| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: By Honour Bound
Author: Marchant, Bessie
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "By Honour Bound" ***
BY HONOUR
BOUND
A SCHOOL STORY FOR GIRLS
BY
BESSIE MARCHANT
AUTHOR OF
“DIANA CARRIES ON,” ETC.
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO, AND PARIS
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LTD
Parkside Works Edinburgh 9
3 Henrietta Street London WC2
312 Flinders Street Melbourne C1
5 Parker’s Buildings Burg Street Cape Town
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS (CANADA) LTD
91-93 Wellington Street West Toronto 1
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
19 East 47th Street New York 17
SOCIÉTÉ FRANÇAISE D’EDITIONS NELSON
25 rue Henri Barbusse Paris V^{e}
CONTENTS
I. WHAT DOROTHY SAW
II. A SHOCK
III. PRIDE OF PLACE
IV. TOM IS DISAPPOINTING
V. TOM MAKES EXCUSE
VI. RHODA’S JUMPER
VII. THE ENROLLING OF THE CANDIDATES
VIII. THE TORN BOOK
IX. UNDER A CLOUD
X. FAIR FIGHTING
XI. DOROTHY SCORES
XII. DOROTHY IS APPROACHED
XIII. WHY TOM WAS HARD UP
XIV. TOP OF THE SCHOOL
XV. AT HIGH TIDE
XVI. A STARTLING REVELATION
XVII. SETTING THE PACE
XVIII. THAT DAY AT HOME
XIX. A SUDDEN RESOLVE
XX. PLAYING THE GAME
XXI. THE HEAD DECIDES
XXII. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CUP
XXIII. TROUBLE FOR TOM
XXIV. DOROTHY TO THE RESCUE
XXV. SAVED BY THE CHAIN
XXVI. DOROTHY GETS THE MUTTON BONE
By Honour Bound
CHAPTER I
WHAT DOROTHY SAW
Stepping out of the train in the wake of Tom, Dorothy was at once caught
in the crowd on Paddington arrival platform. She was pushed and squeezed
and buffeted, but her eyes were shining, and her face was all smiles,
for she felt that she was seeing life at last.
“Whew! Some crowd, isn’t it?” panted Tom, as a fat man laden with a
great bundle of rugs and golf clubs barged into him from behind, while a
lady carrying a yelling infant charged at him from the side, and
catching him unawares, sent him lurching against Dorothy.
She was sturdy, and stood up to the impact without disaster, only saying
in a breathless fashion, “Oh, Tom, what a lot of people! Where do you
expect they all come from?”
“Can’t say. You had better ask ’em,” Tom chuckled, as he sprang for the
nearest taxi, and secured it too, although a ferocious looking man, with
brown whiskers like a doormat, was calling out that he wanted that
particular vehicle.
Dorothy meanwhile secured a porter, and extricating Tom’s luggage and
her own from the pile on the platform, the things were bundled into the
taxi; she and Tom tumbled in after them, and they were moving away from
the platform before the angry person with doormat whiskers had done
making remarks about them.
“That is what I call a good get-away,” Tom sighed with satisfaction,
lolling at ease in his corner. “You will have time to buy your finery
now, without any danger of our missing the train.”
“Bless you, I should have taken the time in any case, whether we lost
the train or not,” rejoined Dorothy calmly. Then she asked, with a
twinkle in her eye, “Are you coming to help me choose the frock?”
“Not me; what should I be likely to know about a girl’s duds?” and Tom
looked as superior as he felt.
Dorothy leant back laughing. “Sometimes you talk as if you know a lot,”
she said mischievously. “Do you remember Brenda Gomme and the marigold
satin?”
Tom grinned, but stuck to it that he had not been so far wrong in
calling the thing marigold, seeing that it was yellow, and marigolds
were yellow.
“Roses are red—sometimes,” she answered crisply; “for all that we do
not call all red things rose colour. Hullo! is this Victoria already?
See, Tom, we will cloakroom everything we’ve got, and then we shall be
able to enjoy ourselves.”
When this was accomplished, and the taxi paid, the two plunged into the
busy streets outside Victoria, walking briskly along, and stopping
occasionally to ask the way to the great multiple shop to which they
were bound.
“There it is! Look, Tom!” There was actual rapture in Dorothy’s tone as
she pranced along, waving her hand excitedly in the direction of the big
plate-glass windows of Messrs. Sharman and Song.
