Turquoise and Ruby
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Accordingly, as Nina sat on the edge of her bed that morning, she turned to Fanchon and said:
“When will that Penelope girl arrive?”
“I think she’s coming to lunch,” answered Fanchon. “I suppose she’s a second Brenda,” exclaimed Josie. “Oh, I don’t think she’s at all like her,” answered Fanchon. “Besides, she is much, much younger.”
“Brenda is very old indeed,” said Nina. “She’s twenty-one; I can hardly imagine anybody being quite as old as that – it must be such an awful weight of years on one’s head.”
“They say it isn’t,” replied Fanchon, who was becoming learned in all sorts of matters she had better have known nothing about. “Brenda says that you don’t even begin to feel grown-up until you are past twenty.”
“I suppose you have jolly times when you’re out spreeing with her at night,” said Josie.
“Wonderful,” said Fanchon.
“You wouldn’t tell us anything about it, would you?”
“No,” said Fanchon, “it is quite, quite secret.”
“I don’t want to hear,” said Nina. Then she added:
“Josie and I have a secret too – a beautiful, beautiful secret that you don’t know anything about.”
“A secret?” said Fanchon. “What nonsense!”
She thought of Joe Burbery, of the play, of the beautiful bangle. What silly children her little sisters were to talk of having secrets.
“Yes, we have!” reiterated Nina; “haven’t we, Josie?”
“Wonderful!” said Josie, smacking her lips.
“Well, tell it, you little geese,” said Fanchon, “and have done with it.”
“Indeed we won’t,” said Nina, “not unless you tell us yours.”
“But I haven’t a secret,” said Fanchon.
“You haven’t? Oh, what awful lies you tell! I’d be ashamed if I were you!” said Nina.
“Well, well – if I have – I can’t tell it,” said Fanchon, colouring.
“You can’t?” said Josephine – “not to your own, own sisters? You might – you know.”
Fanchon would not for worlds betray Brenda, either as regarded her introduction of Joe Burbery, or the fact that she had taken her to a play – for dearest papa did not approve of plays. But she would have liked her sisters, in secret, in absolute secret, to behold the lovely bangle.
“I can’t tell my secret,” she said. “I have one – just a little one – but I can’t, because I have promised.”
“Then we can’t tell you ours,” said Nina. “And our secret is lovely! Isn’t it, Joey?”
“Oh, ripping!” said Joey. “It’s just golloptious! Won’t you be jealous, though? You’ll want to wear one of them sometimes.”
“A thing to wear!” said Fanchon, colouring and trembling. “What sort of thing?”
“That’s our secret.”
Fanchon got up from the chair where she was seated and began, in a perfunctory way, to tidy the hopeless room.
“I suppose we had best go out,” she said. “Brenda said we were to follow her to the sands. She says we’re not to bathe this morning. Oh – and, Nina – you’re to take your notebook and pencil – there are a lot of things to enter.”
“I am going to lose that account-book,” said Nina. “I won’t be bothered any more – horrid Brenda!! I had dear Mademoiselle as my governess.”
“Mademoiselle d’Etienne?” exclaimed Fanchon. “What do you know about her? Brenda says she’s not a bit nice. Brenda distrusts her dreadfully.”
“Well, and she doesn’t like Brenda,” exclaimed Nina. The moment she said this, Fanchon walked up to her young sister and said sternly:
“What have you seen of Mademoiselle? Out with it!”
“I won’t tell!” said Nina. “You’re not to question me – I won’t tell! You have all your fun, and I don’t mention it – I can if I like – I can write to dear papa and tell him, and he’ll come over pretty quick – you had best not worry me.”
“Never mind,” said Fanchon, who didn’t at all like this threat on Nina’s part; more particularly as she knew that her little sister was quite capable of carrying it into effect. “Never mind,” she repeated. “But you might as well tell me that little wonderful secret.”
“I’ll tell if you’ll tell,” said Josie. “There! that’s fair.”
“And I’ll tell if you’ll tell,” exclaimed Nina.
Josephine walked softly up and down.
“Why shouldn’t we three have secrets all to our three selves?” she said then.
“Oh, if I thought it wouldn’t go to anybody else, of course I shouldn’t mind,” said Fanchon.
“Why should it go to anybody else? We just want you to know – it is so beautiful – so very beautiful!” said Nina. “We want you to know because you are our flesh and blood, but it’s only fair you should give us something in exchange.”
