Mr Manchuri was a person who seldom had his soft moods; but he was very
kind to Priscilla. She found the house most luxurious, and was allowed
to do exactly what she liked in it. The housekeeper, Mrs Wolf, petted
her a good deal, and the other servants were most respectful to her.
She was given a large, luxurious room to sleep in, and was allowed to do
what she liked with herself while Mr Manchuri was busy all day long over
his business affairs.
So one day lengthened into two, and two into three; and a week passed,
and still Priscilla was the guest of old Mr Manchuri. It was a Sunday
evening, the first Sunday after her visit, when she and the old man were
seated together, and the old man put out his hand and touched hers and
said:
"There is a dress of Esther's upstairs; it is all grey and long and
straight, and belongs to no special fashion, and I believe if you put it
on it would exactly fit you; and I think, in this sort of half-light, if
you came down to me in that dress I should almost believe that Esther
had returned."
"But I can't wear the dress," said Priscilla, "because of that which I
have told you; nor can I see the portrait of your Esther for the same
reason."
"Now, my dear," said Mr Manchuri, "I won't ask you to wear the dress and
I won't show you the portrait of my child until you yourself ask me to
do so. But what I do want to say is this: that whatever happens, I am
your friend; and as to your having done something that you call wicked--
why, there--I don't believe it. What can a young girl who is not yet
seventeen have done? Why, look at me, my dear. I am as worldly an old
fellow as ever lived, and I have made a capital good bit of business
while at Interlaken. It is connected with that secret that I hinted to
you about when we were on our way back from Interlaken."
"Mr Manchuri," said Priscilla, "what you have done in your life cannot
affect what I have done in mine. I have done a very bad thing. It
seems dreadful to me, and"--here she looked at him in a frightened
way--"you attract me very much," she said. "You have been so
wonderfully kind to me, and the thought of your Esther seems to give me
a sort of fascination towards you, and if you will let me I--I--should
like to tell you what I have done."
"Ay?" said the old man, rubbing his hands. "Now we are coming to the
point."
"You will send me away, of course," said Priscilla; "I know that. I
know, too, that you will counsel me to do the only right thing left, and
that is to make a clean breast of everything to Mrs Lyttelton."
"She is your schoolmistress?"
"Yes."
"Then it is something you have done at school?"
"That is it."
"Oh, a schoolgirl offence--a scrape of that sort! My dear young lady,
my dear Priscilla, when you come to my age you won't think much of
things of that sort."
"I hope I shall never think lightly of them," said Priscilla; "that
would be quite the worst of all."
"Well, out with it now. I am ready to listen."
"I want you to do more than listen," said Priscilla. She took one of
his hands and held it in both of hers. "I want you to be Esther for the
time being. I want you to judge me as Esther would judge me if she were
here."
"My God!" said the old man. "I cannot do that. I cannot look at you
with her eyes."
"Try to, won't you? Try to, very hard."
"You move me, Priscilla. But tell me the story."
"It implicates other people," said Priscilla--she sank back again in her
seat--"and in telling you my share in it I must mention no names; but
the facts are simply these. I have a great and very passionate love for
learning. I am also ambitious. I was sent to Mrs Lyttelton's most
excellent school by an uncle in the country. He could not very well
afford to pay the fees of the school, and his intention was to remove me
from it at the end of last term. I ought to tell you, perhaps, that I
have a father in India; but he has married a second time and has a young
family, and he is very poor. Uncle Josiah is my mother's brother, and
he has always done what he could for me. But he is a rather rough,
uneducated man; in short, he is a farmer in the south-west of England.
Towards the end of the last term I received a letter from him saying
that he could not afford to keep me at school any longer, and that I was
to come back to him and either help my aunt in the house-work--which
meant giving up my books and all my dreams of life--or that I was to be
apprenticed to a dressmaker in the village.
"Now both these prospects were equally odious to me. I struggled and
fought against them. The suffering I endured was very keen and most
real. Then, just when I was most miserable, there came a temptation.
