Читать книгу The Altar of Honour - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 10

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“I’m tired, Mrs. Dicker,” said Charmaine.

She sat bent in her chair, frowning over a long darn in a tablecloth while Mrs. Dicker ironed at the kitchen table. Her beautiful hair hung over her shoulder in one long shining plait of vivid gold which contrasted strongly with the flower-like whiteness of her skin. There was no colour whatever about Charmaine save in her hair and the pansy-purple of her eyes, which were now fixed with a kind of desperation upon her work.

“Leave it for me, my dearie!” said Mrs. Dicker. “I’ll do it presently. You go out and get a little air!”

Charmaine did not look up. “Oh no,” she said. “Griselda told me to get it done before I did anything else. If I hadn’t dawdled I should have finished it yesterday.”

“As if you ever dawdled!” protested Mrs. Dicker.

“Oh yes, I do sometimes,” said Charmaine with a sigh, “when I’m tired—as I am to-day. It’s very difficult not to, I think, when there’s always something else waiting to be done.”

She did not speak in any tone of complaint, but wearily, spiritlessly, monotonously.

“It’s a shame, that’s what it is!” declared Mrs. Dicker warmly. “I shall up and tell Miss Griselda so one of these days.”

“Oh no, you mustn’t,” said Charmaine. “It’s much nicer than the old days, when I had to do lessons. They were dreadful. I shouldn’t like to go back to them. They used to make me feel so stupid.”

Mrs. Dicker made a sympathetic sound. The sight of the slender bowed figure vexed her motherly soul, but she knew there was no remedy. Griselda had decreed that Charmaine should work since she was too stupid to learn, and work she must. There was always plenty to be done, and, with all the goodwill in the world, Mrs. Dicker could not shoulder everything, though she could and did ease the burden to a certain extent. But for Charmaine she would have quitted the establishment years before. It was only her love for the child, fostered by a long and desperate illness through which her devotion alone had brought her, that kept her there. To have left Charmaine would have been in Mrs. Dicker’s mind rank treachery and desertion.

“The pore lamb’s got no one but me to turn to,” she would say to Tim Kelly, the groom, in moments of expansion, and Tim, who for purposes of his own had also accompanied the family from Malahide, would agree with a pitying grin.

He had no very high opinion of Charmaine on account of her nervous dread of horses, but he was broad-minded enough to admit that it was Miss Griselda’s fault that she was so poor-spirited. Miss Griselda could bully the life out of anyone if she’d a mind.

“And what have you got to do when that’s finished?” asked Mrs. Dicker, as Charmaine straightened her weary frame for a moment and took another thread.

“I’m to wash all the china in the drawing-room,” said Charmaine.

“Why, we only did it the other day!” said Mrs. Dicker.

“I know. But the chimney smoked and made it bad again. Griselda was rather vexed about it. She thought I hadn’t done it properly.” Charmaine stooped again to her task.

“Well, it takes hours to do,” said Mrs. Dicker. “You’ll never get through it to-day if you stop to finish that first.”

“I must—somehow,” said Charmaine.

The sudden ringing of a bell made her start violently, and she looked up.

“All right,” said Mrs. Dicker, setting down her iron. “It’s the drawing-room. I’ll go.”

Charmaine said nothing, but she watched the comfortable figure bustle out with startled eyes, and listened intently thereafter until Mrs. Dicker’s returning footsteps were audible.

Mrs. Dicker nodded at her as she entered. “Yes, she wants you, my dearie. Run along quick sharp or there’ll be trouble!”

Charmaine was on her feet in a moment, the strained look turning almost to panic on her face. “Oh, is she angry? What is it?”

“No, no, child! She’s the same as usual. Don’t get so scared!” said Mrs. Dicker. “Stand up and show her a bold front! You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

It was true. But Charmaine had been made to cringe too often to be capable of displaying any remnants of self-respect in Griselda’s presence, even if they existed. She went to obey the summons with a breathless rapidity that earned instant reproof as soon as she reached her destination.

“Don’t come in like a whirlwind!” said Griselda coldly from her chair before her bureau. “Close the door quietly and come here!”

Charmaine obeyed with a care that would have seemed exaggerated in anyone else. She came to Griselda, and stopped meekly behind her chair.

“Don’t stand where I can’t see you!” said Griselda. “Have you been doing something you’re ashamed of?”

“No,” murmured Charmaine, moving forward obediently to meet the hard eyes from which she always shrank with an inward quaking that made her heart gallop.

“Very well,” said Griselda, bestowing upon her a searching and intent scrutiny which lasted until she began to tremble. “And now tell me—first of all—why you have not carried out my orders with regard to the china in this room!”

