Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 13

"Nothing will help Professor Waite so much as the entire truth," Winnie replied. "Of course he is not the one who took the money. If the person really responsible can be discovered, or will confess, the Professor and all other innocent persons will be cleared from suspicion."

"Of course," Milly replied, looking at Winnie in a puzzled way. "And I am sure," she added hopefully, "that Mr. Mudge will find the guilty individual soon, if he is as keen as you all seem to think him. I really dread meeting him, and I am glad he has gone away for to-day. There goes the supper bell. What a long day this has been!"

After supper Milly woke to a consciousness that she had not prepared one of her lessons for the next day. She sat puckering her pretty forehead into ugly wrinkles, and repeating helplessly, "'Populi Romani!' I am sure I've had that before." Then she began a wild attempt at translation, with manifold running comments. "'Because Ariovistus, King of the Germans, had sat down on their boundaries--' Now, was there anything ever so absurd as that? Why did old Ariovistus want to sit down on their boundaries?"

"Perhaps the word doesn't mean boundaries here," Adelaide suggested, and Milly turned patiently to her lexicon--"If _finibus_ comes from _finitimus_ it may mean neighbors--and then Ariovistus sat down on his neighbors; well I must say that was cool----"

Milly worked on for a little while in silence, and then exclaimed, "I'm getting into the sensibility of it now--how's this? 'These things having been known, Caesar confirmed the mind of all Gaul with words.' He was always very generous of his words. We have a review to-morrow, and the ridiculosity of the whole thing comes out. Now just listen to this: 'Wherefore it pleased him to send legates to Ariovistus, who should ask him to appoint some place in the middle of the others for a colloquy. To these legates he responded if it was too much trouble for him to come to himself, himself would come to him and he--Caesar--would then find out who ought to do the coming. Besides, he would admire to see all Gaul in a row, and it was no business of Caesar's or his old Populo Romano.' I rather like his pluck but I'm afraid my translation is rather free.

Then here is a place that I am not quite sure about; 'The Helvetians, the Tulingians, and the Lotobigians, and all the other igians, in their boundaries or something, whence they had something else--he commanded to--thingummy; and because all their fruits were--were--frost bitten, I guess, and at home nothing was which could tolerate hunger--he commanded the other nink.u.ms that they should make for them copious corn--' I perfectly hate Caesar. He was always boasting of his own benefits and clemency to one tribe in making another support it, and then 'pacifying'

the other tribes by slaying a few thousand of their soldiers, and I just don't see the use of our muddling our heads with what that stupid, cruel, conceited old bandit did, anyhow. But if I don't know this lesson I shall not be able to pa.s.s in examination, and you will all graduate and leave me behind for ages and ages----"

Ordinarily Winnie could not have resisted such an appeal as this. I have known her to patiently translate all of Milly's lessons for her, and then as patiently explain them to her over and over again, until some faint idea of their meaning had penetrated her befogged little brain.

And having spent the evening thus, go unprepared to her geometry, and stoically receive a cipher as her cla.s.s mark, and see Cynthia carry off the honors of the day. But to-night Winnie did not seem to see the forget-me-not eyes turned appealingly to her. She appeared to be completely absorbed in her Cicero. I endured Milly's frowns as long as I could, and finally pushed aside my own studies, and said, "Come into my bedroom where we will not disturb the other girls, and I will straighten it out for you."

Milly was delighted. She threw her arms around my neck and thrust some cream peppermints into my pocket.

We were in the midst of Caesar's negotiations with Ariovistus, and had nearly finished the paragraph, when Milly suddenly looked up.

"Tib," she said, "do you know whatever became of Madame Celeste's last bill? I thought I put it in my bureau drawer, but I must have left it around somewhere. Have you seen it? I can't find it."

"Then you could not pay it this afternoon?" I asked evasively.

"Oh, yes! she made out another bill and receipted it for me, but I want to be sure that the first one is destroyed."

"I thought all your money was taken; where did you get enough to pay this bill?"

"Oh! that is a secret," she replied, with a pleased little flutter of importance. "It's no manner of consequence how I came by it. I've paid the bill--that's the essential thing--and I've got out of that dreadful quicksand. Oh, Tib, I have been so unhappy, and Cynthia has been so mean! I did not think it possible that any one could be so horrid."

"Tell me all about it, dear," I said, caressing the curly blond head which nestled on my knee.

