Читать книгу One Night's Mystery - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 8

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here is a silence for a while. Cyrilla Hendrick has walked away to the curtainless school-room window, and stands looking out at the pale, chill, twilight sky, where a white moon hangs silvery, a few yellow, frosty, sparkling stars near. The tamaracs shiver and toss their feathery green plumes in the evening breeze, a breeze that bears a prophecy of coming winter even now in its breath. Miss Hendrick's handsome brunette face looks darker and sadder than Sydney Owenson has ever seen it before.

"Ten minutes and the study bell will ring, and this horrid tumult end, for which Dieu merci. Look at them, Syd, 'a motley crowd, my masters, a motley crowd.' Of course, all this I've told you is strictly sub rosa. Mademoiselle Stephanie, poor old snuffy soul, would go out of her senses if she thought I was corrupting her favorite pupil by such improper conversation."

She half-turned around, all her gloom gone, the airy ease of manner, so uncommon in a school-girl, and which constituted this school-girl's especial charm, back. Independently of wealth and social position (and no one on earth thought more of wealth and social position than this waif of vagabondia), she liked Sydney Owenson for her own sake.

"I promised not to tell, you know, Syd; and, reprobate as Aunt Phil thinks me, I like to keep my word. I have kept it for three years; all those noisy girls think, as you thought an hour ago, that my life, like their lives, has been the quintessence of dull, drab-colored gentility. Your papa was a captain in the English navy once, wasn't he, and is a great stickler for good birth and breeding? I wonder if he would ask the rich and respectable Miss Phillis Dormer's niece to be your bridemaid if he were listening now?"

"If papa knew you as I do, he would like and admire you as I do," Sydney cried, warmly. "Who could help it? I never saw a man yet whom you did not fascinate in ten minutes if you chose."

"If I chose?" Cyrilla laughed. "Ah, yes, Syd, the men like me, and always will; let that be my comfort. I shall be one of those women whom other women look upon askance, and know as their natural enemy at sight, but men will like me to the end of the chapter. Only be very sure of this, pretty little Sydney." She took the pearl-fair face between her two hands, and stooped and kissed her. "You need never fear me."

"Fear you, Cy? What nonsense! What do you mean?"

"This Mr. Bertie Vaughan is handsome, you say, Syd?" was Cyrilla's inapposite answer. "Let me look at his photo again."

As a rule Miss Owenson wore her lover's picture and locket affectionately in her trunk, but she chanced to have it on to-day. She snatched the slender yellow chain off her neck and handed it to her friend. She had been touched strangely by Cyrilla's confidence, more touched still by the unexpected caress. They had been good friends and staunch comrades during the past three years, with the average of school-girl quarrels and make-ups; but never before had Cyrilla Hendrick been known to kiss her or any other creature in the school. She was wonderfully chary of enthusiasm or caresses; set down as "that proud, conceited thing" by her fellow-boarders, admired and envied for her superior cleverness and ease of manner, and dark, aristocratic, high-bred face, liked by a few, Sydney Owenson chief among them, and cordially hated by the many. Without knowing why, without being able to reason on the matter, they instinctively felt she was of them, but not like them.

