Girls of the Forest Part 53

"I told you not to mention that day," said Pauline. Her whole face changed. "I remember," she said slowly, but she checked herself. The words reached her lips, but did not go beyond them. "Put it down, Verena," she said. "Put it there on the mantelpiece."

"Then you won't tell me how you got it? It is not yours. You know it belongs to Aunt Sophy."

"And it is not yours, Renny, and you have no right to interfere. And what is more, I desire you not to interfere. I don't love anybody very much now, but I shall hate you if you interfere in this matter."

Verena laid the thimble on the mantelpiece.

"You can leave me, Renny. I am a very bad girl; I don't pretend I am anything else, but I won't talk to you now."

"Oh!" said poor Verena. "Oh!"

Before she reached the door of the room she had burst into tears. Her agony was so great at Pauline's behavior to her that her tears became sobs, and her sobs almost cries of pain. Pauline, lying on the bed, did not take the least notice of Verena. She turned her head away, and when her sister had left the room and shut the door Pauline sprang from the bed and turned the key in the lock.

"Now, I am safe," she thought. "What is the matter with me? There never was anything so hard as the heart that is inside me. I don't care a bit whether Renny cries or whether she doesn't cry. I don't care a bit what happens to any one. I only want to be let alone."

At dinner-time Pauline appeared, and tried to look as though nothing had happened. The other girls looked neat and pretty. They had not the least idea through what a tragedy Verena and Pauline were now living. Verena showed marks of her storm of weeping, and her face was terribly woebegone. Miss Tredgold guessed that things were coming to a crisis, and she was prepared to wait.

Now, Miss Tredgold was a very good woman; she was also a very wise and a very temperate one. She was filled with a spirit of forbearance, and with the beautiful grace of charity. She was all round as good a woman as ever lived; but she was not a mother. Had she been a mother she would have gone straight to Pauline and put her arms round her, and so acted that the hard little heart would have melted, and the words that could not pa.s.s her lips would have found themselves able to do so, and the misery and the further sin would have been averted. But instead of doing anything of this sort, Miss Tredgold resolved to a.s.semble the children after breakfast the next day, and to talk to them in a very plain way indeed; to a.s.semble all before her, and to entreat the guilty ones to confess, promising them absolute forgiveness in advance. Having made up her mind, she felt quite peaceful and happy, and went down to interview her brother-in-law.

Mr. Dale still continued to like his study. He made no further objection to the clean and carefully dusted room. If any one had asked him what was pa.s.sing in his mind, he might have said that the spirits of Homer and Virgil approached the sacred precincts where he wrote about them and lived for them night after night, and that they put the place in order.

He kept the rough words which he had printed in large capitals on the night when he had returned to his study still in their place of honor on the wall, and he worked himself with a new sense of zest and freedom.

Miss Tredgold entered the room without knocking.

"Well, Henry," she said, "and how goes the world?"

"The world of the past comes nearer and nearer," was his reply. "I often feel that I scarcely touch the earth of the nineteenth century. The world of the past is a very lovely world."

"Not a bit better than the world of the present," said Miss Sophia. "Now, Henry, if you can come from the clouds for a minute or two----"

"Eh? Ah! What are you saying?"

"From the clouds, my dear brother, right down to this present prosaic and workaday world. Can you, and will you give me five minutes of your attention?"

"Eh? Yes, of course, Sophia."

Mr. Dale sat very still, drumming with his right hand on his pad of blotting-paper. Miss Tredgold looked at him; then she crossed the room, took away the pad, his pen and ink, the open volume of Homer, and removed them to another table.

"Sit with your back to them; keep your mind clear and listen to me, Henry."

"To be sure."

"I want you to come into the schoolroom after breakfast to-morrow morning."

"To the schoolroom?"

"I have a reason. I should like you to be present."

"But it is just my most important hour. You commence lessons with the girls--when, Sophia?"

"We sit down to our work at nine o'clock. Prayers take ten minutes. I should like you to be present at prayers--to conduct Divine worship in your own house on that occasion."

"Oh, my dear Sophia! Not that I have any objection--of course."

"I should hope you have no objection. You will take prayers, and afterwards you will a.s.sist me in a most painful task which lies before me."

"Painful, Sophia? Oh, anything I can do to help you, my dear sister, I shall be delighted to undertake. What is it? I beg of you to be brief, for time does fly. It was only a quarter of an hour ago that I found Homer----"

"I could say a very ugly word about Homer," said Miss Tredgold.