“Then I will – I will show it to you. I’ll lock the door first. It is – it is – too beautiful – you’ll envy me all the days of your lives, both of you. But you must never breathe it – you must go on your knees and solemnly declare that you won’t let it out.”
“All right,” said Nina, her little eyes dancing. “And you will go on your knees and promise that you won’t let out what we have got to say to you.”
“Silly children,” said Fanchon. “You can’t have much of a secret.”
“But we have – we have, we certainly have!” said Josie.
“Well then, here, let us clasp hands – that’ll do equally well,” said Fanchon. “We’ll never, any of us, tell to anybody, what is about to take place in this bedroom. I, Fanchon Amberley, promise.”
“And I, Josephine Amberley, promise,” cried Josephine.
“And I, Nina Amberley, promise,” exclaimed little Nina.
“Now, Nina, lock the door,” said Fanchon.
Nina did so.
“Who’ll show first?” she asked, her small face crimson.
“Oh – it’s something to show?” said Fanchon. “Well, you’ll show first, of course – you’re the youngest.”
“Must I?” said Nina. “You’re the eldest, you ought to begin.”
“Nothing of the sort: the greater comes last.”
“I wonder if it is greater!” said Nina.
“Never mind – you will soon see.”
“Well then – I’ll begin.”
Each sister possessed a little sacred drawer. The sisters’ drawers were destitute of keys, for Brenda had appropriated the key for her own far more valuable possessions. Nina’s was the bottom drawer. The chest was a rude, shaky concern, but the drawer itself was deep and held a good deal. She went on her knees now and pulled it open and pushed her little hand into the farthest back corner and took from within a tiny cardboard box. Her hand shook as she laid the box in her lap and looked up at Fanchon. Fanchon did not speak. She was waiting for Nina to proceed.
“Open it quickly, do!” said Fanchon, when the little girl still hesitated.
“It’ll surprise you,” said Nina. “You never could think that I would have such a thing: but it’s my very, very own. There, look!”
The box was pulled open, the cotton wool removed, the little gilt brooch with its false turquoise was held up for Fanchon’s inspection.
“It is mine!” said Nina – “she gave it to me!”
“Who in the world is she?” asked Fanchon, very much impressed by the brooch, and secretly coveting it. “That darling Mademoiselle. Oh, I can’t tell you anything more; but she was sorry for us little girls who go to bed every night in the hot, hot hours in this hot, hot room – and she gave me this! It’s a beautiful, beautiful trinket, isn’t it?”
“It is very pretty indeed,” said Fanchon.
“Well now – you see mine,” said Josie, and she produced the brooch which held the false pearls.
“There!” – she said – “Mademoiselle called them ‘very chic,’ and aren’t they – aren’t they lovely?”
“They are sweet!” said Fanchon. “How curious of her to give them to you. Of course they can’t be real.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t matter a bit,” said Nina – “they look like real, and that’s the main thing. Poor dear Mademoiselle couldn’t afford real jewellery.”
“You think they look real,” said Fanchon. “Wait till you see – ”
She had discovered the spot where Brenda kept the real key of the chest of drawers. She had watched carefully, and had seen her put it inside a broken vase on the top shelf of the over-mantel that very morning.
“Girls,” she said, “I have something to show you. Both of you go and bury your heads against your counterpanes. Kneel down by your beds, and don’t look, to save your lives. Then you will see something!”
The girls flew to obey. In a minute Fanchon had opened the drawer and had taken out the little precious box.
“Now you may look, and you must be quick!” she said. “Oh dear – it is weak of me even to show it – but when you see it – ”
She opened the precious box and lifted out the bangle, which she supposed to be the real one. There was the blue stone, there was the clasp, and there was the rim of gold, but – Fanchon felt all the colour rushing madly up to her face, and then leaving it. The bangle was not her bangle! Oh, yes – she had studied it once or twice; she had observed its elegance, its dainty finish. “This – this – ”
She looked wildly at her two sisters, who glanced at her in some wonder.
“Where did you get this?” said Nina, who felt that if she did not pretend now, all the rest of her life would be worthless to her.
“It was given to me by Brenda – oh, let me put it away – some one will come – I am frightened!”
“It’s only an old shilling thing, isn’t it?” said Josie. “Indeed not – it is real, as real can be.”
“Then why didn’t you show us the gold mark? there’s always a gold mark on real things – at least so Mademoiselle says.”
