Kitabı oku: «Three Girls from School», sayfa 10
“Then how in the world am I to pay the thirty pounds to Mrs Priestley?”
“I am coming to that. There is a lovely, lovely necklace in one of those shops full of articles of vertu in the town. It is worth, I know for a fact from fifty to sixty pounds; but I think your aunt could get it for forty. Now I want you to coax her to give it to you.”
“Oh Annie, what is the use? Is it likely that Aunt Henrietta, when she is so furious with me about a bill at my dressmaker’s, would spend forty pounds on one necklace just for me?”
“She is absolutely certain to do it if you manage her rightly; and I will help you. The necklace is a great bargain even at forty pounds. It is of real old pearls in a wonderful silver setting. Now a beautiful old necklace, once the property of a French marquise, which can be bought for forty pounds is a bargain. Lady Lushington loves making bargains. You must secure it.”
“Well, Annie, even if I do get it – and I am sure I do not care a bit for the old thing at the present moment – what am I to do with it?”
“You are a stupid, May; you really are. Your aunt, Lady Lushington, will go with you, and probably with me, to the shop. We must take her there early for fear that some one else snaps up the bargain. She will buy the necklace and give it to you. She will tell you to be careful of it, and then, according to her way, she will forget all about it.”
“Yes, perhaps so; but still, I do not see daylight.”
“Well, I do,” said Annie. “We will sell the necklace at another shop for thirty pounds, and send the money immediately to Mrs Priestley. At the same time I will write her a long letter and tell her that she must take thirty pounds off her bill, and apologise for having, owing to a press of customers, put some one else’s account to yours. Thus all will be right. Your aunt Hennie will not object to paying forty pounds for your school dresses, so that will be settled; and we may be able to get a little more than thirty pounds for the pearl necklace, and thus have some funds in hand towards Mrs Lyttelton’s Christmas school bill.”
“Oh,” said Mabel, “it is awful – awful! Really, I sometimes think my head will give way under the strain. Of course it may succeed; but there are so many ‘ifs.’ Suppose the man to whom we are selling the necklace shows it in his window the next day; what will Aunt Henrietta say then?”
“You goose!” replied Annie. “We shall be in Zermatt by then; and I will make an arrangement with the shopman to keep the necklace out of the window until we are off. Now I have everything as clear as daylight. You must coax and coax as you know how for the beautiful necklace, and you must get your aunt Henrietta, if possible, to pay forty pounds for it. That is the only thing to be done, but it just needs tact and resource. I shall be present with my tact and resource. I will allow you to be alone with your aunt to-morrow morning, and then, when I think she has scolded you long enough, I will come innocently into the room, and you must start the subject of the necklace; then trust to me for the rest. Mrs Priestley is asked in this letter, which will never go – for the one with the thirty pounds will take its place – to send the full items of her account to Zermatt. She will do so; and your aunt will be so much in love with you for your economy, and so full of remorse at having accused you of extravagance, that she will probably give you another necklace when there, which one you can keep. The main thing, however, is to get through this little business to-morrow. Now go to bed and to sleep, May Flower, and never say again that your Annie does not help you out of scrapes.”
Chapter Eighteen
Dawn at Interlaken
The next day dawned, fresh, clear, and beautiful, with that exquisite quality in the air which so characterises Interlaken. Priscilla, when she opened her eyes in the tiny bedroom which was close to Annie’s and just as much under the roof – although no one thought her unselfish for selecting it – sprang out of bed and approached the window. The glorious scene which lay before her with the majestic Jung Frau caused her to clasp her hands in a perfect ecstasy of happiness. The pure delight of living was over her at that moment. It was permeating her young being. For a time she forgot her present ignoble position – the sin she had sinned, the deceit in which she had had such an important share. She forgot everything but just that she herself was a little unit in God’s great world, a speck in His universe, and that God Himself was over all.
The girl fell on her knees, clasped her hands, and uttered a prayer of silent rapture. Then more soberly she returned to her bed and lay down where she could look at the ever-changing panorama of mountain and lake.
They were going on to Zermatt on the following day; and Zermatt would be still more beautiful – a little higher up, a little nearer those mountains which are as the Delectable Mountains in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, past the power of man to describe. Priscie owned to herself, as she lay in bed, that she was glad she had come.