She came into their midst with her pauper head held well aloft, a sort of defiance in her black, derisive eyes, a sort of superior contempt for them and their ignorance of life in her slight sarcastic smile. Wonderfully reticent for a girl of sixteen, she yet said things, and did things, besides the smoking of cigarettes, that proved that she had lived, before coming here, in a very different world from any they had ever known. The sketchy outline of her life she had given to Sydney Owenson—the sketchy outline only—there were details that might have been filled in, which would have raised every red-gold hair on Miss Owenson's pretty head aloft with dismay. She had seen life with her "handsome, clever, reprobate father," as luckily it falls to the lot of few daughters ever to see it. Bacchanalian nights of gambling, song-singing, wine-drinking, and festive uproar. There was not a capital in Europe which she and her doll had not visited at the age of twelve. She had spent three whole months behind his chair at Baden-Baden, with a pin and a perforated card, and starved and feasted as he lost or won. All the jolly outlaws of Bohemia had lounged in the shabby rooms of "Jack Hendrick," where a perpetual "tobacco parliament" seemed to reign. Scions of aristocracy, youthful sprigs of gentility, deep in the books of the children of Israel, made it their headquarters and lounging-place, and lost their last sovereign to their genial host. Clever painters, whose pictures hung on the line in the Royal Academy, had painted "Little Beauty Hendrick"—as Cyrilla had been named—painted her as Cupids, as Undines, as Hebes, as gypsies, as angels, as everything a plump, pretty, black-eyed rosebud of a child could be painted. Clever actors gave her orders to their plays, and coached her in small private theatricals. Old Jean Jacques Dando, teacher of the ballet of the Princess Theatre, taught her to dance, and the first violinist taught her to play the fiddle. She could jabber in five different languages at twelve, and read French novels by the wholesale. Tall booted and spurred military swells had carried her aloft on their shoulders, and taught her to roll and light their cigarettes. Midnight, as a rule, was this little damsel's hour of lying down, and noonday her time of rising up. Then, in the midst of this jolly, vagabond career, came Miss Phillis Dormer's offer and its acceptance.

"Will you go, Beauty?" her father said, doubtfully. "It will be beastly dull without you, but the old girl's rich, and intends to make you her heiress, no doubt. She'll send you to school, and do the handsome thing by you when she dies. Will you go?"

"Yes, father, I'll go," Cyrilla answered, promptly. "I'll pack my trunk and be ready at once. Freddy says there's a steamer to sail day after to-morrow."

"Ah! Freddy says," her father repeated, still looking at her doubtfully. "Look here, Beauty! I wouldn't say anything about Freddy, or the rest of 'em over there, if I were you. Just tell the old girl and the other Philistines you meet that you came of poor—poor, but honest—parents you know. Mum's the word about the card-playing and the scampering over the world, and—the whole thing, in short."

"You may trust me, father. I know when to hold my tongue and when to speak. I haven't lived with you sixteen years for nothing," calmly says Mademoiselle Cyrilla.

"No, by Jove!" Jack Hendrick cried, admiringly. "You're the cleverest little thing that ever breathed, Beauty! You know on which side your bread's buttered. And you'll not forget the dear old dad, eh, Cy? out there among the purple and fine linen, and your first taste of respectability?"

So Cyrilla came and was received by Miss Dormer—a pale, dark girl, tall and slim, quiet, silent and demure. But Aunt Phil had the keenest old eyes that ever sparkled in the head of a maiden lady of sixty, and read her like a book.

"Ha!" the old voice scornfully cried; "you live sixteen years with Jack Hendrick and then come to me and try to take me in with your mock-modest airs! But I'm an old bird, and not to be caught with chaff. You're a very pretty girl, Cyrilla—you take after your father in that—and you hold your beggar's head well up, which I like to see. You take that and your aquiline nose from your mother. Your mother was a fool, my dear, as I suppose you know, and proved her folly to all the world, by running away with handsome, penniless, scoundrelly Jack Hendrick. She was the daughter of a baronet, and engaged to a colonel of the Guards—Lord Hepburn to-day—and she ran away one night, just three weeks before her appointed wedding, with your father. Ah! well, she paid for that bit of romance, and is in her grave long ago—the very best place for her. But you're a Hendrick, my niece Cyrilla—a Hendrick to the backbone, and a precious bad lot, I have no doubt. I never knew a Hendrick yet who came to a good end—no, not one! and you take care, niece Cyrilla, or you'll come to a bad end, too."

"I dare say I shall," niece Cyrilla answered, coolly, seeing in a moment that perfect frankness was best with this extraordinary old fairy godmother. "My father always taught me that coming to grief was the inevitable lot of all things here below. At least I hope I shall do it gracefully."

