Dumps – A Plain Girl

Just at this moment the door opened and Augusta entered.

“A letter for you,” said Hermione.

She glanced at me as she spoke, and her eyes evidently implored me to keep my news to myself. But Augusta had seen my face.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing – nothing,” said Hermione, with impatience. “For goodness’ sake don’t worry her, Augusta; she has not quite got over her cold. Fancy any girl being nervous because her father is in bed for a day or two!”

“The Professor ill?” said Augusta.

“Oh no,” I answered.

Her tone was like a tonic to me. If she was anxious, surely I needn’t be.

“That is,” I continued, glancing down at my step-mother’s letter, “he is not very well, that’s all.”

“I knew he was too good,” said Augusta.

She took up her letter and walked out of the room, slamming the door after her.

“It really is provoking,” I said, “when your friend feels more about your father than you do yourself.”

I went on reading my step-mother’s letter. She said that if all went well she would like me to return home for one week at Easter.

“By that time we can move your father down to Hedgerow House,” she said. “The fresh country air will do him good. He has been working for years far beyond his strength, and this is the result. I should like to have you with the boys and myself to spend our first Easter together, dear; so, although few of your companions will be leaving Bella Vista at that season, I hope to have you. I will write about it later on, and give you particulars with regard to your journey.”

I do not exactly know why this letter made me feel depressed. To have my father a little ill was not the sort of thing that would put an ordinary girl into a state of keen anxiety; but anxious I was, and depressed. Perhaps this was caused by my own state of weakness, for my cold had left me far less strong than I had been.

The next day, however, something occurred which put all thoughts of home and home life out of my head. Soon after breakfast Mademoiselle Wrex came upstairs and asked me to follow her to the Baroness’s private sitting-room.

“But why am I to go there?” I said.

Mademoiselle Wrex looked at me kindly. She came up to me and took my hand.

“I trust,” she said after a pause, “that when questioned you will tell the simple truth. A very painful thing has occurred. Fortunately the Baroness is able to nip it in the bud. It seems that you are suspected.”

I guessed what was coming, and I felt a cold chill at my heart. How silly I had been! How worse than silly – how wrong!

“I will follow you in a minute, mademoiselle,” I said.

“Put a warm shawl round you, dear, though the house is not cold; for since so many girls have been suffering from this sort of slight form of influenza, all the passages have been heated much more than they were.”

Mademoiselle left the room. I flew immediately to the table of rules which was pinned against my wall. There was no doubt whatever that the rule in question was there. I had broken it; there was no excuse for me. I wrapped a white shawl round my shoulders and ran downstairs. As I passed through the wide hall I peeped into the schoolroom, which opened directly into it. I saw Baroness Elfreda glancing out at me with an intense and frightened expression on her face. Immediately several other girls looked out also, and then a whisper ran round the room. I felt it more than heard it, and my misery and distress grew worse. I had never before been mixed up with a dreadful thing of this sort. But Mademoiselle Wrex was standing by the Baroness’s sitting-room door. She said, “Vite! vite, mon enfant!” and we found ourselves the next minute at the other side of a thick pair of velvet curtains.

The Baroness was standing by a bright fire made of logs of wood. This was the only room in the house which had the privilege of a fire. The fire gave it all of a sudden a sort of English look. A smarting pain came at the back of my eyes.

“I trust you are better, my child,” said the Baroness.

She came up to me quite kindly, took my hand, and led me to a seat which exactly faced the very bright light which came through two tall windows. She then rang the bell.

“Request Comtesse Riki von Kronenfel to attend here immediately,” was her remark to the servant.

The servant withdrew; there was a dead pause in the room. The Baroness was turning over some papers, and did not take the slightest notice of me.

As soon as Riki entered she glanced nervously round her. When she saw me she turned first red, then very white; then, being evidently quite satisfied that I had betrayed her, she went to the extreme end of the room and sat there with her hands folded.

“You sent for me, my Baroness?” she said in the prettiest tone imaginable, and looking up with pleading blue eyes at the face of her mistress.

The Baroness returned her glance with one full, dark, swift, and indignant.

“Riki,” she said, “I have had the good fortune to intercept a letter addressed to you.”

“But how? I understand not,” said the girl.

“It was addressed to you, and got, doubtless by mistake, into the post-box this morning.”

As the Baroness spoke she laid the letter on the table. Riki came forward as though to pounce on it. “Permit me,” said the Baroness. She took it up and held it firmly in her own hand.

“But it is open,” said Riki.

“I opened it,” said the Baroness.

Riki then stood very still; it seemed to me I could almost hear her heart beat.

“I have read the letter,” said the Baroness; “and now I will read it aloud. I will read it in English, so that both you and this young girl, Rachel Grant, may hear.” The Baroness then began:

“My own One, Angel of Love and Light, – I have received your two most precious letters quite safely. I pine to get still more news from you. I don’t think it possible that I can exist until the summer without seeing you, and I propose, during the Easter recess, to get my father to allow me to visit Paris. There, I make no doubt, we can arrange a meeting, if the some kind English girl,” – (“Horrors!” I said to myself) – “will again help us by putting your communications to me into the post-box outside the house where that dragon of propriety, the Baroness von Gablestein, resides. – Your most faithful and devoted lover, —

“Heinrich.”

This letter, read aloud in the smooth tones of the Baroness, without a scrap of emotion, just as though she were repeating one of her pupils’ daily lessons, fell truly like a bomb-shell into the little room.

“I must have other witnesses to this transaction,” she said.

Again she rang the bell. Riki darted blue fire of indignation towards me. I did not speak; I believe I looked a greater culprit than she did at this moment.

“Request Mademoiselle Wrex and Fräulein Schumacher to come here immediately,” said the Baroness, her tone now one of great imperiousness. The servant withdrew, and the French and German governesses made their appearance. The Baroness handed the letter in question to each in turn.

“Do not speak,” she said; “I only want you to witness exactly what will immediately take place. – Comtesse, will you have the goodness to tell me the name of the individual who calls himself Heinrich?”

Silence on the part of the Comtesse.

“If there is such reluctance to your making a full confession of your disgraceful conduct, I shall be forced to send a telegram to your father, the Count Kronenfel, and request him to attend here in order that he may take his daughter away in disgrace from my establishment.”

This threat had a due effect on Riki, and she now, in a very nervous voice, confessed that the name of the youth who called himself Heinrich was Holgarten. Further investigation proved that Holgarten was a boy at a large school near Riki’s native place, that he and she had met two or three times, and that the idea of a correspondence had started between them. She did not wish, she said, to enter into a forced marriage. Here she burst into tears.

“It is not the English way,” she said.