Girls of the Forest Part 47

Miss Tredgold took the little girl's hands and put them inside the bedclothes.

"I am going to get you a cup of tea," she said.

Miss Tredgold made the tea herself; and when she brought it, and pushed back Pauline's tangled hair, she observed a narrow gold chain round her neck.

"Where did she get it?" thought the good lady. "Mysteries get worse. I know all about her little ornaments. She has been talking in a most unintelligible way. And where did she get that chain?"

Miss Tredgold's discoveries of that morning were not yet at an end; for by-and-by, when the servant brought in Pauline's dress which she had been drying by the kitchen fire, she held something in her hand.

"I found this in the young lady's pocket," she said. "I am afraid it is injured a good bit, but if you have it well rubbed up it may get all right again."

Miss Tredgold saw in the palm of the girl's hand her own much-valued and long-lost thimble. She gave a quick start, then controlled herself.

"You can put it down," she said. "I am glad it was not lost."

"It is a beautiful thimble," said the girl. "I am sure Johnson, the jeweller in the High Street, could put it right for you, miss."

"You had better leave the room now," replied Miss Tredgold. "The young lady will hear you if you talk in a whisper."

When the maid had gone Miss Tredgold remained for a minute or two holding the thimble in the palm of her hand; then she crossed the room on tiptoe, and replaced it in the pocket of Pauline's serge skirt.

For the whole of that day Pauline lay in a languid and dangerous condition. The doctor feared mischief to the brain. Miss Tredgold waited on her day and night. At the end of the third day there was a change for the better, and then convalescence quickly followed.

Mr. Dale made his appearance on the scene early on the morning after the accident. He was very much perturbed, and very nearly shed tears when he clasped Penelope in his arms. But in an hour's time he got restless, and asked Verena in a fretful tone what he had left his employment for. She gave him a fresh account of the whole story as far as she knew it, and he once more remembered and asked to see Pauline, and actually dropped a tear on her forehead. But by the midday train he returned to The Dales, and long before he got there the whole affair in the White Bay was forgotten by him.

In a week's time Pauline was p.r.o.nounced convalescent; but although she had recovered her appet.i.te, and to a certain extent her spirits, there was a considerable change over her. This the doctor did not at first remark; but Miss Tredgold and Verena could not help noticing it. For one thing, Pauline hated looking at the sea. She liked to sit with her back to it. When the subject was mentioned she turned fidgety, and sometimes even left the room. Now and then, too, she complained of a weight pressing on her head. In short, she was herself and yet not herself; the old bright, daring, impulsive, altogether fascinating Pauline seemed to be dead and gone.

On the day when she was considered well enough to go into the drawing-room, there was a festival made in her honor. The place looked bright and pretty. Verena had got a large supply of flowers, which she placed in gla.s.ses on the supper-table and also on a little table close to Pauline's side. Pauline did not remark on the flowers, however. She did not remark on anything. She was gentle and sweet, and at the same time indifferent to her surroundings.

When supper was over she found herself alone with Penelope. Then a wave of color rushed into her face, and she looked full at her little sister.

"Have I done it or have I not, Pen?" she said. "Have I been awfully wicked--the wickedest girl on earth--or is it a dream? Tell me--tell me, Pen. Tell me the truth."

"It is as true as anything in the wide world," said Pen, speaking with intense emphasis and coming close to her sister. "There never was anybody more wicked than you--_'cept_ me. We are both as bad as bad can be. But I tell you what, Paulie, though I meant to tell, I am not going to tell now; for but for you I'd have been drownded, and I am never, never, never going to tell."

"But for me!" said Pauline, and the expression on her face was somewhat vague.

"Oh, Paulie, how white you look! No, I will never tell. I love you now, and it is your secret and mine for ever and ever."

Pauline said nothing. She put her hand to her forehead; the dull weight on her head was very manifest.

"We are going home next week," continued Pen in her brightest manner.

"You will be glad of that. You will see Briar and Patty and all the rest, and perhaps you will get to look as you used to. You are not much to be proud of now. You are seedy-looking, and rather dull, and not a bit amusing. But I loves you, and I'll never, never tell."

"Run away, Pen," said Miss Tredgold, coming into the room at that moment.

"You are tiring Pauline. You should not have talked so loud; your sister is not very strong yet."

CHAPTER XXIV.

PLATO AND VIRGIL.

