Chapter VI: About the Vase

THE door was opened, not by Pearson, but by Diana Fenwick,—Diana in a white heat of rage. Beryl had been angry herself many a time, and many a time had seen Dixon angry; but she had known nothing before quite like this. For Diana's very face was changed, and her slender figure shook with passion, and her lips were colourless. She grasped Beryl's arm, and dragged the child by main force into the drawing-room, pointing with her free hand to the overturned table and the shattered vase.

"You dared!" she gasped. "You dared—you naughty naughty child—you 'dared' to come in here and meddle with my things—"

"I didn't mean," Beryl tried to interpose.

"Take that!" Diana Fenwick, a spoilt child and a spoilt wife, utterly untrained in self-control, was for the moment beside herself, and her hand bestowed a ringing box upon Beryl's ear.

Pearl in Beryl's place would have cried bitterly; but though Beryl staggered beneath the blow, she did not shed a tear. Her face crimsoned, and her brow grew sullen, as she wrenched herself free from Mrs. Fenwick's grasp.

"Stand still," commanded Mrs. Fenwick. "Do you know what you have done, you wicked shameless child? Do you know that the vase was worth twenty pounds if it was worth a penny? There is nothing in all my house that I would not sooner have lost. And much you care!"

Beryl retreated another step in silence. Her expression certainly was not penitent.

Diana Fenwick, quivering and white still with anger, was by far the most agitated of the two.

"Twenty pounds!" she repeated. "Twenty pounds, if it was worth a penny. And to think of all that I am doing for you—as if it were not enough without this! Talk of gratitude! I don't believe you know the meaning of the word. No wonder Mrs. Dixon warned me! The vase that my dear husband bought to please me,—one of his last gifts. O it is too too bad!" And Diana's excitement culminated in a fit of sobbing.

Beryl stood motionless, her brow drawn into puckers, her hands knotted together, her ear burning and tingling, while the proud spirit within burnt and tingled yet more sharply under the indignity.

"A loss that can never be replaced—never!" sobbed Diana. "Fifty pounds would not pay me back for the loss. To choose out that—the very thing of all others which I care most about. Nothing else would have mattered. And to wait till I was gone—so underhand, so deceitful! You have not told me how it happened," Diana said sharply, drawing her handkerchief away from her face with a sudden whisk. "Ah, I thought so, you have nothing to say for yourself. Not even to tell me you are sorry."

"No," Beryl said huskily.

"You are not sorry! You tell me so to my face, Beryl!"

Beryl would not unsay the word. She was not sorry at that moment, and her face showed too plainly what she felt.

"Well, it is no more than I might expect, after all that I was told. But this quite decides me—quite," said Diana, ignoring the fact that she had been "decided" before. "I cannot possibly keep you at home. You will go to school, where this sort of thing will be put down with a strong hand. That is what you need,—a strong hand over you. Pearl is a good little gentle girl, and I shall keep her with me, but you will go to school the very first day I can arrange for it. And if you do not choose to tell me you are sorry for behaving like this, and to beg my pardon, I certainly shall not trouble myself to have you home for the holidays. I am not going to have everything in my house broken. You may go upstairs now, for you are not fit to be seen, and I have had enough of your tempers for one day. Racketing about in the fields, and enjoying yourself, after such behaviour! It just shows that you have no principle. Don't make a mess with your wretched flowers here,—" as some primroses fell from Beryl's hand. The greater number had been already dropped in the brief scuffle. Diana was in a mood to be vexed with everything. She caught up a handful of pale-yellow blossoms and flung them into the fire-place.

"You may go," she repeated to Beryl, "and your tea will be sent to you. I don't choose to have you downstairs again this evening. That beautiful vase! There isn't another like it for ten miles round. I shall never forget what you have done."

Nor would Beryl. She went slowly out of the room, and upstairs, step by step in measured style, while her whole frame was pulsating with suppressed emotion. Passing the open door of her sister's little room, Beryl walked straight in, and found Pearl brushing her hair before the glass. Beryl stood beside Pearl, and the two faces were reflected together; one ivory-white and tinted with rose, fair and serene; the other burning, gloomy, and troubled.

"Pearl," Beryl said abruptly, "I meant my primroses for you. But you won't care for them now."

Pearl turned with a half-alarmed look.

"O Beryl, how could you break that beautiful vase?"

"I didn't mean—" began Beryl, in a thick breathless voice. "It wasn't on purpose. But it's no good for me to say so. She won't believe me. Pearl, do you love her?"

"Aunt Di? Yes, of course I do, very much indeed."

"I don't. I shall never love her—never, if I live to be a hundred years old—never," repeated Beryl.

"I think you ought, though," Pearl said.

"But you love me most, Pearl—Pearl," said Beryl passionately, and Pearl made an involuntary step backwards. "You do love me best, Pearl?"

"I love you both," Pearl said with caution. "She isn't cross to me, as you are."

"I am not cross," said Beryl. "It isn't crossness. Oh, I wish,—I do wish,—if only there was somebody who could understand!" Then, with a change of tone, "Look, Pearl—she struck me."