“I’m going to do it,” whispered Charmaine with trembling lips. “I—I’m just finishing the tablecloth you gave me to do first.”

“Yes,” said Griselda. “You leave one day’s work to be finished the next, with the result that nothing is ever properly done. Now listen, Charlotte! When I give you a task it is to be done on that day and no other, and you will not leave it until it is done. I have said this to you before. How is it that I have to repeat it?”

Charmaine was silent.

“Answer me!” said Griselda.

Charmaine swallowed and found her voice. “I’m very sorry, Griselda. I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday. I had a side-ache, and—and Mrs. Dicker sent me to bed early.”

“I should be very much obliged to Mrs. Dicker if she would kindly mind her own business,” said Griselda. “Since when, pray, have Mrs. Dicker’s orders taken precedence over mine?”

“Oh, they didn’t—they haven’t!” gasped Charmaine in a quivering tumult of agitation. “Please don’t think that! Please—please don’t! It was my fault. My side was hurting me. It comes on sometimes at night, and I can’t help it. I’m very, very sorry. I’ll get everything done to-day. I will really.”

“Stand still!” commanded Griselda. “And stop making silly remarks! Don’t make those ugly faces either! It’s a stupid habit that you must cure yourself of. Is your side hurting you now?”

“Oh no, it’s all right to-day,” whispered Charmaine, clasping her hands tightly in a desperate effort at self-control.

“Then let me hear no more of this hysterical rubbish!” said Griselda. “You do nothing but fuss over every little ache until you are becoming perfectly hypochondriacal. There is nothing whatever the matter with you, and you would be a normal healthy girl if you didn’t give way to these absurd fancies.”

She paused to light a cigarette while Charmaine stood in quaking silence, longing for dismissal.

“Now for another matter!” said Griselda. “Since you never go near the hunting-field of course you get no opportunity of meeting anyone worth knowing or entering any kind of society, and this accounts to a large extent for your being so childish and awkward for your age. Do stand up, Charlotte, and stop fidgeting! You have the most annoying habits. Anyone would think you had St. Vitus’s dance from the way you behave.”

“I’m sorry,” faltered Charmaine, gripping her hands together still more convulsively until Griselda in sudden exasperation leaned forward and forcibly dragged them apart.

“What on earth is the matter with you, child?” she said. “You cringe like a dog that expects to be beaten, and yet I’ve never whipped you since you were twelve years old. For goodness’ sake pull yourself together and have a little sense! I believe you’ve been up to some mischief.”

“Oh, I haven’t—I haven’t!” gasped Charmaine, her agitation rising again.

Griselda made an impatient sound. “You really are the most extraordinary girl. I’m not angry with you. I have never been unjust to you in your life. And yet you behave in this insane fashion whenever I speak to you. What are you dithering for now?”

Charmaine was shaking all over. Great tears welled up in her eyes and overflowed. She shrank from Griselda’s pitiless regard in open distress. “I don’t know! I can’t help it!” she sobbed. “I can’t!”

“I think you ought to see a brain specialist,” said Griselda, still surveying her critically. “You stand and cry, and can’t say what you’re crying for. Really, Charlotte, I don’t know what to make of you. Do stop this nonsense, or I really shall be seriously annoyed with you! Get out your handkerchief and dry your eyes—at once!”

The familiar deep note made itself heard in her voice, and Charmaine responded instantly, choking back her tears with frantic effort.

“That’s better,” said Griselda. “Now don’t be so silly again, or I shall have to punish you. I really can’t endure hysteria. It’s too futile. What I sent for you to say was that Sylvia has been good enough to offer to have you for a season in town. I’m sure I don’t know what sort of mess you’ll make of it, but there it is. You’ll have to do the best you can—get married if possible; for I honestly don’t feel that I can do much longer with your unwholesome moods and fancies here. If you’d been a hardy, open-air girl it would have been different. But I can’t stand the puling sort that cries for nothing. It’s such a temptation,” she smiled sardonically, “to give it something to cry for. Well? What are you looking like that for?”

Charmaine’s tears were gone. She was standing wide-eyed, with arrested breath, a great flood of colour sweeping over her delicate face.

“Oh, Griselda!” she gasped. “You—you—do you mean it?”

“Oh, don’t gibber!” said Griselda irritably. “And don’t ask idiotic questions! I always mean what I say. And that brings me to one thing more—the most important of all. We have decided to give you this chance because you never have fitted into this household, and the sooner you can find yourself another niche the better. You will have to work for your living eventually if you don’t, or—more probably—go to the workhouse. But let me warn you very solemnly, Charlotte, against misusing it! You needn’t gape at me like that. You are not your mother’s daughter for nothing, and you know very well what I mean. If you ever do anything to bring shame upon our family name, you had better never let me see your face again; for if you do, you will get such punishment as will make you wish for the rest of your life that you had never been born.”