At the door of the lift she paused to beg Tom to come with her; but he,
his attention caught by a window filled with football requisites, was
already engrossed, and turned a deaf ear to her pleading.
Dorothy was shot up in the lift to the next floor, and was at once
thrilled and half-awed by the splendid vista of showrooms stretching
away before her enchanted gaze. Then a saleswoman took her in hand, and
she plunged at once into the business of buying a little frock for
evening wear, with the tip kind old Aunt Louisa had given to her.
The frocks displayed were too grown-up and elaborate for a schoolgirl.
Dorothy knew what she wanted, and was not going to be satisfied until
she got it. The saleswoman went off in search of something more simple,
and for the moment Dorothy was left alone staring into the long
looking-glass, not seeing her own reflection, but watching the people
moving about the showroom singly and in groups: it was so early in the
day that there were no crowds.
She saw a girl detach herself from a group of people lower down the
room, and wander in and out in an aimless fashion between the showcases.
Suddenly the girl halted by a table piled with pretty and costly
jumpers. Stooping over them for a moment she swiftly slid one out of
sight under her coat, and with a leisurely step turned back past a big
case to join her party.
[Illustration: She swiftly slid a jumper under her coat]
Dorothy gave a little gasp of dismay. It had been so quickly done that
at first she did not realize she had been watching a very neat piece of
shoplifting. Then she sprang forward to meet the saleswoman, who was
coming towards her with an armful of frocks. She was going to denounce
that girl who was a thief, she was just opening her lips to cry out that
a jumper had been stolen, she looked round to see where the girl was,
but the light-fingered one had gone—vanished as completely as if she
had never been—and Dorothy was struck dumb. If the girl had escaped out
of the room, of what use to accuse her? Even if she were still in the
building she might easily have passed the stolen garment on to some one
else. Then it would be her word against Dorothy’s accusation. There
would be an awful fuss, her journey would be delayed Tom would be
furious, and——
“I think you will like these better, Moddom,” the voice of the
saleswoman cut into Dorothy’s agitated thinking.
She hesitated, and was lost. She could not make a disturbance by telling
what she had seen—she simply could not.
All the time she was choosing her frock she felt like a thief herself.
Half her pleasure in her purchase vanished, and she was chilled as if
the sun had gone behind a cloud, leaving the day drear and cold.
In spite of this the garment was as satisfactory as it could be, and the
price was so reasonable that there was a margin left over for shoes and
stockings to wear with the frock. Oh, life was not such a tragedy after
all, and Dorothy hugged her parcel with joy as she went down in the lift
to join Tom, who was still absorbed by the window filled with football
things.
“Did you buy up the shop?” he asked, as they went off briskly in search
of lunch.
“Why, no; it would have needed a pretty long purse to do that,” she said
with a laugh; and then she burst into the story of the shoplifting she
had seen, asking Tom what he would have done if he had been in her
place.
“Yelled out, ‘Stop thief!’ and have been pretty quick about it too,” he
answered with decision, as they settled down at a corner table in a
quiet little restaurant for lunch.
“Oh, I could not!” There was real distress in Dorothy’s tone. “The girl
was so nice to look at, and she was well-dressed too. Oh, Tom, how could
she have stooped to such meanness?”
“Women are mostly like that.” Tom wagged his head with a superior air as
he spoke. “It is very few women who have any sense of honour; I should
say it is peculiar to the sex. When boys and girls have games together
the girls always cheat, and expect the boys to sit down under it. It is
the same in the mixed schools; the girls expect to get by thieving what
the boys have to work hard for. When they are older, and ought to know
better, it is still the same; they expect to have what they want, and if
they can’t get it by fair means, why, they get it by foul. They don’t
care so long as they get it.”
Dorothy stared at him for a moment as if amazed at his outburst; then
she laughed merrily, and told him he was a miserable old cynic, who
ought to be shut up in a home for men only, and be compelled to cook his
own food and darn his own socks to the end of the chapter.
“Well, in that case I shouldn’t be going back to school to-day, with the
prospect of being invited over to the girls’ house every fortnight or so
during the term—rather jolly that would be.” Tom winked at his sister
as he spoke, and then they laughed together.