"I believe I will. I feel like telling somebody, and Winnie is so queer lately--she freezes me. She has disapproved of me and scolded me ever since she found out about Cynthia's dress, and I can't bear to be disapproved of. It isn't one bit nice. Adelaide is perfectly splendid; she likes me and pets me, but perhaps she wouldn't if she knew everything; but you are just my dear old Tib. You would always like me, wouldn't you, even if I were real wicked?"

"Yes indeed, Milly," I replied; "and so would Winnie; you don't half realize her love for you."

"Then she has a very queer way of showing it. She makes me feel as if I had committed some dreadful sin, and she was urging me to confess. She is just about as pleasant a companion as that Florentine monk--what's his name? who kept nagging Lorenzo de Medici--even when the poor man was just as busy as he could be a-dying."

"Savonarola acted as he thought was kindest and best for his poor guilty friend. Sometimes the surgeon who probes our wound is the truest friend--But you are going to tell me about your trouble--I've noticed how red your little nose has been of late."

"It was partly Celeste's fault, too," Milly said. "Cynthia's and Celeste's and mine. Of course the fault was mostly mine. You see it all started with the minuet--with which Professor Fafalata closed his dancing cla.s.s just before the Christmas holidays. He wished us to be costumed in the Florentine style of the early part of the sixteenth century. I was talking it over with Celeste, and she said I ought to have the front of my petticoat covered with some jewelled net which she had just imported from Paris. It was very expensive, but very beautiful, and showy in the evening. The net was made of gold thread set with imitation amethysts and rubies, an arabesque design, copied from some mediaeval embroidery, and just the thing for me, since I was to represent a young princess of the house of Medici. I thought that I would write mother, who was in Florida then, and ask her to lend me one of her party dresses, and that it would be just the thing to put over it; and while I was admiring it and before I had really ordered it, or realized what she was doing, Celeste had cut me off a yard of it, and had charged it to my account--fifteen dollars. I brought it here, you remember, only to find that Madame had interested Professor Waite in the minuet, and that he had promised to lend the girls some beautiful costumes of the period which he had brought back from Paris. There was that lovely heliotrope velvet edged with ermine for Adelaide, and a faded pink brocade sprigged with primroses for me.

"So of course there wasn't the slightest need for my golden net. I carried it to Celeste to see if she would take it back. She said that she would like to oblige me, but as it was cut she couldn't quite do that, but she would try to dispose of it for me. And she did sell it a few days later for ten dollars. I thought that was better than to lose the entire sum. She handed me the money, saying that it would put her to some trouble to change her accounts, and I had better let the bill go in just as she had made it out, and I could hand mother the ten dollars and explain matters. I really intended to do so, but I was nearly bankrupt that month. My pocket money just seemed to walk away. I had invited Adelaide to see the play of the 'Harvard Hasty Pudding,' and of course I had to have Miss Noakes chaperone us, and I hadn't money enough left to buy the tickets."

"Why didn't you tell her so?" I asked.

"Oh! I couldn't back out after I had asked her; and I owed her a little treat of some kind, for she invited me to see the cadet drill at her brother's school.

"Well, after I had broken the ten dollar bill to get the tickets, the first thing I knew it was all gone. I knew mother wouldn't mind, and that I could tell her any time after she came home, but it never seemed necessary to mention it in my letters and I never did."

"Oh, Milly!"

"Horrid of me, wasn't it? But I had worse temptations. My pocket money is so very skimpy compared with what the other girls have, and with what I have, too, in the way of credit for certain things, that I am often really embarra.s.sed and have to turn and twist and borrow and pinch to make it stretch out. When you girls clubbed together and paid for Polo's sisters at the Home, I wanted awfully to help, but I couldn't.

You see father lets me subscribe so much annually to the Home and he sends in a check every year for me, and thinks that ought to be enough.

But I don't feel as though I was giving it at all, for it does not even pa.s.s through my hands. I don't deny myself to give it, as Adelaide does for her charities, and I haven't a penny for any special case of distress or sudden emergency which I may happen to hear of.

"Do you know, Tib, that Satan actually suggested to me how easily I might have extra pocket money by ordering things from Celeste, and letting her sell them again in just the same way that she managed with the golden net? I knew that she would be glad enough to do it, for I found out afterward that Rosario Ricos bought that net of Celeste and paid her full price for it! So you see she kept back five dollars on the second sale, besides making a good commission on the first."

"But you didn't do it, Milly dear; you surely did not obtain your charity money in any such dishonest way as that?"