“It was not going to be nice at first,” she thought. “But this repays everything. I shall remember it all for the rest of my days. I am not a bit good, I know; I have put goodness from me. I have chosen ambition, and the acquiring of knowledge, and the life of the student, and by-and-by an appointment of some worth where I can enjoy those things which I thirst for. But whatever is before me, I am never going to forget this scene. I am never going to forget this time. It is wonderfully good of God to give it to me, for I am such a wicked girl. Annie and Mabel are wicked too, but they could never have done what they did without my help. I am, therefore, worse than they – much worse.”
A servant knocked at the door and brought in Priscilla’s first breakfast. The man laid the coffee and rolls on a little table by the girl’s bedside, and Priscilla sat up and enjoyed her simple meal, eating it with appetite When she had come to the last crumb a sudden thought forced itself on her mind: “What is the matter with Annie? How strangely Annie looked at me last night! Why has she taken each a violent antipathy to me? What have I done to annoy her?”
The thought had scarcely come to Priscilla when she heard a light tap at her door, and in reply to her “Come in,” Annie entered.
“I thought you would be awake and having your breakfast, Priscie.”
Annie tripped lightly forward. She seated herself on Priscie’s bed.
“Isn’t it a glorious morning?” said Priscie. “Isn’t the view lovely?”
“I suppose so,” replied Annie in an indifferent tone. “But, to tell the truth,” she added, “I have not had time either to think of the beauty of the morning or the beauty of the view.”
“You surprise me,” said Priscilla. “I can never think of anything else. Why, we are just here for that,” she continued, fixing her great dark-grey eyes on Annie’s face.
“Just here for that?” laughed Annie. “Oh, you oddity! we are not here for anything of the kind. We are staying at Interlaken because Lady Lushington thinks it fashionable and correct to spend a little time here in the autumn. From Zermatt, I understand, we are going to Lucerne, and then presently to the Italian lakes; that is, Mabel and Lady Lushington are going to the Italian lakes. Of course, you and I will have to go back to the dreary school.”
“Oh, but the school is not dreary,” said Priscilla.
“I am glad you find it agreeable; it is more than I do.”
“But I thought you loved your school.”
“It is better than my home – that is all I can say; but as to loving it,” Annie cried, “I love the world, and the ways of the world, and I should like some day to be a great, fine lady with magnificent clothes, and men, in especial, bowing down to me and making love to me! That is my idea of true happiness.”
“Well, it is not mine,” said Priscilla. She moved restlessly.
“How white you are, Priscie! You don’t look a bit well.”
“I am quite well. Why do you imagine I am not?”
“You are so sad, too. What are you sad about?”
As Annie boldly uttered the last words Priscilla’s face underwent a queer change. A sort of anguish seemed to fill it. Her mouth quivered.
“I shall never, never be quite happy again, Annie Brooke; and you know it.”
“Oh, you goose!” said Annie. “Do you mean to say you are letting your little fiddle-faddle of a conscience prick you?”
“It is the voice of God within me. You dare not speak of it like that!”
Annie settled herself more comfortably on the bed. She faced her companion defiantly.
“I know what you are about to do,” she said.
“What do you know?”
“And if you do it,” continued Annie, “and turn traitor to those who have trusted you – to your own schoolfellows – you will be the meanest Judas that ever walked the earth!”
Priscilla’s face was very white, almost as white as death.
“Leave my room, please,” she said. “Whatever I have done, I have done at your instigation; and whatever I do in the future is my affair and no one else’s. Leave the room immediately.”
“I won’t until you make me a promise.”
“I will make you no promise. I have had too many dealings with you in the past. Leave the room, please.”
Priscilla spoke with such dignity that Annie, cowed and almost terrified, was forced to obey.
She went out on the landing. Priscilla, for the time being, had completely routed her. She scarcely knew how to act.