"But it was very naughty of you to break the vase," said Pearl.

"She had no business to strike me," Beryl answered, her face flaming at the recollection. "Dixon never did. She says I am to go to school, and I think I am glad. I think I'd rather. I don't want to live with her, and I can't bear to see you and she always kissing and hugging."

"She would kiss you too, if you would be good," said Pearl.

"Beryl! Go to your own room immediately. Mere naughtiness," Mrs. Fenwick said, in a displeased voice from the doorway.

Beryl brushed past her and disappeared. The door of the room over Pearl's was heard to slam heavily.

"My poor little girl, you are quite frightened," said Diana, sinking into a chair. "And no wonder. We cannot go on like this, Pearl. It makes me positively ill. Beryl must go to school for a time till she has learnt to command her temper."

Pearl took the matter philosophically. After all, there is no denying that her affection for Beryl was mixed with a touch of fear. Having tasted something of freedom during the last day or two, she was perhaps the less disposed to wish for a continuation of the former state of things.

And Mrs. Fenwick, while condemning Beryl's temper, was not in the least troubled with recollections that her own temper had been by no means under control. She counted hers to have been only righteous anger.

But the breach between her and Beryl seemed to be irreparable. Beryl appeared no more that evening; and when, next morning, she came downstairs, she wore a fixed expression of sullen unhappiness. Mrs. Fenwick addressed her seldom, but when she did she spoke to the child sharply, and Beryl answered only in the curtest monosyllables. Pride and temper were thoroughly aroused in Beryl. Towards Pearl, her manner was constrained and cold, though with an occasional quiver of painful distress and longing. It was sad that, Millicent being laid by and Marian away, softening influences were utterly wanting.

Two days passed thus, and on the third Diana said stiffly:—"I have heard from Mrs. Brigstock, and she can receive you at once. There is no object in delay. You will go on Monday."

Beryl heard silently, offering no response.

"Remember, you have not told me yet that you are sorry about the broken vase, or asked my pardon," said Mrs. Fenwick.

A cloud came over Beryl's face. "When shall I see Pearl again?" she asked.

"That depends upon yourself,—upon your making a proper apology for your conduct, and also upon the reports that I shall receive from school. I will not have you here, to behave as you have done the last week."

"If Pearl 'might' go to school too!" broke from Beryl.

"Certainly not. I could not be so unjust as to punish Pearl for your misconduct. Besides, Pearl will be far happier without you. Mrs. Dixon told me how you tyrannised over the poor little thing, and I find it to be quite true. You have no idea of consulting Pearl's will in anything."

Beryl looked bewildered, for, like many children, she was not at all aware of her own faultful tendencies. "Pearl always liked what I liked," she said, speaking involuntarily in the past tense, though the new order of things had lasted but a few days.

"Pearl is sweetly yielding, and she submitted to your dictation sooner than have a quarrel. That is different from 'liking' to be domineered over. If you go on as you have done, all your schoolfellows will dislike you, Beryl. All depends upon yourself. And if you leave home in this sulky mood, refusing to apologise for the way in which you have treated me, you are sure to go wrong."

Beryl's brows drew together uneasily. "I can't say I am more sorry than I am," she muttered.

"Then you admit that you deliberately broke the vase."

"No," Beryl said in a stolid voice. "The worsted got twined round the furniture, and I didn't see. And I was winding up the worsted, and it pulled the table over."

Diana felt that the words were entirely truthful.

"And you are not sorry?"

Beryl's eyes glowed. "I should be—if—if—you had not struck me."

"Nonsense," said Diana shortly. "Children must be punished, and if you behave like a little child, you must be corrected like one. You deserved ten times as much. Then you do not intend to ask my pardon? . . . Very well, I have made an easy opportunity for you, but I certainly shall not trouble myself to do it again. You will go to school next Monday, and you may write to Pearl once a week, but I shall expect to see neat letters. If you behave well, you will see Pearl now and then, when I can arrange to have you in the holidays. If not, you must take the consequences."

Beryl murmured, "I'll try."

Somehow the reports from school were not satisfactory. Whether or no Beryl "tried," she certainly did not for a long while succeed in pleasing her schoolmistress. Diana had passed on to Mrs. Brigstock the "character" that she had received of Beryl from Dixon, adding thereto sundry observations on her own account. Beryl, thus docketed as an undesirable pupil, was placed necessarily at a disadvantage. Preconceived opinions adverse to a child usually result in jaundiced views, and Beryl probably suffered to the full from such views.

The journey from Bath to Hurst was no light expense, and Diana cared less and less to undertake it as time went on. Beryl and Pearl met but seldom during the next five years. Once a year, in the summer, Mrs. Fenwick took Pearl to the seaside for a month's change, and she usually arranged to have Beryl there. Through the last three of the five, Beryl never once set foot in Hurst. And the last summer before her school life came to an end, an epidemic of measles in the school prevented any meeting between the two sisters. When Beryl reached the age of seventeen-and-a-half, she had not seen Pearl for eighteen or twenty months.