“I should feel just awful at the prospect of Compton Schools if you were
not going to be there too,” she said with a little catch of her breath;
and then she cried out that they must hurry, or they would certainly be
late for the train.
It was a scramble to get their things out of the cloakroom, to get on to
the platform, and to find a place in the Ilkestone train. At first they
had to stand in the corridor, then a voice from farther along the
corridor called to them “Tom Sedgewick, there is room for one here Is
that your sister? Bring her along.”
“Some of our crowd are down there; come along and be introduced,” said
Tom, catching Dorothy by the hand and hurrying her forward. “It is Hazel
Dring, and Margaret Prime is with her. They are pals—if you see one,
you may be sure the other is not far off.”
Hazel Dring was a tall girl with fair hair and a very nice smile.
Margaret Prime was smaller, a quiet girl with a rather shrinking manner,
as if she was afraid of being snubbed, Both of them greeted Dorothy in
the friendliest fashion. They made room for her to sit with them,
although they were already crowded; and they were so kind that she had
to be glad she had met them on the train, although secretly she would
have chosen to be alone with Tom.
“You are not a scholarship girl, are you?” asked Hazel. “You look nearly
grown up.”
“I am not clever enough for a scholarship girl,” Dorothy answered with a
little sigh; “Tom has the brains in our family. I am seventeen, and I am
to have one year at the Compton Schools.”
“Just long enough to win the Lamb Bursary,” cried Hazel eagerly. “I
expect you will be in the Sixth, you are so big; and if you are, you
will be eligible for the Mutton Bone.”
“The Mutton Bone!” Dorothy looked puzzled, even frowning, as was her
wont when perplexed.
Margaret laughed, then answered for Hazel. “That is what we call the
Lamb Bursary—a term of affection, mind you. We would not cry it down
for worlds; it is the top strawberry in the basket of the Compton
Schools, and there are a lot of us going to have a try for it this
year.”
“Oh yes, I know the Lamb Bursary is a prize worth having,” said Dorothy.
“Tom has talked about it, and groaned a lot because there was not an
equal gift for the boys. But I don’t suppose I should have much chance
for it as I am not at all clever.”
“Oh, that does not matter so much if you are anything of a sticker at
work,” said Hazel; “the Lamb Bursary goes to the best all-round scholar
of the year. You might be very brilliant in some subjects, but if you
were a duffer at others you would not stand a chance. For instance, you
might stand very high in mathematics, you might be a prodigy in
chemistry, but if you had not decent marks for languages, history, and
music you would be left, for the judging is on the averages of all the
subjects. It is really a very good way, as it gives quite an ordinary
girl a chance.”
“What do you mean by judging on the averages?” asked Dorothy, frowning
more than before.
“This way,” put in Margaret, whose business in life seemed to be to
supplement Hazel. “You might get a hundred marks for maths; well, eighty
would be a good average, so you would be put down for eighty. Say you
only got twenty for history; the twenty left over from your maths
average would be put to it, but it would not bring you up to your
average of eighty, don’t you see? It is a queer way of judging, and must
give the staff and the examiners no end of trouble, but it does work out
well for the girl who is plodding but not especially clever. In most
subjects one could hope to make eighty out of a hundred, but oh! it
means swotting all the time. One can’t shirk a subject that does not
make much appeal, because every set of marks must be up to the average.”
“I don’t mind work,” said Dorothy, her frown disappearing, “but I’m not
brilliant anywhere, and that has been the trouble. The Bursary sends you
to Cambridge, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, the full university course. Oh! it is well worth trying for, even
if one has little or no chance of getting it.” Margaret’s face glowed as
she spoke, and Dorothy thought she was really nice-looking when she was
animated.
“Webster and Poole are wedged into a corner along there; I am going to
talk to them,” said Tom, thrusting his head in from the corridor; and
then he went off, and Dorothy did not see him again until the train
slowed up at Claydon Junction, where they had to change for Sowergate.
Quite a crowd of boys and girls poured out of the London train, racing
up the steps and over the bridge to the other platform where the little
Sowergate train was waiting. Dorothy went over with Margaret, while
Hazel and Tom stayed behind to sort out the luggage. There was a wait of
ten minutes or so. The carriage was crowded out with girls, some of them
new, like Dorothy, and others, old stagers, who swaggered a little by
way of showing off. The talk was a queer jumble of what they had been
doing in vac, of the hockey chances of the coming term, and what sort of
programme they would have for social evenings. Dorothy sat silent now;
indeed she was feeling rather lonely and out of it, for every one was
appealing to Margaret, and Hazel was at the other end of the carriage,
while Tom was nowhere to be seen.
