Читать книгу The Altar of Honour - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 7

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Mrs. Dicker got up to make up the fire, and cast an anxious eye at the clock. It was growing rapidly dark, and the rain was beating on the window-panes. The kettle was boiling cheerily, and a dainty meal stood all ready on a tray.

“Dear, dear!” said Mrs. Dicker. “Dear, dear!”

At the sound of the opening door, she turned stoutly round. “Oh, my dearie,” she said, “where ever have you been?”—and then uttered a sort of choke and continued in another key—“Ah, it’s you, Miss Griselda! And what a night to be sure! I was just saying to myself I wouldn’t like to be out in it.”

The woman who entered the housekeeper’s room was tall and gaunt. She moved with the gait of a man. Her face had the weather-beaten look of a sailor’s, but the harsh features were rugged and forbidding, wholly lacking in kindliness. Her hair was turning grey.

She came up to the fireplace and looked down at Mrs. Dicker, in comparison with whose hen-like comeliness she was like an eagle, her keen dark eyes close-set on each side of a high, dominant nose. Her hands were long, supple, powerful.

“Is that Miss Charlotte’s tea?” she asked in a deep commanding voice.

Mrs. Dicker smoothed her apron nervously. “Yes, Miss Griselda. I was just going to make it and take it up to her.”

Griselda made a peremptory gesture. “Make it then! I will take it up.”

Mrs. Dicker hesitated, still fumbling at her apron. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder now if she’s fast asleep,” she said in a voice that pleaded unconsciously. “It would be a pity to wake her for it. Let me just run up and see first!”

She turned to the door, and Griselda, standing on the hearth—a grim and imposing personality—allowed her to reach it before she spoke.

Then, “You needn’t take that trouble, Mrs. Dicker,” she said, without moving. “I heard what you said when I came in just now. And as a matter of fact, I have already been up to Miss Charlotte’s room. Where is she?”

The question came upon Mrs. Dicker like a thunderbolt. She faced round, almost gibbering.

“Oh, Miss Griselda!” she gasped. “Miss Griselda!”

“Well?” said Griselda, still motionless and judicial on the hearth-rug.

Mrs. Dicker stood trembling with her back to the door. “The pore lamb wanted a breath of air,” she urged breathlessly, “and I thought as it couldn’t do any harm, so I let her go out for a little. You’ll not be vexed with her, Miss Griselda. It was but natural, and I couldn’t see any harm in it.”

“No?” said Griselda.

She took out a cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette with absolute calm, her face, save for its habitually drawn brows, quite devoid of expression. As she replaced the match-box on the mantelpiece, she spoke again to the horror-stricken Mrs. Dicker.

“And you—evidently—do not see any harm in deceiving me either, or in encouraging the child to do the same. No, I don’t want any excuses,” as Mrs. Dicker found her voice again in a gasping flood of entreaty and extenuation. “I am not concerned with your morals. In fact, they do not hold the faintest interest for me. When Miss Charlotte returns, you will send her straight to bed and let me know. And I forbid you to give her any refreshment of any kind. Is that quite understood?”

She walked across the room, and Mrs. Dicker shrank to one side in frightened silence.

At the door she paused. “You understand me, Mrs. Dicker?”

“Oh lor, Miss Griselda,” faltered Mrs. Dicker, “you won’t punish the pore lamb just for going out to take a breath of air?”

“No, not for that,” said Griselda, with compelling eyes upon her. “Have you understood my orders?”

“Oh yes, Miss Griselda, yes!” gasped Mrs. Dicker, tearfully. “But you won’t—you won’t——”

Griselda swung open the door. “Then be good enough to obey them!” she said, and passed out with her firm, unbending carriage, leaving Mrs. Dicker almost in a state of collapse.

Five minutes later the unlatched door was pushed softly open, and Charmaine’s face, all flushed and wet with rain, peeped in.

“I’m afraid I’m late,” she said. “But it’s all right, I didn’t meet anyone. Oh, Mrs. Dicker, what’s the matter?”

For Mrs. Dicker was sitting in a low chair by the fire, crying into her apron.

Charmaine stole up to her. “What is it?” she said. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, my dearie! Oh, my dearie!” sobbed Mrs. Dicker. “It’s all up! She knows!”

Charmaine turned very white. “Who? Griselda? Oh, never mind, Mrs. Dicker! It—doesn’t matter.”

Mrs. Dicker commanded herself with an effort, and looked up at the child’s set face. “She’s very angry, Miss Charmaine dear—in one of those still tempers of hers.” Charmaine shivered. “And oh, my dearie, how wet you are! What ever have you been doing? You’re to go to bed at once.”

Charmaine was wet, drenched to the skin. The rain was streaming off her as she stood. Her hair hung in dank, gleaming strands.

“It—doesn’t matter,” she said again, in a queer, stifled voice. “I’ve had a wonderful day. She can’t take that away, anyhow.”

Mrs. Dicker bustled to her feet, her trouble forgotten in her solicitude. “My dearie, you must come and undress at once, or you’ll be ill. Come along—quick!”

“That wouldn’t matter either, would it?” said Charmaine.

But she yielded to Mrs. Dicker’s anxious insistence, and turned away from the cheery fire with a sigh. She was beginning to feel cold as well as wet, but nothing really mattered any more. Tired out, she faced the fact that for that one perfect day payment must now be made. And she could not see beyond it. Perhaps there was no beyond.

Up in her room she submitted to Mrs. Dicker’s ministrations, sometimes shivering in a sort of ague of suspense, sometimes too spent even to shiver.