"I'm going to send you to school," the old lady pursued, "for three years, and mind you make the most of your time. You are as ignorant as a Hottentot now of all you ought to know, and horribly thorough in all you ought not. I shall send you to the Demoiselles Chateauroy, at Petit St. Jacques—a very strict school and a very dull place, where even you cannot get into mischief. And mind! don't you go contaminating your fellow-pupils by tales of vagabond life! Don't you offend me, niece Cyrilla; I warn you of that."

"I don't intend to, Aunt Phil," the girl answered, good-humoredly. "I shall study hard, and be a credit to you; trust me. I know my ignorance, and am as anxious to shake the dust of vagabondism off my feet as you can possibly be. I shall do you honor at school."

She had kept her word. She was brilliantly clever, and amazed and delighted her teachers by her progress. She was the pride of the school at each half-yearly exhibition; her playing, her singing were such as had never been heard within these walls before. And in the small milk-and-water dramas performed on these occasions she absolutely electrified all beholders. In truth, she did it so well that the Demoiselles Chateauroy were almost alarmed.

"She goes on more like a real play actress than a school-girl," they said; "it can't be the first time she has tried parlor theatricals."

It was not, indeed. And at one of these exhibitions a little incident had occurred that disturbed Ma'm'selle Stephanie more and more. The rooms were crowded. "Cinderella" had been dramatized expressly for the occasion, and "Miss C. Hendrick" came on as the Prince, in plumed cap and silk doublet, acting her part, as usual, con amore, and making much more violent love than ever Mlle. Stephanie had intended to the Cinderella of the piece. As she came gracefully forward before the audience, singing a song, a tall, dashing-looking man, an officer newly arrived from England, had started up.

"It is!" he exclaimed; "by Jupiter, it is!—Beauty Hendrick!"

Miss Hendrick had flashed one electric glance from her black eyes upon him, and the play went on. People stared, the Demoiselles Chateauroy turned pale; pupils pricked up curious little ears and looked askance at the big trooper. "He knew Cy Hendrick, and called her Beauty. What did it mean?"

The performance over, Major Powerscourt sought out Mlle. Stephanie, and a low and earnest conversation ensued—the gentleman pleading, the lady inexorable.

"But I knew her in England, knew her intimately, by Jove!" said the gallant major, pulling his long red mustache in perplexity. "Just let me speak to her one moment, mademoiselle!"

Mademoiselle was resolute.

"I would be very happy, monsieur," was her answer, polite, but inexorable, "but it is her aunt's wish that she makes no new gentlemen acquaintances and renews no old ones. What Monsieur the major asks is, I regret, impossible."

"Confound her aunt!" Major Powerscourt muttered inwardly, but he only bowed and turned away. "Little Beauty Hendrick! and here! By Jove! it will go hard with me though if I don't see her."

See her he did not. Mademoiselle Stephanie spoke a few low-toned words to her tall pupil. Miss Hendrick listened with downcast eyes and closed lips; then she bowed.

"It shall be as ma'm'selle pleases, of course," she answered, quietly. "I have no wish to transgress even the slightest of my aunt's commands."

With the words she left the parlors, and appeared no more. Next morning she went for the midsummer vacation to "Dormer Lodge." When she returned, the dangerous Major Powerscourt was gone.

Miss Jones, the second English teacher, had been one of the witnesses of this scene. Miss Jones set her thin lips, and drew her own conclusions. She hated Cyrilla Hendrick with an absolute hatred,—hated her for her beauty and that indefinable air of haughty, high-bred grace that encircled the girl,—hated her for her bright cleverness and talent,—hated her most of all for her cool impertinence to herself. There was a long debt standing between these two,—a long debt of petty tyrannies on the teacher's part, of serene, smiling insolence on the pupil's.

"And if the day ever comes, Miss Hendrick," Miss Jones was wont to think—"and I think it will—I'll pay off every affront, every sneer, every scornful smile and innuendo with compound interest."

That day was nearer than Miss Jones dreamed.