Three Girls from School

“Oh, you are absolutely quite mistaken about that. Your aunt took a fancy to her on the first night because she spoke in rather an original way and, I suppose, looked handsome, which she does occasionally; and your aunt is very easily impressed by anything that she considers rather fine. But I assure you that it is my private opinion that she is sick of Priscilla by this time, and also rather ashamed of her appearance. Priscilla has no tact whatever – simply none. When does she help your aunt? When does she do anything to oblige others? She just flops about and looks so gauche and awkward.”

“Well, poor thing! she can’t help that. With Susan Martin as her dressmaker what chance has she?”

“She is just an oddity,” said Annie; “and it is my impression that your aunt is tired of oddities. I can make her a little more tired, and I will.”

“Oh Annie! Poor Priscie! and she does enjoy the mountain air so, and is such a splendid climber. You might as well let her have her holiday out. You are so frightfully clever, Annie; you can always achieve your purpose. But I think, if I were you, I would let poor old Priscie alone.”

“I would if there were no danger,” said Annie.

“Danger – in her direction? What do you mean?”

“There is very grave danger,” said Annie – “very grave indeed. I am more afraid about Priscie than about anything else in the whole of this most unfortunate affair.”

“Annie, what do you mean?”

“She is troubled with a conscience, bless you! and that conscience is talking to her every day and every night. Why, my dear Mabel, you can see the gnawings of self-reproach in her eyes and in her horrid melancholy manner. She is always in a dream, too, and starting up and having to shake herself when one talks to her suddenly. I know well what it means; she is on the verge of a confession.”

“What?” said Mabel.

“Yes, that is the danger we have to apprehend; at least it is one of the dangers. One day, for the sake of relieving her own miserable conscience, she will go to your aunt and tell her everything. Then where shall we be?”

“But she could not be so frightfully mean; I never, never would believe it of her.”

“Mark my words,” said Annie – “people with consciences, who believe they have committed a crime or a sin, never think of anybody but themselves. The thought of relieving their own miserable natures is the only thought that occurs to them. Now, we must get hold of that conscience of Priscie’s, and if it is going to be a stumbling-block we must cart her back to England.”

“We must indeed,” said Mabel. “For all that I say I don’t believe that she could be so mean.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Annie; “I know better.” Mabel crouched on the floor by Annie’s side, her hand lying on Annie’s lap.

“You are wonderful,” she said after a pause, “quite wonderful. I can’t imagine how you think of all these things, and of course you are never wrong. Still – poor Priscie! you won’t make things very hard for her, Annie, will you?”

“I know exactly what I mean to do,” said Annie. “First of all I have to get you out of your present scrape, and then I shall go boldly to Priscie and find out her pent-up thoughts, and if they are in the direction I am fearing, I shall soon find means to protect ourselves from her and her conscience. But perhaps that is enough about her. On the present occasion we have got to think of you and Mrs Priestley.”

“Oh, indeed, yes! Oh, I am terrified!”

“Listen to me. But for my management at lunch to-day, Lady Lushington was so indignant that she would have blurted out the whole thing and asked you what you meant by running up such an outrageous bill. You would have given yourself away on the spot, for you have no presence of mind in an emergency. Now I am preparing you. Lady Lushington will speak to you to-morrow, and you are faithfully to describe the dresses that I have, told her you possess. Oh, I know you have not got them at all, but that does not matter; I will give you a list of them in the morning, and you are to hold to that list. But now, listen. This is the main point. At the same time you are to assure your aunt that Mrs Priestley has made a mistake and put down some one else’s dresses to you, for you are positive your bill is nearer forty pounds than seventy.”

“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.