“I can – oh dear, oh dear – of course I can! but – you must come to the light.”
The three girls approached the window. They turned the bangle round and round. Alas! that curious little mark which Joe Burbery had detected under the lamp-post was nowhere to be found on the false bangle. Fanchon burst into a flood of tears.
“Some one has stolen the real bangle! – whatever am I to do?”
The two girls clustered round her. She cried a good deal; then carefully returned the bangle to its hidden place.
“I don’t know what is to be done!” she said. “It’s the most awful thing that ever happened! But my bangle that was eighteen carat gold – and there was the most lovely turquoise in it – is gone! Oh, what am I to do!”
Chapter Twenty One
A Forlorn Hope
The Amberleys were really fond of each other. They were worldly little creatures, and had never been trained in high principles of any sort; but they clung together, as motherless, defenceless creatures will in their hour of peril. They had a queer feeling now that they were in some sort of danger, and the younger ones sympathised enormously with Fanchon.
They did not of course dare to tell her what had happened on the previous night – how Nina had worn the bangle, the real eighteen carat gold bangle, the bangle with the turquoise of such size and elegance, of such an exquisite shade of colour, the bangle with that delicate tracery all over its gold rim. That bangle was so widely different from this, that there was no doubt whatever that the one had been substituted for the other. How had it been done? Mademoiselle? Oh, no, no. Nina looked at Josephine, and Josephine was afraid to meet Nina’s eyes, as the thoughts flashed quickly through each little brain.
Mademoiselle had helped them to undress. Mademoiselle had herself put the precious bangle away. But no – she was kind – more than kind. It could not be in the heart of such a woman to do anything so shabby. Nevertheless, the thought of Mademoiselle’s past treachery had come to both the little sisters, and they hated themselves for it, and feared to glance at each other, and above all things dreaded what Fanchon might be thinking about. Fanchon was, however, far too miserable to worry herself with regard to her little sisters’ thoughts.
“I cannot make it out,” she said. “Of course I shall have to speak to poor Brenda about it.”
“Perhaps Brenda did it herself,” said Nina then. It was an audacious and very wicked thought which had come to the little girl, but she was really intensely anxious to shield Mademoiselle at that moment. The words she uttered bore some fruit, for Fanchon considered them very carefully, and said aloud:
“If I really thought that – ”
“What would you do if you did think that?” asked Josephine.
“I should go straight home to papa, and tell him everything – everything!” was Fanchon’s answer.
“But have you a great deal to tell him?”
“I have – oh, I have. I am a miserable girl! That odious – that vulgar – that detestable bangle – is that what I am to have in the end? She probably did exchange it for the real one, because she wanted to wear the real one herself. Oh, girls – how am I to endure it!”
“Buck up, whatever you do,” said Nina; “and remember your promise.”
“Oh – how I hate promises!” said Fanchon. “I want to fly at her now, horrid thing! and confront her with the truth.”
“Well, you can’t anyhow for the present, on account of your promise,” said Josie.
“Perhaps to-night you may talk to her, but certainly not before; and it’s time for us to be going down to the sands,” said Nina. “We’ll lose all our morning’s fun if we don’t. I want to get some of those buns from the little old woman who brings them round in her basket. I’ll get Brenda to buy them for us; I’m ever so hungry, and I’m not going to be afraid of Brenda to-day.”
“You’ll have to take your notebook,” said Fanchon; and then she gave a half-laugh.
“I!” exclaimed Nina. “Not I. I think the time of tyranny with Brenda is nearly over.”
The girls put on their hats, and strolled down to the beach. Brenda was there looking quite happy and unconcerned. She called Fanchon a little aside, and desired the younger girls to amuse themselves building castles in the sand.
“I am too old for that,” said Josephine.
“Not a bit,” exclaimed Brenda. “How ridiculous you are! you are nothing but a baby. Anyhow, please yourselves, both of you, for I want to talk to Fanchon.”
“It’s horrid, the way you make Fanchon grown-up, and make Nina and me quite little babies!” said Josie.
But Brenda looked troubled, and was quite indifferent to her small pupil’s remarks with regard to her conduct.
“I tell you what,” she said, after a pause. “You may do anything you like on the sands, only don’t wander too far.”
“There’s Betty with her tray of cakes!” exclaimed Nina. “May we have a bun each, Brenda? Will you give us money to buy a bun each?”
