“We do it for ourselves as much as you. It would disgrace us as much as you,” said Mary. “Yes; I think you may rest quite assured.”
Chapter Five.
Five Important Letters.
On the following evening five girls might have been seen all busily employed writing to their respective friends. These girls were the five who had been elected to take the parts of the heroines in Tennyson’s “Dream of Fair Women.” Penelope Carlton was writing to her sister Brenda. She had passed her test sufficiently well to induce Mrs Hazlitt to alter her resolution and to determine that “A Dream of Fair Women” should be represented on the little stage in the old Elizabethan garden of Hazlitt Chase.
The girl was full of deficiencies, but she was also full of capabilities. There was, in short, a soul somewhere within her. Those light blue eyes of hers could at will darken and flash fire. Those insipid lips could curve into a smile which was almost dangerous. There was an extraordinary witchery about the face, which Mrs Hazlitt felt, although she had never noticed it before. She blamed herself for considering—at least for the time being—that in some respects Penelope Carlton outshone Honora Beverley. Honora, with her stately grace, her magnificent young physique, could never go down into the very depth of things as could this queer, this poor, this despised Penelope. Mrs Hazlitt decided to give in to the girls, and, that being decided, the necessary letters were written.
Penelope wrote briefly to her sister, but with decision:
“Dearest Brenda: Don’t ask me why I have done it, but accept the fact that your desires are accomplished. I have sunk very low for your sake, and I feel absolutely despicable; but the less you know of the why and the wherefore of my deed, the better. All that really concerns you is this: that within the next week or so you will receive twenty pounds which you can do exactly what you like with. You will owe this gift to your sister, who will have made herself—but no matter. You know, for I have told you already, how truly I love you. I don’t think it would be quite frank not to say that I don’t care for any one in all the world like you, Brenda. I am only sixteen, and you twenty-one—or is it twenty-two—and all my life I have adored you from the time when I used to cry because you were so beautiful and I so ugly, and from the time also when you used to take me in your arms and pet me, and kiss me and call me your own little girl.
“It takes a great deal to get me to love anybody, but I do love you, Brenda, and I think I prove my love when I disgrace myself now in the school for your sake and do something which, if it were found out—but there—how nearly I trenched on ground which I must not touch in your presence; for if you knew, and if you were in the least worthy of what I think you, darling, you would not take the money. You would not, because you could not.
“I hope whoever the man is who cares for you and who wants to see you in your fine dress and your pretty hat and ruffles, that he will not take the little affection you have for me away. But, even if that happens, my love for you is so true, and so very, very deep, that I think I would not change my purpose, even though I knew, by so doing, I should lose the little love you give me. For, Brenda,—I must say it now—I read you quite truly—you have got a lovely face and a beautiful manner and all people are attracted to you. But it is I—your sister—who have got the heart; and the one who has the heart suffers. I accept the position. I know quite well that no one will ever care for me in the way people will care for you; but so great is my love for you, that I am satisfied even to do what is wrong for your sake. It is all dreadful, but it can’t be helped.
“Your affectionate sister,—
“Penelope Carlton.”
Having finished her letter, Penelope addressed it to: Miss Brenda Carlton, c/o Rev. Josiah Amberley, The Rectory, Harroway; and, leaving her room, she ran with it into the hall, where it was deposited in the post box in sufficient time to go out with the evening letters.