Dumps – A Plain Girl

“And pray, Comtesse, what have you to do with the English way? You are a German girl.”

“I – I love Heinrich,” she said.

She threw herself down on the sofa, regardless of proprieties, and burst into sobs.

“You will have the goodness in a minute or two to leave the room. Your punishment, which will be a severe one, will be meted out to you when I have considered all the circumstances. I now wish to ask you the name of the English girl who posted your letters.”

There was no answer from Riki; again she glanced at me. Again she lowered her eyes and twisted her hands in distress.

“A full confession, Comtesse; in no other way will you escape the just anger of your noble father.”

Before she could speak I sprang to my feet.

“You need not ask her,” I said. “I did very wrong. I posted the letters.”

“That will do,” said the Baroness. A relieved look passed over her features. “Riki, stop crying. Your conduct has been beyond words, but I will not say any more to blame you just now. – Fräulein Schumacher, conduct the Comtesse to her room, and see that she does not leave it; stay with her there, for I cannot trust her alone.”

The German governess immediately conveyed the weeping girl from the room, and I found myself the one culprit who was now to be dealt with.

“I must ask you,” said the Baroness in her very bitterest tone, “why you, an English girl, brought up without the terribly circumscribed pale of the German girl, dared to help her to convey letters from this house.”

“I did it without thinking,” I said.

“The rule on the subject of letters was in your bedroom.”

“I know.”

“You had read the rules?”

“That is true; but they did not make any impression on me; I did not remember any of them.”

“You must tell me exactly what occurred; also on what dates you posted the letters.”

Gradually, piece by piece, the Baroness got the information from me. My conduct seemed to grow blacker and blacker in my own eyes. The Baroness evidently thought very badly of me. After a time she said:

“I shall be forced to make a distinction between you and the other girls. It must be known amongst the English girls – and we have six or seven in this establishment – that their letters will still be unread, that their correspondence will still be unmolested, with the exception of the correspondence and letters of one girl – Rachel Grant. In future you must post every letter in the box in the hall, and each letter you receive must be first of all opened and read by me before it is handed to you. That is your just punishment. I could do much more severe things, but I will to a certain extent overlook your inexperience.”

I left the room feeling as though the very floor would open to receive me. I went upstairs with my cheeks on fire. How was I to live? How was I to endure this?

Presently Mademoiselle Wrex followed me.

“Oh mademoiselle, I cannot bear this!” I exclaimed. “I must go away.”

“Go away?” she said.

“Yes; how can I bear to stay at the school when I am disgraced?”

“But your punishment is not very great,” said the French teacher.

“But to let the others know, and to have my freedom as an English girl taken away from me!”

“It will be restored again, I am sure, if you bear your punishment with meekness,” said Mademoiselle; “but if you rebel and make a fuss the Baroness will keep up her indignation.”

“And will she tell my people at home?”

“I do not think she will do that if you bear your punishment with all due patience. You did wrong.”

“I did wrong, but not such a dreadful sin as you give me credit for. I did wrong in ignorance. There is a great, great difference between doing a thing you know is wrong and doing a thing that is wrong without knowing it.”

A slight smile played round the lips of Mademoiselle. She was, as a rule, kindly; but she could not quite understand my nice distinction.

“The effect is the same,” she said. “Do you not know that for a young lady in this school to have a correspondence with a schoolboy, as the Comtesse Riki has done, is quite scandalous? It would ruin the school. The Comtesse must be made an example of.”

“Oh, what are they going to do with her, poor thing?”

“She will not be dismissed; that would be too disgraceful; but she is for a whole week to be confined to her own room, and no girl in the school will be allowed to speak to her. At the end of that time she will be restored to a certain amount of liberty; but her actions will be most carefully watched.”

“And Heinrich?” I said.

“Heinrich?” said Mademoiselle, with a start. “You are not interested in him, I hope?”

“Oh no, no!”

“He will receive one short letter from the Baroness, and his master at the school will receive another. I do not think anybody in the future need trouble themselves about Heinrich.”

Nothing could exceed the contempt which she threw into the word. After a time she left me.

The scene of the morning had certainly not made my cold better; but when Hermione came up I confided my troubles to her. She said she thought that I was lucky to have got off as cheaply as I had.

“Rosalind has been telling me of another girl, an English girl, who helped some Russians to get their communications into the post, and she was dismissed – sent back to England within twenty-four hours. The only reason you are not treated as harshly is because the Baroness really believes that you did what you did unwittingly.”

“I did,” I said. “Oh, I hate this school! I was never meant to be a French or German girl. I have lived such a free life, I shall die in this cage.”

“No, you won’t, you silly girl. As to your thinking that we English girls will think any the less of you, you may be certain we won’t.”

But, after all, the punishment which was so severe, which I so dreaded, which seemed to shake my nature to its very depths and to turn me at once from a happy, interested, contented girl into a mass of sulkiness and misery, was, for the time at least, to be averted – averted in a very fearful way – for that evening there came a telegram from my step-mother:

“Your father very ill; one of the teachers must bring you back immediately.”

Mademoiselle Wrex was the lady who had the task of conveying me home. There was a great fuss and bustle and distress in the school when the telegram reached me. I scarcely knew what to do with myself. Augusta was speechless with misery. She begged and implored me to take her with me.

“But I can’t,” I said. “And why should I? He is not your father.”

“No,” said the poor thing – “no.”

I really pitied her. She sank back on the sofa in our little sitting-room with a face like death.

“If you see him, can you just tell him how he has helped me?”