Curious to relate, Brenda complied. She gave Nina the necessary pence, and did not even refer to the obnoxious notebook. The moment the little girls were out of sight, she turned to her elder pupil.
“I met Harry to-day; he was quite contrite and nice. I feel almost certain he’ll ask me to marry him. I mean to go out without you this evening, and I mean to wear the bangle. I think the bangle will quite clinch matters. Harry thinks I am poor; but I don’t want him to do so. Why, what’s the matter, Fanchon?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Fanchon, making an effort to conceal her feelings.
“Have you a headache, dear? are you ill?”
“I am not ill,” said Fanchon, “but I have a little headache – the sun is very hot,” she added.
“I shall take Penelope with me this evening – that’s a good idea,” said Brenda, suddenly. “I shall keep her for the night; I mean to force her to stay. She’s got a very stylish air about her, which you, poor Fanchon, don’t possess, and what with Penelope and the bangle – ”
“I thought you didn’t want Penelope to know about the bangle.”
“No more I do; but I shall manage just to let him see a gleam of it when she is not looking. You haven’t the least idea how to arrange these sort of things, my dear child; but doubtless some day you will. However, now it’s almost time to hurry home. My little Fanchon shall have that beautiful bangle all for herself when the holidays are over.”
Fanchon gave quite an audible sniff.
“What a very unpleasant noise you make, dear Fanchon.”
“Oh, I can’t help it,” replied Fanchon, and she stuck her head high in the air and looked so repellent that her governess wondered she had ever been bothered by her.
When the girls returned to the pension, they found Penelope awaiting them. She wore a brown holland frock, quite neat, but very plain. Her soft, very fair hair was arranged tidily round her head, also with the least attempt at display. She was a singularly unobtrusive-looking girl, and, beside Brenda, she was, as the ladies of the pension exclaimed, “nowhere.” They all criticised her, however, very deeply, for had she not come from Castle Beverley? By slow degrees, too, they began to discover virtues in her, the sort of virtues they could never aspire to. She was so gentle in conversation, and had such a low, sweet voice. She was very polite, also, and talked for a long time to Miss Price, seeming, by her manner, to enjoy this woman’s society. Mrs Simpkins looked her up and looked her down, and said to herself that although not pretty, she was “genteel,” and to be genteel, you had to possess something which money could not buy. The good woman made a further discovery – that pretty, showy Brenda was not genteel.
Mademoiselle was also reading Penelope from quite a new point of view. She had already gauged to a great extent her pupil’s character, and what she saw to-day gave her pleasure rather than otherwise. She talked to her, however, very little, and put herself completely into the shade.
When the meal was over, Brenda spoke to her sister.
“I want you to stay for the night,” she said. “We can send a telegram to the Castle to say that I have kept you. I want you to stay a bit, Pen; you will, won’t you?”
“I am afraid I can’t, for Honora wants me to go home.”
“You call Castle Beverley home?”
“Just for the present, and it is nice to feel that I can speak of it as such.”
The other ladies lingered round for a minute or so, but having no excuse to listen to Brenda and Penelope, they retired, leaving the two sisters and the three Misses Amberley alone.
“Children, you would like Pen to stay, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Fanchon.
“And you three could just for one night sleep all together.”
“It wouldn’t be at all comfortable,” said Nina, “but I suppose we could.”
“You would have to sleep at the foot, Nina,” said Fanchon.
“All right,” said Nina, “I’d like that best, for I could kick you both if you were troublesome.”
“I certainly can’t stay,” remarked Penelope. “I promised to come to you for part of a day, Brenda, and surely we can say all we want to say between now and nightfall.”
“You are horribly disobliging,” said Brenda.
“The carriage is coming for me too,” exclaimed Penelope; “I really must go back.”
“You could send a note quite well, that is, if you were really nice.”
The five girls had now gone upstairs, Mademoiselle had retired to her stifling attic. Mademoiselle was hiding her time. After a little further conversation Brenda perceived that it was quite useless to expect Penelope to remain for the night in the boarding-house, and accordingly, with extreme sulkiness, gave up her plan of impressing Harry with the elegant demeanour of her own sister that night. The next best thing, however, was to take Penelope for a walk. This she proceeded to do. The girls were told they might amuse themselves, which they did by locking themselves into their bedroom and examining the two brooches and the false bangle until they were fairly weary of the subject. Each girl in turn tried on the brooches, and each girl slipped the bangle on her wrist to shoot it off the next moment in horror and let it lie on the floor.