“Of one thing I am certain,” she said to herself when she reached the shelter of her own tiny room, which had not nearly such a magnificent view of the mountain and lake as Priscilla’s chamber, but was a little bit larger, and therefore suited Annie better – “of one thing I am indeed certain,” said Annie to herself: “Priscilla means to make grave trouble, to upset everything. Oh, well, I am glad I know. Was I ever wrong in my intuitions? I had an intuition that Priscilla was going to set her foot on all my little plans. But you sha’n’t, dear old Pris. You will go back to England as soon as ever I can get you there, and trust Annie Brooke for finding a way. This clinches things. As soon as ever I have settled Mrs Priestley and the affair of the necklace I must turn my attention to you, Priscie. There is no earthly reason, now I come to think of it, why everything should not be managed within the scope of this little day. Why should Priscie accompany us to Zermatt? I am sure she is no pleasure to any one with those great, reproachful eyes of hers, and that pale face, and those hideous garments that always remind me of poor consumptive Susan Martin and her silly poems. Yes, I think I can manage that you, dear Priscie, return to England to-morrow, while Lady Lushington, Mabel, and I proceed to Zermatt. Your little schoolfellow Annie Brooke, I rather imagine, is capable of tackling this emergency.” Accordingly, Annie dressed swiftly and deftly, as was her way, coiling her soft golden hair round her small but pretty head, allowing many little tendrils of stray curls to escape from the glittering mass, looking attentively into the shallows – for they certainly had no depths – of her blue eyes, regretting that her eyelashes were not black, and that her eyebrows were fair.
The day was going to be very hot, and Annie put on one of the fresh white cambric dresses which Lady Lushington’s maid kept her so well supplied with. Then she ran downstairs, as was her custom, for she always liked to be first in the breakfast salon in order to look over the morning’s post.
A pile of letters lay, as usual, by Lady Lushington’s plate. These Annie proceeded to take up one by one and to look at carefully. A lady, a certain Mrs Warden, who had made the acquaintance of Lady Lushington since she came to the hotel, came into the breakfast-room unobserved by Annie, and noticed the girl’s attitude. Her table was, however, situated in a distant part of the room, and Annie did not know that she was watched. Amongst the pile of letters she suddenly saw one addressed to herself. It had evidently been forwarded from the Grand Hotel in Paris, and was written in a bold, manly hand. Annie felt, the moment she touched this letter, that there was fresh trouble in store for her. She had an instinctive dislike to opening it. She guessed immediately that it was written by her cousin, John Saxon. Still, there was no use in deferring bad tidings, if bad tidings there were, and she would do well to acquaint herself with the contents before Mabel or Lady Lushington appeared.
It was one of Lady Lushington’s peculiarities always to wish to have her coffee and rolls in the breakfast salon. She said that lying in bed in the morning was bad for her figure, and for this reason alone took care, whatever had been the fatigues of the previous day, to get up early. Priscilla, strange as it may seem, was the only one of the party who had her rolls and coffee in her own room. But that Priscilla liked to rush through her breakfast, and then day after day to go out for a long ramble all alone, whereas Lady Lushington preferred to linger over her meal and talk to those acquaintances whom she happened to meet and know in the hotel.
Annie glanced at the clock which was hung over the great doorway, guessed that she would have two or three minutes to herself, and, taking a chair, seated herself and opened John Saxon’s letter. It was very short and to the point, and Annie perceived, both to her annoyance and distress, that it had been written some days ago.
“Dear Annie,” it ran, “I promised to let you know if your uncle was worse and if your presence here was a necessity. I grieve to say that it is; he is very far from well, and the doctor is in constant attendance. Your uncle does not know that I am writing this letter; but then, I am sorry to tell you that he has not often known during the last few days what is passing around him. He is quite confined to his bed, and lives, I believe, in a sort of dream. In that dream he is always talking of you. He often imagines that you come into the room, and over and over he begs that you will hold his hand. There is not the least doubt that he is pining for you very much, and it is your absolute duty to return to him at once. I hope this letter will be forwarded from the Grand Hotel in Paris, as you have forgotten, my dear Annie, to give us any further address. I am, therefore, forced to send it there. If you will send me a wire on receipt of this, I will manage to meet you in London; and in case you happen to want money for your return journey – which seems scarcely likely – I am enclosing two five-pound notes for the purpose. Do not delay to come, for there is imminent danger, and in any case your place is by the dear old man’s bedside. – I am, dear Annie, your affectionate cousin, John Saxon.”