“Rhoda Fleming has come back,” said a stout girl who had flaming red
hair, “I saw her at Victoria. She says she is going to stay another
year, so that she can have a chance at the Mutton Bone.”
“She will never win it,” chorused several.
“She would stand a very good chance if only she would work,” said
Margaret quietly. “Rhoda is really clever, and she has such a good
memory too.”
“It is like you to say a good word for her, Meg, but she has snubbed you
most awfully in her time.” The red-haired reached out a friendly hand to
pat Margaret on the shoulder, but Dorothy noticed that Margaret winced,
turning a distressful red.
“I don’t mind who snubs me, provided Hazel does not,” she said with a
rather forced laugh.
“There is not much danger of my doing that, kid.” Hazel nodded her head
from the other end of the carriage, and looked her affection for her
chum.
Dorothy thrilled. How beautiful it must be to have a girl chum, and to
love her like that. She and Tom had always been great pals, but she had
never had a chum among girls. Her own two sisters, Gussie and Tilda,
otherwise Augusta and Matilda, were four years younger than herself, and
being twins, were in consequence all in all to each other.
Just then the train ran out of tunnel number three, Dorothy caught sight
of two flags fluttering amid groups of trees on the landward side of the
railway track, and at that moment a great roar of cheering broke out
along the train. The girls in the carriage yelled with all their might,
handkerchiefs fluttered, and Dorothy wondered what was happening.
“See those flags?” cried Margaret, seizing her arm and shaking it
violently. “They are the school flags, and we are saluting them. Now,
then, yell for all you are worth!”
And Dorothy yelled, putting her back into it too, for was she not also a
Compton girl?
CHAPTER II
A SHOCK
A string of vehicles were drawn up outside Sowergate Station—there were
three taxis, two rather dilapidated horse cabs, the station bus, and
four bath chairs. There was a wild rush for these last by the girls in
the know, and when they were secured the fortunate ones set off in a
race for the school, the chair-man who arrived first being promised
double fare.
Dorothy, with Hazel, Margaret, the two Goatbys, and little Muriel Adams
were squeezed into a taxi, and the luggage was taken up on a lorry. The
girls were a tight fit, as Daisy Goatby was an out-size in girls;
however, the distance was short, so crowding did not matter. They all
cheered loudly when they passed the labouring chair-men, who were making
very good way indeed, until one unlucky fellow, in trying to pass
another, tipped his chair over in the ditch and spilled the passenger,
though, luckily, without doing any damage.
Dorothy felt rather sore because Tom had gone off without even saying
good-bye, but she was too proud to let the others know she was hurt.
There was such a bustle and commotion on the platform and in the station
that no one would notice the omission but herself. It was quite possible
that Tom had forgotten that he had not said good-bye to his sister, and
she strove to forget it herself.
There were no conveyances for the boys. Their school was so close to the
station, they had only to race across the rails, and then over the road
leading up to Beckworth Camp, and the school gates were in front of
them. But it was nearly a mile up the steep little Sowergate valley to
the funny old house under the hill where the girls had their school.
Dorothy thought she had never seen such a queer medley of buildings as
the Compton School for girls. It was built round in a half-circle under
the hill, and at first sight seemed to consist chiefly of
conservatories; but that was because most of the rooms opened on to a
conservatory which ran the whole length of the house, and served as a
useful way of getting from room to room. The place was very big, and
very rambling; it had lovely grounds, and the sixty girls were lodged in
the extreme of comfort and airy spaciousness.
Dorothy was received by Miss Arden, the Head, and by her handed over to
the matron, who allotted her a cubicle in No. 2 dormitory, in company
with Hazel, Margaret, and seven other girls. It was half-past five by
this time, and matron said dinner was at six o’clock: it was to be at
this time to-day, as most of the girls had been travelling, and had had
no proper meal since breakfast. By the time dinner was over the luggage
would have arrived, and there would be unpacking to be done.