She uttered the words with a grimness of purpose that rang through the room almost like a death sentence. Her eyes had the look of gleaming cruelty with which she had often watched a fox torn to pieces by the pack. Charmaine knew that look. It sent nightmare terrors to her heart.

“You understand me?” said Griselda, after the passage of several impressive seconds.

The colour had all gone again from Charmaine’s face. She answered very faintly. “Oh yes, indeed—indeed I won’t do anything to disgrace you!”

“You had better not,” said Griselda, the threatening note still in her voice. “Now you can go. I will let you know later when you are to leave, but bear in mind that until that time comes I shall expect you to do your duty without any more shirking or foolishness.”

“Yes, yes, I will, I will!” said Charmaine earnestly, moving towards the door with as much celerity as decorum would permit.

As she reached it, Griselda’s voice stayed her. “And do try to have a little sense,” she said, “or you’ll be the laughing-stock of the town! You probably will be as it is.”

“Oh, I will try,” said Charmaine, and, slipping out, fled like a rabbit to its burrow.

Back in the kitchen and panting with haste and excitement, she imparted the amazing news to Mrs. Dicker in quivering tones that were scarcely expressive of joy at the prospect before her.

Mrs. Dicker, however, was delighted on her behalf. “Well, that is a surprise!” she declared. “I never thought Miss Griselda would have done anything so nice. Why, my dearie, what’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased about it? Why, I do believe you’ve been crying!”

“Oh, that’s nothing—nothing!” declared Charmaine. “Griselda was rather vexed and scolded me about the china, and I got stupid and frightened. I couldn’t help it, But I’m all right again now.”

“But you aren’t pleased as you ought to be,” said Mrs. Dicker, regarding her with fond solicitude. “What else did she say to you?”

“Not much,” said Charmaine. “Only that I was ugly, and that people would laugh at me if I didn’t behave more sensibly.”

“What nonsense!” said Mrs. Dicker roundly. “You ugly! What next, I wonder? You’re as pretty as a rose, my dearie, and always have been. Nobody’s going to laugh at you. They’ll love you.”

Charmaine sighed. “I don’t see how they can. I’m so dreadfully afraid of people I don’t know—the people Griselda likes. I get so frightened sometimes I can hardly speak.”

“Oh, you wait!” said Mrs. Dicker with consoling reassurance. “People aren’t like you think they are. You’ll be as happy as a queen up there. You get on all right with Miss Sylvia—I beg her pardon—her ladyship, you know.”

“Yes, Sylvia is never unkind to me,” said Charmaine, but she spoke dubiously, still oppressed by the thought of her own shortcomings.

“Then don’t you worry, my dear!” said Mrs. Dicker. “You’ll have the time of your life. Why, I shouldn’t wonder but what you might go and pick up with some nice young gentleman and get married before you know where you are.”

Charmaine had returned to her darning, but her hands were shaking almost too much to ply the needle. “That’s what Griselda is hoping for,” she said in a muffled voice. “But no one could ever possibly want to marry me, and I would never dare to get married either—unless it was to someone like dear Rory Daredevil who was so kind to me five years ago.”

“How you do remember him!” commented Mrs. Dicker. “Fancy, after all these years! For you’ve never seen him since. We moved over here directly you got better.”

“I know,” said Charmaine sadly. “I don’t suppose I ever shall see him again, Mrs. Dicker. But I shall go on dreaming about him always. He was the sort of person one never could forget.”

“Dearie me!” said Mrs. Dicker. “Well, well, let’s hope you will find someone like him then! But don’t you go for any of them flighty ones, Miss Charmaine dear! They’ll only lead you into trouble.”

“Is that what Griselda meant?” said Charmaine suddenly, pausing in her efforts but without lifting her eyes.

“Eh, dearie?” questioned Mrs. Dicker.

“Is that what Griselda meant?” repeated Charmaine. “She said I wasn’t to misuse my chance or bring shame upon the family. She said that being my mother’s daughter, I should understand. But I didn’t. Mrs. Dicker,” her eyes were lifted now—eyes of deepest, purest innocence—“what did she mean when she said that? Did my mummy ever do anything to—to disgrace them?”

Mrs. Dicker had just taken a fresh iron from the stove. She dropped it on the table abruptly as if it had burnt her, then as quickly snatched it up again and put it back with a clatter on the stove.

“What’s the matter?” said Charmaine. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Dicker?”

And Mrs. Dicker, with her back turned, answered reassuringly, but in a voice that was oddly shaken, “Oh, never you mind, my dear! Don’t talk to me! I can’t get the dratted thing right nohow this morning.”

Charmaine with her instinctive obedience asked no more.