Annie had barely read this letter and crushed it with its precious two five-pound notes into her pocket before Lady Lushington and Mabel made their appearance. Mabel looked rather white and worried. Lady Lushington, on the contrary, was in a good-humour, and seemed to have forgotten her vexation of the previous day; but Annie’s scarlet face and perturbed manner could not but attract the good lady’s attention.
“What is the matter, Miss Brooke? Is anything troubling you?”
“Oh no; at least, not much,” said Annie. She reflected for a minute, wondering what she could safely say. “The fact is, Uncle Maurice – the dear old uncle with whom I live – is not quite well. He is a little poorly, and confined to bed.”
“Then you would, of course, like to return to him,” said Lady Lushington, speaking quickly and with decision.
“Oh,” said Annie hastily and scalding herself with hot coffee as she spoke, “that is the very last thing Uncle Maurice wishes. It is quite a passing indisposition, and he is so glad that I am here enjoying my good time. I will wire, dear Lady Lushington, if you will permit me, after breakfast, and give my uncle and the cousin who is with him our address at Zermatt. Then if there should be the slightest danger I can go to him immediately, can I not?”
“Of course, child,” said Lady Lushington, helping herself to some toast; “but I should imagine that if he were ill your place now would be at his bedside.”
“Oh, but it would distress him most awfully – that is, of course, unless you wish to get rid of me – ”
“You know we don’t wish that, Annie,” said Mabel.
“Certainly we don’t,” said Lady Lushington in a more cordial tone. “You are exceedingly useful, and a pleasant, nice girl to take about. I have not half thanked you for all the help you have given me. If you can reconcile it to your conscience to remain while your uncle, who must stand in the place of a father to you, is ill, I shall be glad to keep you; so rest assured on that point.”
“I can certainly reconcile it to my conscience,” said Annie, breaking a roll in two as she spoke; “for, you see, it is not even as though my uncle Maurice were alone. My cousin can look after him.”
“Oh, you have a girl cousin? I did not know of that.”
“Not a girl; he is a man. His name is John Saxon.”
“What!” said Lady Lushington, her eyes sparkling; “Mr Saxon, the young Australian? Why, I met him in London last year. What a splendid fellow he is! I have seldom met any one I admired so much; and they say he is exceedingly rich. I want him to come over to London and enjoy himself for one of the seasons. I could get him no end of introductions.”
“He is with my uncle now,” said Annie, speaking rather faintly, for it seemed to her as though entanglements were spreading themselves round her feet more and more tightly each moment. “Doubtless he is a good nurse,” said Lady Lushington. She then turned the conversation to other matters.
After breakfast Annie went out and sent her telegram. In this she gave the address of the hotel where they were going to stay at Zermatt, at the same time saying that she much regretted, owing to the grave complications, that she could not leave Lady Lushington for a few days. She spent a fair amount of John Saxon’s money on this telegram, in which she begged of him to give her love to Uncle Maurice, and to say that if he really grew worse she would go to him notwithstanding that business which was involving all the future of her friend.
The telegram was as insincere as her own deceitful heart, and so it read to the young man, who received it later in the day. A great wave of colour spread over his face as he read the cruel words, but he felt that he was very near the presence of death itself, and not for worlds would he disturb the peace of that departing saint who was so soon to meet his Maker face to face.
“I will not wire to her,” he said to himself; “but if the old man still continues to fret, and if the doctor says that his longing for Annie is likely to shorten his days, I shall go to Zermatt and fetch her home myself. Nothing else will bring her. How could dear old Mr Brooke set his affections on one like Annie? But if he can die without being undeceived as to her true character, I at least shall feel that I have not lived in vain.”
Meanwhile, as these thoughts were passing through the mind of a very manly and strong and determined person, Annie herself was living through exciting times. She was not without feeling with regard to her uncle. After a certain fashion she loved him, but she did not love him nearly as well as she loved her own selfish pleasures and delights. She was sadly inexperienced, too, with regard to real illness. Her belief was that John Saxon had exaggerated, and that dear, kind Uncle Maurice would recover from this attack as he had done from so many others. Now she had much to attend to, and forced herself, therefore, after the telegram had gone, to dismiss the matter from her mind.
As Annie had predicted, Lady Lushington did call Mabel into her private sitting-room soon after early breakfast on that eventful day, and did speak very seriously to her with regard to Mrs Priestley and her bill.
