the misery of these thoughts, Leslie did not notice Annie until she came back and touched her on the arm.
“He cannot praise you enough. You do not know what he has been saying of you. He wants to bid you good-by now. He is going to Australia; he has made up his mind. I shall never see him more.”
There was a note of such utter misery in Annie’s voice that Leslie, wretched as she was, started up and shook herself.
“Let him go,” she said. “I do not want to speak to him again.”
“But I so earnestly wish you would. He is terribly touched by what you have done. This may be the turning-point. Do come and shake hands with him.”
“I cannot.”
“You cannot? Leslie, do you think him as bad as all that?”
“He is very bad, Annie, and he is making you bad – and, oh, indirectly he is making me bad too. I cannot go; I can never touch his hand.”
“You are too hard,” said Annie. “I could have loved you for what you have done; but when you speak against him I cannot bear you.”
“Feel just as you please about me,” said Leslie; “but I cannot bid your brother good-by, nor shake hands with him. Come back to me when he has gone, and be quick. We ought to be in the house now. There is no use in our getting into fresh trouble.”
Annie turned slowly away. In about ten minutes she came back to Leslie.
“He has gone,” she said. “He will take his passage for Australia to-morrow. I shall never see him any more.”
Her tone was cold, calm, and low.
“Then let us return to the house,” said Leslie.
They went slowly across the quadrangle, entered by the side door, and went up to their room.
“I wish I was not your roomfellow, Annie,” said Leslie. “I never knew I could feel so bitter towards anyone.”
“You will get over it, dear, and, after all, as Rupert says – ”
“Oh, please don’t mention his name!”
Annie looked at her, a frown coming between her brows.
“I cannot understand you,” she said, after a pause. “You are so noble, and yet you are so hard. Are good, very good, people often like you?”
“I am not good. I don’t think I shall ever be good again,” said poor Leslie. She sat down on the nearest seat, and covered her face with her trembling hands.
Annie switched on the electric light.
“At least there need be no more study,” she said, after a pause.
Leslie did not take the slightest notice.
Annie sat down on a sofa, took up the novel she had been reading that afternoon, and turned a page or two listlessly. Presently she flung it down and uttered a heartrending sigh. That sigh reached Leslie. She looked up, and tried to speak in a cheerful tone.
“Are not you going to get out your books? You know you have so much to do before the honor examination?”
“I do not mean to study any more. Did not you hear me say so?”
“But why? I cannot understand.”
“The motive for study has gone. I shall take my pass exam., and let that suffice. I shall leave Wingfield at the end of term.”
“But why should you give up everything?”
“Why?” said Annie, “why?” She went over and stood by the window. The night wind came in and lifted a tress of her hair and played with it.
Leslie, seated on her own sofa at the farther end of the room, seemed always, in her moments of bitterest grief in the future, to see that tress of hair tossed up and down by the wind. The electric light in the room played on it, and brought out some of its red fire. Annie’s face was ghastly pale; but her eyes were large and too brilliant for health.
“Why should you give up everything?” repeated Leslie, after another pause.
“Why? Can’t you understand? Did you ever have a watch with a broken spring?”
“I think so; yes.”
“It was useless, was it not?”
“Of course; until it was mended.”
“Well, I am like that watch. The spring that guided my life is broken, and, unlike the watch, it can never be mended.”
“You forget that there is such a thing as a watchmaker; even for the human watch,” said Leslie, her tone softening.
“Granted; but I shall not put myself into His hands. Good-night, I am dead tired. I feel numb all over. I am going to bed. I want, beyond everything else on earth, to sleep.”
She threw herself down on her bed without an attempt at undressing.
Leslie started up to remonstrate. If Annie lay like that she would have a terrible cold in the morning. She advanced a step or two across the room, and then paused.
“After all, it does not matter,” she said to herself. “I should not have got into this awful scrape if I had not been good to her. I will leave her alone now. I have ruined myself absolutely and for ever; but I cannot – cannot be friends with her.”
“Rupert has gone, Rupert has gone,” moaned Annie, “and my sun has set.”
Leslie heard the words, but even they did not soften her.
“What has come to me?” she thought. “Has this trouble turned me into a stone?”