Dorothy was thankful to drop the curtains of her cubicle, and to find
herself alone for a few minutes, it had been such a wildly exciting sort
of arrival. Even as she sank down for a moment on the chair by the side
of her bed a great burst of cheering broke out, and she looked out of
the window to see that the first bath chair had turned in past the lodge
gate, and was being uproariously welcomed by a group of girls who were
lingering on the step of the hall door for that purpose.
She had to burst out laughing at the ridiculous sight the chair-man
presented, decked out with coloured paper streamers round his hat and a
huge rosette pinned to his coat. He was panting with his exertions,
while his fare, still seated in the chair, was haranguing them all on
her splendid victory, when two other chairs came in at the gate, and
were presently followed by the last, which had been overturned.
There was only time for a wash and brush-up; then, as the gong sounded,
streams of girls from various parts of the house poured in the direction
of the dining-hall. They streamed along the conservatory that was so gay
with all sorts of flowers, and turned into the dining-hall to meet
another stream of girls coming from dormitories No. 4 and No. 5, which
were reached by a different stairway.
Dorothy was with the girls coming through the conservatory, she was
looking at the flowers as she was hurried along, and she was thinking
what a lovely place it was. There seemed to be a great crowd of girls in
the dining-hall, and because it was the first meal of term, they were a
little longer getting to their places. The various form-mistresses were
busy drafting them each to the right table, and Dorothy had a sense of
whirling confusion wrapping her round, making all things unreal, while
her vision was blurred, and the sound of voices seemed to come from ever
so far away. Then the sensation passed. She was herself again, she was
standing on one side of Hazel Dring, while Margaret stood on the other,
and she lifted her eyes to look at her opposite neighbour.
A shiver of very real dismay shook her then, for in the tall girl
confronting her across the table she recognized the girl who had stolen
the jumper in the showroom of the London shop.
Oh, it surely, surely could not be the same! Dorothy stared at her
wide-eyed and bewildered. Her gaze was so persistent and unwinking that
presently the girl looked at her in annoyance, saying curtly,—
“What are you staring at? Have you found a black mark on my face?”
Dorothy flushed. “I beg your pardon, I was thinking I had seen you
before.” She stammered a little as she spoke, wondering what answer she
would make if the girl should ask her where she had seen her.
“That is hardly likely, I should think,” answered the girl. Then, as if
with intent to be rude, she said coldly, “I have no acquaintance with
any of the scholarship girls.”
Dorothy gasped as if some one had shot a bowl of cold water in her face;
she was fairly amazed at the rudeness and audacity of the girl, and she
subsided into silence, while Hazel said crisply,—
“Dorothy Sedgewick is not a scholarship girl, and until after the
examination to-morrow morning we do not even know whether she is a dunce
or not, so you need not regard her as a possible rival until then.”
“I am not afraid of rivals,” said the girl with superb indifference; and
Dorothy caught her breath in a little strangled gasp as she wondered
what would happen if she were to announce across the table that she had
seen this proud girl steal a silk jumper from the showrooms of Messrs.
Sharman and Song only a few hours before.
Just then a girl lower down the table leaned forward and said, “I did
not see you at Redhill this morning, Rhoda; which way did you come?”
The girl who had snubbed Dorothy turned with a smile to answer the
question. “I came up to town with Aunt Kate, who was going to do some
shopping, and then I came on from Victoria.”
Dorothy’s gaze was fixed on the girl again: it was just as if she could
not take her eyes away from her; and Rhoda, turning again, as if drawn
by some secret spell, flushed an angry red right up to the roots of her
hair. But she did not speak to Dorothy—did not appear to see her even;
and the meal went on its way to the end, while the girls chattered to
each other and to the mistresses.
“Who was that girl sitting opposite who was so very rude?” asked
Dorothy, finding herself alone for a minute with Margaret when dinner
had come to an end.
“That was Rhoda Fleming,” answered Margaret; then she asked, “Whatever
did you say to her to put her in such an awful wax?”
“I only said that I thought I had seen her before,” said Dorothy slowly.
“And had you?” asked Margaret, opening her eyes rather widely, for there
did not seem anything in that for Rhoda to have taken umbrage about.
“I may have been mistaken.” Dorothy was on her guard now. She might have
told Rhoda where she had seen her, had they been alone; but to mention
the matter to any one else was unthinkable—it would be like uttering a
libel.