“I don’t pretend for a single moment,” said Aunt Henrietta, “that I am poor, and that I am unable to meet a bill of three times that amount; but I do not choose you to be wantonly extravagant, Mabel, and it is simply an unheard-of and outrageous thing that a schoolgirl should spend seventy pounds on dress during one short term. You know I invariably pay your dressmaker at the end of each term. Now this bill is more than double the amount of any that I have hitherto paid for you. Will you kindly explain why it rises to such enormous dimensions?” Mabel was very much frightened, and stammered in a way that only increased her aunt’s displeasure.
“What is the matter with you, May? Can’t you speak out? Are you concealing anything from me?”
“Oh no, no, indeed, Aunt Hennie – indeed I am not! Only the fact is, I am quite certain Mrs Priestley must have made a mistake.”
“What is all this about?” said Annie Brooke, who entered the room at that moment.
“Oh, we were talking business.”
“I beg your pardon. Shall I go away?”
“No, don’t, Miss Brooke,” said Lady Lushington rather crossly; “you are really wanted here to help to clear matters. Seeing that I am honoured by the possession of so clever a niece as Mabel, I wish she would not on every possible occasion act the fool. She is as stupid over this outrageous bill as though she were an infant.”
“Well, Mabel,” said Annie, “you know quite well that you had some nice dresses, hadn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Mabel, who seemed to have a wonderful amount of added courage now that Annie had appeared on the scene. Then she nimbly quoted a description of the beautiful gowns which Annie had falsely described the day before.
“Most unsuitable for a schoolgirl,” said Lady Lushington. “And where are they, may I ask?”
“Oh, I – I – left them at school,” said Mabel.
“Worse and worse; you seem to have lost your head.”
“Poor May!” said Annie; “no wonder. You must know, Lady Lushington, that after your letter came May nearly worked herself into a fever to get that literature prize. She could think of nothing else. She did so long to be with you; didn’t you, May?”
“Indeed I did,” replied Mabel.
“Well, that is gratifying, I suppose,” said Lady Lushington; “although I am by no means certain, my dear May, that I return the compliment. My impression is that another year at that excellent school would do you no end of good. Well, you lost your head trying to get that prize. But how could that fact affect Mrs Priestley’s bill?”
“I mean,” said Mabel, “that I forgot about packing my dresses and taking them away, and I had not an idea that my bill amounted to that. In fact,” she added, meeting Annie’s eyes, “I am quite positive that Mrs Priestley has made a mistake, and that you will find the bill – ”
Here she hesitated.
“I,” said Annie, “happen to know pretty well what May’s lovely dresses cost. Oh, you know, Lady Lushington, we thought them perfectly ruinous in price – we schoolgirls; for our best dresses usually come to from three to four pounds. But May’s – oh, some of hers were up to ten or twelve guineas. Even so, however, I don’t think May can owe Mrs Priestley more than forty pounds.”
“Then the woman’s a thief and a cheat!” said angry Lady Lushington.
“I think, perhaps,” said Annie, speaking in her gentlest tones, “it might be fairest to let her explain. She has probably – oh, she has such numbers of customers! – put down some items that don’t belong to Mabel in her account.”
“Well, well, we shall see,” said Lady Lushington. “You posted that letter, didn’t you, Miss Brooke?” Then she added, hastily and without waiting for an answer, “I shall be glad if it is so. I make no objection to paying forty pounds, but I do draw the line at seventy.”
“Thank you, auntie; thank you so much,” said Mabel, running up to her aunt and kissing her.
“Now don’t, my dear! You disturb the powder on my cheek. Do sit down; don’t be so impulsive.”
“I know what you are wanting to do; I know what is in your head, you silly Mabel,” said Annie at this juncture.
Lady Lushington looked up. “What is it?” she asked.
“Oh,” said Annie, “it is that necklace – that wonderful, amazing bargain.”
Lady Lushington pricked up her ears. She could not – and all her friends were aware of the fact – ever resist a bargain. She would have gone from one end of London to the other to secure the most useless old trash if she was firmly convinced in her own mind that she had to get it as a bargain. She now, therefore, sat up with sparkling eyes, and Mrs Priestley and her bill were as absolutely forgotten as though they had never existed.