“You ought to have a hot bath,” said Mrs. Dicker. “But she said I was to put you straight to bed, my dearie. I daren’t do other.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Charmaine.

But as she slipped between the sheets the shivering came again. She lay quaking in icy terror, and listening—listening for that firm, relentless step.

When it came at last, all power seemed to leave her. She could only lie and pant.

Griselda entered, and turning, locked herself in.

“Charlotte,” she said, “get up!”

Charmaine made a convulsive effort and raised herself. What she saw made her heart faint within her.

“Oh, Griselda, not that! Not that!” she whispered.

Griselda came to the bedside. “What have you been doing to-day?” she said.

Charmaine shrank away from her. “I’ve been down on the shore,” she said.

“Alone?” said Griselda.

Charmaine hesitated.

“Let me warn you,” said Griselda calmly, “that if you do not tell me the truth now, you will later, but it will cost you a good deal more. Were you alone?”

“No,” murmured Charmaine.

“And whom were you with?” said Griselda.

Charmaine shrank still further back in the narrow bed. “I was with—with a boy called Rory,” she faltered.

“Rory who?” demanded the pitiless, inquisitorial voice.

“I don’t remember,” gasped Charmaine.

“That is not true,” said Griselda.

“It is true—it is true!” Charmaine cried out wildly. “I don’t remember his name. They call him Rory Daredevil. I can’t remember his real name.”

“Who is he?” pursued Griselda.

“A nephew—of Mrs. Deloraine’s.” Charmaine was shaking now, shaking from head to foot, so that the bed appeared to shake with her.

Griselda seemed to grow taller at the sound of that name. Her massive frame filled Charmaine’s vision, looming gigantic in the shadowy room.

“Then I am right in supposing that you had arranged to meet him on the shore to-day when you professed to be too tired to get up this morning,” said Griselda.

Charmaine’s hands clutched each other. “Yes,” she admitted tremulously.

“And what have you been doing all day?” Griselda’s voice took a deep note that seemed to hold a menace. “Be careful how you answer me!” she said. “I shall know if you lie.”

“We haven’t been doing anything,” whispered Charmaine piteously. “We only sat—and talked—while it was high tide, and afterwards looked at the caves.”

“I see,” said Griselda. “And after that, you came home, hoping to get to bed before I could find out anything about it?”

“Yes,” said Charmaine.

“You concocted a deliberate plot to deceive me,” pursued Griselda.

“Yes,” murmured Charmaine again.

“And why?” Again her voice went a little deeper, and Charmaine quailed.

“Because—because I knew you wouldn’t let me go,” she confessed faintly, “if you knew.”

“I see,” said Griselda. “Well, you have had your fun, and now you will take your punishment.” She bent abruptly and stripped the bedclothes away from the little shrinking figure. “Get up!”

“Oh no!” Charmaine gasped. “No! Griselda, please—please! Not this time! I’ll never do it again, I promise. I’ll always—always mind what you say. Oh, Griselda!”

The appeal was in vain. Griselda already grasped her with pitiless intention. “Yes,” she said very grimly. “You will mind what I say after to-night. I am going to give you a lesson which will make you mind—once and for all.”

She had a man’s strength, and there was no resisting her. The thin, supple switch she carried had no weight, but it had a scorpion’s sting, and she knew exactly how to wield it with most effect. She had used it upon Charmaine before, but never as she used it to-night. The punishment she inflicted was merciless and protracted far beyond the breaking-point of the childish endurance opposed to it, and no wrung outcries or anguished tears availed to lessen its severity. Her authority had been set at nought with intolerable effrontery, and she was determined finally to subdue the spirit that had dared thus to defy it.

When she stayed her hand at length she had wreaked upon Charmaine’s quivering body the full force of her wrath; and her end was accomplished. Charmaine was like a shattered thing.

She slid down upon the floor and lay there, convulsed with bitter sobbing, while Griselda stood over her, erect and commanding, and pronounced judgment.

“For the future,” she said, “you will never go outside the gates without my permission, and as to this boy whom you have been meeting in secret I forbid you most emphatically ever to see or hold any communication with him again. I am absolutely shocked by your behaviour in this respect, and I can only put it down to the taint of heredity. And as I have dealt with it now, so I shall deal with it again if occasion arises. Do you understand me, Charlotte?”

Charmaine could only sob in answer in such a paroxysm of distress that even Griselda realized that further discipline was unnecessary.

She turned therefore, picked up the lamp, and went to the door. “I will leave you to come to your senses,” she said, and passed out, locking it behind her and taking away the key.

Charmaine was left lying on the floor in complete darkness, and there during many hours she lay, bound in a kind of icy stupor which succeeded those agonized tears....

When Mrs. Dicker unlocked the door at last on the following morning, having obtained the key by dint of the most earnest entreaty from Griselda, whom she found in no yielding mood, she discovered Charmaine sitting up in bed with flushed cheeks and eyes that burned with fever between lids cruelly swollen with crying.

“Oh, Mrs. Dicker,” she said between short, hard gasps, “I’ve had—such a wonderful dream. I thought—I fell into the sea. And it was high tide—and Rory was there too—and it carried us both right away. Why wasn’t it true, Mrs. Dicker? Why, oh why are all the nice things—always dreams?” And then, with a little cry, she put her hand to her side. “Oh, there’s something hurting me—where I breathe!” she said. “Do you think I’m going to die soon? I hope—I hope I am!”