"Sometimes I wish that I were a man in order that I might swear hard at you, Henry Dale. As I am a woman I must refrain. Do you know that your daughter Pauline, your daughter Briar, your daughter Patty, and your extraordinary daughter Penelope are all of them about as naughty children as they can be. Indeed, in the case of Pauline I consider her worse than naughty. What she has done I don't know, and I don't know what the others have done; but there is a weight on their minds, and those four girls must be got to confess. And you must be present, and you must speak as a father to them. Now do you understand?"

"I am to be in the schoolroom to-morrow," said Mr. Dale, "and four of my girls are turning wicked, and I am not to know what they have done. I will be in the schoolroom at nine o'clock to-morrow, Sophia. May I thank you to hand me back my blotting-pad, my pen and bottle of ink, and my beloved Homer? Take care of the volume. Take it tenderly. Put both hands under the binding. Ah! that is so. You will have the goodness to leave me now, Sophia. To-morrow morning at nine o'clock precisely."

Miss Tredgold went out of the room.

"How my poor dear sister ever brought herself to marry that man," she whispered under her breath, "I know not. But he is capable of being roused, and I rather fancy I shall manage to rouse him to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXVII.

PAULINE IN DISTRESS.

When Pauline went up to her room late that evening she gave Verena a very cold good-night. Her little fire was still burning, for nurse had taken care of it. Verena heard her lock the door. Had she not done so her sister would have gone to her, and begged and prayed, as such a sweet girl might, for the confidence of Pauline. Verena had to get into bed feeling lonely and unhappy. Just as she was doing so she heard a firm step walking down the corridor. A hand turned the handle of Pauline's door, and Verena heard Pen's voice say:

"It's me, Paulie. It's me. Let me in, Paulie."

Verena instantly opened her own door.

"Go away, Pen," she said. "Go straight back to your bed. You are not to go near Pauline to-night."

"Yes, but I want her," said Pauline, opening the door and putting out her head.

"Very well," said Verena. "You shall see her with me. I will ring the bell and ask nurse to fetch Aunt Sophy."

Pauline gave a shrill laugh.

"It isn't worth all that fuss. Go to bed, Pen. We shall have plenty of time for our chat to-morrow morning."

Penelope looked disgusted. Verena stood in the pa.s.sage until her stout little figure had disappeared. She then turned, hoping that Pauline would speak to her; but Pauline had gone into her room and locked the door.

Now, Pauline Dale was at this time going through a curious phase. She was scarcely to be blamed for her conduct, for what she had lately lived through had produced a sort of numbness of her faculties, which time seemed to have no intention of restoring to her. To look at her face now no one would suppose her to be in the ordinary sense of the word an invalid; for she was rosy, her eyes were bright, her appet.i.te was good, and she had plenty of strength. Nevertheless there was a certain part of her being which was numb and cold and half-dead. She was not frightened about anything; but she knew that she had behaved as no right-minded or honorable girl should have done. Verena's words that afternoon had roused her, and had given her a slight degree of pain. She lay down on her bed without undressing. She left the blind up so that the moon could shine through her small window, and she kept repeating to herself at intervals through the night the words that had haunted her when she was at Easterhaze: "Wash and be clean." It seemed to Pauline that the sea was drawing her. The insistent voice of the sea was becoming absolutely unpleasant. It echoed and echoed in her tired brain: "Wash--wash and be clean." After her accident she had hated the sea while she was there, but now she wanted to get back to it. She dreaded it and yet she was hungry for it.

As she lay with her eyes wide open it seemed to her that she was looking at the sea. It seemed to her, too, that she really did hear the murmur of the waves. The waves came close, and each wave as it pressed nearer and nearer to the excited child repeated the old cry: "Wash and be clean."

"Oh, if only I could get to the sea!" was her thought. She pressed her hand to that part of her forehead which felt numb and strange. All of a sudden the numbness and strangeness seemed to depart. She saw one vivid picture after another, and each picture revealed to her the sin which she had sinned and the wrong she had committed. At last she saw that fearful picture when she stood with her little sister in the White Bay, and the waves had so nearly drowned them. She sat up in bed. The idea of going straight to Aunt Sophia and of telling her everything did not occur to her. She wanted to get back to the sea. How could she manage this? She was not in the least afraid of Aunt Sophy; she was only afraid of the G.o.d whom she had offended. She got up, pushed back her black hair, tied it neatly behind her ears, and taking her little sailor-hat and her dark-blue serge jacket, she put them on. She would go back to the sea.

She did not know exactly how she could manage it, but somehow she would.