“Ugly, coarse, common thing!” said Fanchon. “Oh! when I remember my beauty, you can’t even imagine, girls, what it was like.”
“But it seems so ridiculous that Brenda could have given it to you,” said Nina. “Brenda might rise to a shilling thing, but as to the bangle you describe – ”
“Well, well – I know nothing about it,” exclaimed Fanchon. “I only know that she did give it to me. Perhaps she inherited it from a relation. She wanted me to be friends with her, anyhow, and so she gave it to me, although I was not to have it for my absolute very, very own until we return to Harroway.”
“Well – I shouldn’t think you would much value that thing!” exclaimed Nina, kicking the false bangle across the room with her foot.
Josie ran and picked it up.
“It’s better than nothing,” she cried, “but of course it is common. Now of course our brooches – ”
“Your brooches are common too,” said Fanchon.
“No, they’re not; they’re very, very elegant: any one would take them to be real.”
“What – without the hall-mark?” queried Fanchon.
“People as a rule don’t ask you to take your brooch off in order to see the hall-mark!” exclaimed Josie. “Don’t be silly, Fanchon, you can never wear that bangle, for it is too coarse for anything. But we can, and will– wear our brooches. We’ll wear them every Sunday regularly, when we get home. And won’t the children at Sunday school be impressed! I can fancy I see all their eyes resting on mine – I think mine with the pearls is even more elegant than Nina’s with the turquoise.”
“Well, come out now,” said Fanchon. “The whole thing is disgusting. Of course Brenda will discover very soon that the bangle is changed.”
“She won’t be surprised, because she did it herself,” said Nina.
“No – that she didn’t! I am certain sure she would not be quite so mean – I don’t believe it of her!” exclaimed Fanchon.
The three little Amberleys walked and talked alone that afternoon, while Brenda and Penelope sat on the quay. Brenda earnestly hoped that the redoubtable Harry would pass that way and see her with her elegant sister.
“I always did think you a fearfully plain girl, Penelope,” said her sister, “and of course you are plain. But you are mixing in such good society that it is beginning to affect you. You seem to me to have undergone a sort of transformation. You are – of course you’re quite ugly still; but you are – I can’t explain what it is – different from the rest of us.”
“You don’t look too happy, Brenda,” was Penelope’s next remark.
“I happy?” answered Brenda. “Oh – I’m well enough.”
“We’re very happy at the Castle,” continued Penelope. “Honora is so sweet, and all the other children are nice, and – I wish you could know something of our life – it is a little bit higher than this, somehow.”
Brenda kicked a pebble restlessly away with the toe of her smart shoe.
“I am not suited for that sort of life,” she said. “I don’t care for your Castle, but all the same, I think you may as well get me invited there again. What day can we come?”
“I don’t know: how can I get invitations for you?”
“You’ll be perfectly horrid if you don’t – it is your duty to give your own, own sister a good time.”
“Oh, Brenda – if only you’d be different!”
“I don’t want to be different, thank you; I enjoy myself, on the whole, very well.”
“You don’t look too happy: you seem sort of worried,” and Penelope gave a sigh and laid her hand on Brenda’s arm.
“When he proposes, it’ll be all right,” said Brenda. “It was on account of him that I wanted you to stay. I don’t want to be governess any more. I want to be married and to have my fun like other girls; and he is awfully rich – Oh – I do declare! Yes – it is – why, there is Mr Fred Hungerford and his brother!”
Brenda bridled, and drew herself up. Young Hungerford approached. He took off his hat to both the girls, and presently he and his brother and Brenda and Penelope were chatting in the most amicable way together.
While they were thus employed – Brenda’s face now radiant with smiles, her eyes bright with merriment, and even Penelope laughing and chatting in the most natural way in the world – who should pass by but Harry Jordan and his friend, Joe Burbery. Brenda felt that she would like to cut Harry Jordan at that moment. She contented herself, however, with the very stiffest inclination of her head. Fred followed her gaze, and favoured Joe with the slightest perceptible nod.
“How is it you know that bounder?” he said, turning to Brenda as he spoke.
Brenda coloured deeply.
“I just know him slightly,” she said, “do you?”
“Why, yes – of course. He is the son of a small draper in our town. I used to meet him when I was a schoolboy on my way to school every morning, and I think mother sometimes gets odds and ends at Jordan’s shop. They’re fifth-rate tradespeople, and I don’t believe their business is very extensive.”