Mr. Dale returned home to find metamorphosis; for Betty and John, egged on by nurse, had taken advantage of his day from home to turn out the study. This study had not been properly cleaned for years. It had never had what servants are fond of calling a spring cleaning. Neither spring nor autumn found any change for the better in that tattered, dusty, and worn-out carpet; in those old moreen curtains which hung in heavy, dull folds round the bay-window; in the leathern arm-chair, with very little leather left about it; in the desk, which was so piled with books and papers that it was difficult even to discover a clear s.p.a.ce on which to write. The books on the shelves, too, were dusty as dusty could be. Many of them were precious folios--folios bound in calf which book-lovers would have given a great deal for--but the dust lay thick on them, and Betty said, with a look of disgust, that they soiled her fingers.

"Oh, drat you and your fingers!" said nurse. "You think of nothing but those blessed trashy novels you are always reading. You must turn to now.

The master is certain to be back by the late afternoon train, and this room has got to be put into apple-pie order before he returns."

"Yes," said John; "we won't lose the chance. We'll take each book from its place on the shelf, dust it, and put it back again. We have a long job before us, so don't you think any more of your novels and your grand ladies and gentlemen, Betty, my woman."

"I have ceased to think of them," said Betty.

She stood with her hands hanging straight to her sides; her face was quite pale.

"I trusted, and my trust failed me," she continued. "I was at a wedding lately, John--you remember, don't you?--d.i.c.k Jones's wedding, at the other side of the Forest. There was a beautiful wedding cake, frosted over and almond-iced underneath, and ornaments on it, too--cupids and doves and such-like. A pair of little doves sat as perky as you please on the top of the cake, billing and cooing like anything. It made my eyes water even to look at 'em. You may be sure I didn't think of Mary Dugdale, the bride that was, nor of poor Jones, neither; although he is a good looking man enough--I never said he wasn't. But my heart was in my mouth thinking of that dear Dook of Mauleverer-Wolverhampton."

"Who in the name of fortune is he?" asked nurse.

"A hero of mine," said Betty.

Her face looked a little paler and more mournful even than when she had begun to speak.

"He's dead," she said, and she whisked a handkerchief out of her pocket and applied it to her eyes. "It was bandits as carried him off. He loved that innocent virgin he took for his wife like anything. Over and over have I thought of them, and privately made up my mind that if I came across his second I'd give him my heart."

"Betty, you must be mad," said nurse.

"Maybe you are mad," retorted Betty, her face flaming, "but I am not. It was a girl quite as poor as me that he took for his spouse; and why shouldn't there be another like him? That's what I thought, and when the wedding came to an end I asked Mary Dugdale to give me a bit of the cake all private for myself. She's a good-natured sort is Mary, though not equal to Jones--not by no means. She cut a nice square of the cake, a beautiful chunk, black with richness as to the fruit part, yellow as to the almond, and white as the driven snow as to the icing. And, if you'll believe it, there was just the tip of a wing of one of those angelic little doves cut off with the icing. Well, I brought it home with me, and I slept on it just according to the old saw which my mother taught me.

Mother used to say, 'Betty, if you want to dream of your true love, you will take a piece of wedding-cake that belongs to a fresh-made bride, and you will put it into your right-foot stocking, and tie it with your left-foot garter, and put it under your pillow. And when you get into bed, not a mortal word will you utter, or the spell is broke. And that you will do, Betty,' said my mother, 'for three nights running. And then you will put the stocking and the garter and the cake away for three nights, and at the end of those nights you will sleep again on it for three nights; and then you will put it away once more for three nights, and you will sleep on it again for three nights. And at the end of the last night, why, the man you dream of is he.'"

"Well, and did you go in for all that gibberish?" asked nurse, with scorn.

She had a duster in her hand, and she vigorously flicked Mr. Dale's desk as she spoke.

"To be sure I did; and I thought as much over the matter as ought to have got me a decent husband. Well, when the last night come I lay me down to sleep as peaceful as an angel, and I folded my hands and shut my eyes, and wondered what his beautiful name would be, and if he'd be a dook or a marquis. I incline to a dook myself, having, so to speak, fallen in love with the Dook of Mauleverer-Wolverhampton of blessed memory. But what do you think happened? It's enough to cure a body, that it is."

"Well, what?" asked nurse.

"I dreamt of no man in the creation except John there. If that isn't enough to make a body sick, and to cure all their romance once and for ever, my name ain't Betty Snowden."

John laughed and turned a dull red at this unexpected ending to Betty's story.

"Now let's clean up," she said; "and don't twit me any more about my dreams. They were shattered, so to speak, in the moment of victory."

The children were called in, particularly Briar and Patty, and the room was made quite fresh and sweet, the carpet taken up, the floor scrubbed, a new rug (bought long ago for the auspicious moment) put down, white curtains hung at the windows in place of the dreadful old moreen, every book dusted and put in its place, and the papers piled up in orderly fashion on a wagonette which was moved into the room for the purpose.

Finally the children and servants gazed around them with an air of appreciation.