"No, Tib. I didn't do it for charity. I some way felt that G.o.d would not accept such a gift from me; but there came a time when I had a worse temptation still. You know all last term papa used to ride with me every Sat.u.r.day afternoon either at the riding academy or in the Park. Well, something is the matter with his liver; it hurts him to trot, and he has had to give it up, and Wiggins took me out. But I hate riding with a groom, and so one day when papa called I told him I didn't care for any more riding this winter. This happened the week you went home to help tend your mother when she was sick, and that is the reason you never heard of it. I was taking father up to the studio when I said it, to show him Professor Waite's Academy picture, and papa was so vexed with me about my not wanting to ride that he didn't half notice the pictures.

"He took to Professor Waite, though, right away; and just as he was leaving asked him if he rode. 'When I am so fortunate as to have the opportunity,' Professor Waite replied.

"'Very good,' said papa. 'Then possibly you will oblige me by accompanying my daughter and one of her friends on an occasional ride in the park.' He explained that he had a good saddle horse, which needed exercise, which he would be glad to have him use; and that, what was more important, I needed exercise too, and was so perverse that I did not want to take it alone. 'And now,' said he, 'the cruel parent proposes, Milly, to pay for another horse for one of your other girl friends. I suppose you will choose Adelaide, and if Professor Waite will act as your escort occasionally, I think you can manage to extract some pleasure from the exercise.'

"Of course I was perfectly delighted, and hugged papa, and called him a dear old thing. Professor Waite, who had looked awfully bored and had even begun to mumble something about being too busy, began to take an interest in the matter as soon as Adelaide's name was mentioned, and papa had an interview with Madame and got her permission to let us ride every Sat.u.r.day morning. Adelaide was down at her tenement, and it was left that I was to tell her when she returned, and I thought everything was settled. But when Adelaide came in she was looking troubled over some of her tenants' tribulations and she only half listened to me.

"'I would like above all things to ride again,' she said 'as I used to on the plains when I lived out West; but there is no use talking about it, Milly dear, I can't do it. I have no riding habit, and I cannot afford to have one made. Thank you just as much, but don't say another word about it.'

"You can imagine how disappointed I was. I knew very well that neither Madame nor mamma would let me ride alone with Professor Waite, even if papa would permit it; and I knew, too, that the Professor would lose every bit of interest in the plan if Adelaide did not go. I was not thoroughly selfish, Tib. I wanted Adelaide to have a good time too, and I wanted Professor Waite to be happy. I told myself that if he loved Adelaide, I would do all I could to help him, and perhaps some day he would remember that it was through me that he had won her, and like me a little for it, and never suspect that I--that I----"

Her voice broke and she buried her head on my shoulder. "Dear Milly," I said, caressing and soothing her as best I could. "Of course you were not selfish. Well, and what happened next?"

"I couldn't give up the plan, Tib, and I thought that if all that kept Adelaide from joining in it was the lack of a habit, that could be easily arranged. I would make her a present of it. I was sure that father would give me twenty-five dollars for my next birthday present, and I thought it would do no harm to spend it in advance. So I asked Celeste how much cloth it would take, and I had it sent her from Arnold's, a beautiful fine dark-green broadcloth. And then I told Adelaide what I had done and that she must go around to Celeste's with me and be fitted. Do you believe it, she would not? She said that it would be wrong for her to accept such a present from me; and besides, nothing would induce her to ride with Professor Waite, for she couldn't endure him. That put an end to the ride in the Park. Cynthia would have taken Adelaide's place, but when I told Professor Waite that Adelaide would not go, he looked so angry that I saw he wanted to get out of the arrangement, and I suggested that perhaps we had better give up the plan. He said, very well, just as I pleased, and looked so relieved that I almost cried then and there. Papa was so provoked when I told him of it that I did not dare say a word about the riding-habit, especially as he had just handed me my little Swiss watch as my birthday present. So I pretended to be pleased with it, and there was that dreadful cloth for the riding-habit on my hands, and I didn't know what to do. Mamma was still in Florida, and papa said that she was not very strong and must not be worried--I must only write cheerful letters to her. I didn't feel very cheerful, I a.s.sure you. Then Cynthia told me one day that she had twenty dollars with which she wanted to purchase a winter suit and she would like my advice about it. I was in debt just twenty dollars for the cloth for the habit, and I told her about it and begged her to take it off my hands. She went with me to Celeste's and liked it very much. The only trouble was that her mother had intended the twenty dollars to pay for both material and making, and of course she ought to get something not nearly so nice.

"She said at last that if I would get Celeste to wait for her pay she would take the dress and pay her later. I thought only of paying for the material at Arnold's, for I had expected to have the money by that time, and had asked them to make a separate bill out, and not put it on my book that goes every month to papa. So we arranged it. Cynthia gave me her twenty dollars and I settled for the cloth, and Celeste made the dress for her, and furnished the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. But how she did run them up!