“There are no bargains at Interlaken,” was her next remark.
“Oh, are there not?” said Annie. “Mabel and I know something very different from that.”
“What is it, my dear? What is it?”
“Well,” said Annie, “it was I who found it out. I showed it to May yesterday. You know Zick the jeweller in the little High Street?”
“Of course; his shop is full of rubbish.”
“There is a necklace there which is not rubbish,” said Annie, “and the best of it is that he is not a bit aware of its value himself.”
“A necklace? What sort?”
“He can’t be aware of its value,” said Annie, “which is very surprising, for these Swiss are so sharp; but I can assure you I was taught to recognise the beauty of good pearls, and there are some lovely ones in that necklace. Now nothing in all the world would be so becoming to May as real, good pearls; and this necklace – it belonged to an old French marquise, who was obliged to sell it, poor dear! to get ready cash. Zick paid – oh, he would not tell me what; but he is offering it for a mere bagatelle.”
“My dear Miss Brooke – a bagatelle!”
“Yes; only forty pounds.”
“Nonsense!” said Lady Lushington. “Forty pounds! All the contents of his shop are not worth that sum.”
“I dare say you are right,” said Annie, by no means abashed; “with the exception of the necklace. But now, you are a judge of jewels, aren’t you?”
“Well, I rather flatter myself that I am.”
“I saw two or three ladies from this hotel looking at the necklace yesterday. I was dying to tell you, but I had not an opportunity. I am so awfully afraid it may be snapped up. Do, do come at once and look at it!”
“If they are really fine pearls,” said Lady Lushington – “and the old French noblesse were noted for the beauty of some of their gems – it would be exceedingly cheap – exceedingly cheap at forty pounds. But then, of course, the whole thing is a hoax.”
“Oh, do, do come and see! It would be such a beautiful present for May.”
“She can’t wear ornaments until she is presented,” said Lady Lushington.
“Well, but think what even a string of pearls would cost, you know, in Bond Street.”
“Of course I know I could not get anything decent under a hundred pounds. You say forty pounds. Of course, the thing could be re-set – Would you really like it, May?”
“Like it?” said Mabel, trembling. “I’d – I’d adore it, auntie!”
“Well,” said Lady Lushington, “if your conjecture, Miss Brooke, with regard to Mrs Priestley is correct and Mabel has really only spent forty pounds on her dress, I should not mind doing a deal for the necklace; but as things are – ”
“As things are,” said Annie, “I should not be one scrap surprised if Mrs Warden has the necklace already in her possession. It is certain to be bought up immediately, for it is a real bargain.”
“In that case,” said Lady Lushington, “I had better, Mabel, ring for Parker. I will just walk down with you to Zick’s. You can both come with me.”
Annie skipped as she ran up to her attic bedroom. Mabel, it may be mentioned, had a very nice room on the same floor as her aunt.
Priscie was out and all alone among the mountains. So much the better. Uncle Maurice, in his room which faced west, was listening for a light footstep that did not come, for the pressure of a little hand that was not present, for the love that he imagined shone out of blue eyes, but which in reality was not there. Annie forgot both Priscie and Uncle Maurice. Things were going swimmingly. How clever she was! How abundantly Mabel would thank her and love her and help her all the rest of her days!
Lady Lushington, accompanied by the two girls, went to Zick’s, and soon began the fierce war of words over the necklace. She perceived at once that Annie was right, and that the pearls were a very great bargain even at forty pounds; but she would not have been a true bargain-hunter if she did not try to bring Zick to accept lower terms. Unfortunately for her, however, two other ladies had been in the shop that morning, had examined the necklace, and had promised to call again. Lady Lushington, in the end, was afraid of losing it. She paid the money, and the necklace became her property.
“Oh May, you are in luck!” said Annie. “Lady Lushington has bought this for you.”
Mabel looked longingly at the little box in her aunt’s hand.
“Take it, child,” said Lady Lushington impulsively. “Be sure you don’t lose it. Let Parker pack it for you to-night with your other small trinkets; but on no account wear it until after your presentation. Really, those pearls are so fine that I think they might be re-set for the occasion. It is my strong impression that I have only given half the worth of that necklace to Zick. What an idiot the man must be to sell it so cheap!”