By the very post which brought me the dreadful letter from my uncle
Josiah, there came a letter to another girl in the school who was most
keenly desirous to leave it. I cannot mention the girl's name, but she
was told that unless she won the first prize for literature at the
break-up she was to remain for another year. You see, Mr Manchuri, this
was the position. One girl wanted to go; another girl wanted to stay.
Now I wanted to stay, oh! so tremendously, for another year at school
would give me a chance which would almost have been a certainty of
getting a big scholarship, which would have enabled me to go from Mrs
Lyttelton's school to Girton or Newnham, and from there I could have
continued my intellectual life and earned my bread honourably as a
teacher."
"This is quite interesting," said Mr Manchuri. "And what happened? You
are still at school--at least, so you tell me."
"Yes," said Priscilla, "I am still at school; I am there because I--
sinned."
"How, child? Speak, Priscilla; speak."
"There was another girl in the school, and she was wonderfully clever.
I must not tell you her name. _She_ managed the thing. She managed
that the girl who wanted to leave the school should get the prize for
literature, and that I should stay for a year longer at Mrs
Lyttelton's."
"But how? How _could_ she do it?"
"She was so marvellously clever that she did do it--of course with my
connivance."
"Oh, with your connivance. How?"
"Well, you see, I could write better essays than most girls in the
school, and--and--it was arranged, and--and I consented to give up my
essay to the girl who wanted to go, and to allow her to put her
signature to it, and I took her essay and put my signature to hers. So
she got the first prize for literature and left the school, and I stayed
on, my reward being that my fees were to be paid for the ensuing year.
That is the wicked thing I have done, and it has sunk into my heart and
has made life unendurable."
"Thank you; thank you very much," said Mr Manchuri.
Priscilla bowed her head. The old man started up and began to pace up
and down the room. After a time he went up to the girl, just touched
her on her bowed head, and said very gently: "We will judge this thing,
if you please, in the presence of my daughter Esther. Come with me now
to her room; you shall see her. The portrait of her is so good that you
will almost feel that you are looking at her living self." Priscilla
rose tremblingly. She was weak and exhausted in every limb, but it
seemed to her that a powerful hand was drawing her forward, and that she
had very little will to resist. Mr Manchuri took the girl up to a room
on the first floor. It was a beautifully large room, but scantily
furnished. He lit some candles that had been previously arranged in
front of a large picture which stood on an easel. This picture had been
painted by one of the great portrait-painters of thirty years ago. It
was a most speaking likeness, and Priscilla, when first she saw it,
started, turned very white, and clasped Mr Manchuri's hand.
"Why, it is I!" she said; "it is I! I have seen myself like--like that
in the glass."
Mr Manchuri drew a deep breath of relief.
"Didn't I know it?" he said. "Didn't I say that you were like her? And
see--she smiles at you.--You forgive Priscilla, don't you, Esther?
Smile at her again, Esther, if you forgive her." The smile on the young
face of the girl who had so long been dead seemed to become more
pronounced, more sweet, more radiant.
"There," said Mr Manchuri, "Esther has judged just as God does, I take
it; and the thing is forgiven as only God forgives; but what you have to
do, Priscilla Weir, is this. You have to put yourself right with your
schoolmistress, and in doing so you cannot, in any justice, shield your
schoolfellows. I am no fool, dear girl, and I know their names well
enough. One of them is that Miss Lushington whom I met at the Hotel
Belle Vue, and the other--the girl who arranged the plot and carried it
through with such cleverness--is no less an individual than my little
_quondam_ friend, Annie Brooke. You see, my dear, there is no genius in
my making this discovery, for I have heard them both talk of Mrs
Lyttelton's school, and Miss Brooke often entertained me in the most
charming way by giving me a minute description of Miss Lushington's
talents and how she won the great literature prize. Little, little did
I then guess that I should be so much interested in you, my dear. We
will leave Esther now. Come downstairs with me again."