She had a band of real sable around the hem of the skirt and trimmed the jacket with it too; and made her that cute little toque with heads and tails on it, and when the bill came in it was sixty dollars. Cynthia was frightened. 'I never can pay it in the world,' she said. 'I think your dressmaker is frightfully extortionate; and I had no idea it would be so much.' I felt sorry for her and I felt, too, that I was to blame for getting her into the predicament; so I said we would divide the expense, and she should only pay half. But she grumbled at that, and said that I had inveigled her into the trouble, and that she had a dressmaker on 125th Street who would have made the suit for ten dollars. When I reminded her of the fur, she said she did not believe it was real sable, and she didn't want it any way.

"I offered to take it to Gunther's and see if I could get something for it, if she would rip it off, but she said she would do no such thing; the dress would be a fright without it. It was all a miserable mess, and I was so unhappy. It would have been some consolation if Cynthia had been grateful, but she blamed me for everything, and I think that, considering all I have done for her, she treated me very shabbily when she said that Adelaide was the only lady in the Amen Corner, and she did not care to speak to any of us again."

"That was like Cynthia, and I am sure that the loss of her friendship can only be a benefit to you. But, Milly, you must bravely shoulder the greater part of the blame yourself. Your first wrong step was in getting the golden net without permission, then in letting Celeste pay you for it and yet having it charged to your father. Then, again, in getting the cloth for Adelaide's habit without consulting your father you deliberately did wrong; and in bargaining with Cynthia, instead of going straight to your father and confessing your fault, you waded still more deeply in----"

"I know it; but there you are scolding me just like Winnie, and it doesn't make the trouble a bit easier to bear to be told that I deserve it all, and am a miserable little sinner. You needn't imagine that I did not realize what a wretch I was; only I didn't seem to see the way out.

Everything I did to extricate myself got me deeper into the quicksand. I saved every way, all that I could; one month I laid by two dollars and thirty-seven cents, but the next I slipped back three and a quarter, and Cynthia handed me a five dollar bill one day, and told me that was every cent that she could pay, and I must let her off from the rest. And to crown it all, Winnie found out about it, and nearly drove me wild. Oh, Tib, I have been in such trouble, what with this dreadful bill that I didn't dare tell papa about, and Professor Waite, and all my lessons so hard, and my marks getting worse than ever, and Winnie turning on me. It just seemed as if I would die, and I almost wished I could. I thought seriously about killing myself only the night before last. I think if I could have found any poison that would not have hurt I would have taken it."

"Don't talk so, Milly; it is wicked. You would have done nothing of the sort."

"But I would. I went into the chemical laboratory and looked at the green and blue stuff in the test tubes, but I couldn't quite screw my courage up to do more than taste just a little bit of one kind that looked more deadly than the rest. It was horrid, and took the skin off of the tip of my tongue. I ate a quarter of a pound of a.s.sorted mints before I could get the taste out of my mouth. If I could have found some laudanum, or something that would not have tasted so bad, or would have killed me by putting me to sleep, I would have taken it that night, for I was miserable enough to do anything, however unscrupulous and reckless. If I hadn't been so very desperate perhaps I would never have dared to do what I did do; the thing which really broke the meshes of the golden net which seemed to have me in its toils. I didn't mean to tell any one, but I was just driven to it, and I know you will keep my secret--besides I have told you so much that you might as well know all.

Tib, I----"

"Milly, it is time we were all in bed." It was Winnie who spoke. She stood in the doorway, cold and commanding, and Milly cowered before her.

She did not offer to kiss her, but shrank, frightened, away to her room.

"Oh, Winnie," I said, "why did you come in just then? Milly was just about to confess to me what she did to get the money with which she has just paid Celeste."

"You have no business to coax her secret from her," Winnie replied angrily. "Whatever it is, you have no right to know it unless she has wronged you. I am afraid our dear Milly is in deep waters. But whatever she may have done lies between her own conscience and G.o.d, and I believe that He will show her how to make rest.i.tution and keep, in the future, strictly to the right. Oh, my poor, precious Milly! I wish I could suffer all the consequences of your wrong doing for you, but I can't.

Every sin brings suffering, and it is the suffering that purifies. I can't save you that experience, but I will shield you from open shame if I can. I forbid you, Tib, to pry into Milly's affairs any further, to question her, or allow her to confide in you, or even suspect her. Only pray for her, and love her; that is all you can do."

"It is you who suspect her," I exclaimed hotly, "and unjustly, Winnie.