“You succeeded in getting her goat up pretty considerably,” said
Margaret with a little laugh. “You may always know that Rhoda is pretty
thoroughly roused when she mentions scholarship girls—they are to her
what a red rag is to a bull. I am a scholarship girl myself, and I have
had to feel the lash of her tongue very often.”
“But why?” Dorothy’s tone was frankly amazed. “It is surely a great
honour to be a scholarship girl—to have won the way here for yourself;
I only wish I had been able to do it.”
“Oh yes, the cleverness part is all right, although very often it is not
so much cleverness as adaptability, or luck pure and simple,” said
Margaret, who hesitated a minute; and then, as if summoning her courage
by an effort, went on, “You see, the scholarship girls often come up
from the elementary schools. I did myself: it was my only chance of
getting here, for my mother is a widow, and poor; she keeps a
boarding-house in Ilkestone. I am telling you this straight off; it is
only fair that you should know. Seeing me with Hazel Dring, you might
think our social positions were equal, or at least not so far apart as
they really are. Hazel’s people are rich. She has never in all her life
had to come within nodding distance of poverty, or even of narrow means.
But she chose me for her chum, and we never trouble about the difference
in our positions.”
“Of course not; why should you?” Dorothy’s tone was friendly—she had
even slipped her arm round Margaret’s waist—and was shocked to see how
the girl shrank and shivered as she made her proud little statement of
her position. “If you will let me be your friend too, I shall be very
pleased and proud. My father is a doctor, and he has to work very hard
indeed to feed, clothe, and educate his six children, so there is
certainly not much difference between you and me, whatever there may be
between you and Hazel. But I am so surprised to find that your home is
in Ilkestone—why, that is quite close, the next station on from Claydon
Junction—and yet you came from London with Hazel.”
“I have spent all the vac at Watley with Hazel. I was not very well last
term,” explained Margaret. “Mother is always so busy, too, during the
long hols that I am something of an embarrassment at home; so it was an
all-round benefit for me to be away with Hazel.”
“I see.” Dorothy’s arm tightened a little round the slender figure of
Margaret as she asked, “Then we are to be chums? I don’t want to come
between Hazel and you, of course.”
“You would not,” said Margaret, glowing into actual beauty by reason of
her happy confidence in her friend. “Hazel and I have plenty of room in
our hearts for other friends, and even for chums. I felt you were going
to be friendly, that is why I screwed my courage to make a clean breast
about myself.”
“That was quite unnecessary where I am concerned, I can assure you.”
Dorothy spoke earnestly and with conviction; then she asked a little
uneasily, “Do you expect that Rhoda Fleming will be in our dorm?”
“No,” replied Margaret. “I am sure she will not. She will be in No. 1;
it is the same size as ours, but there are better views from the
windows. She was there last term, and will be certain to go back to her
old place. She said she was going to leave, so we are surprised to find
that she has come back for another year. Here comes matron; that means
we have to go and get busy with unpacking.”
It was later that same evening, and Dorothy was standing at the window
of the corridor outside the door of the dorm watching the moon making a
track of silver on the distant sea, when suddenly a tall girl glided up
to her out of the shadows, and gripping her by the arm, said harshly,—
“Pray, where was it that you thought you had seen me before?”
The girl was Rhoda Fleming, and Dorothy could not repress a slight
shiver of fear at the malice of her tone.
“I did not think; I knew,” she answered quietly, and she was quite
surprised to hear how unafraid her voice sounded.
“Well, where was it?” Rhoda fairly hissed out her question, and Dorothy
shivered again, but she answered calmly enough, “It was in the showrooms
of Messrs. Sharman and Song, a little before one o’clock to-day.”
The clutch on her arm became a vicious pinch, as Rhoda said in strident
tones, “You are wrong, then, for I have not been near the shop to-day;
in fact, I have never been there.”
“Very well, that settles it, of course,” said Dorothy quietly. “Please
let my arm go, you are hurting me.”
“Rats! Is your skin too tender to be touched?” Rhoda’s tone was vibrant
with scorn, but her fingers relaxed their grip as she went on, “Well,
what was I doing when you saw me there?”
“That cannot possibly concern you, seeing that you state you were not
there,” said Dorothy calmly, and then she moved away to join some girls
who had come out from No. 2 dorm, and were on their way downstairs for
prayers. She was feeling that the less she had to do with Rhoda Fleming
the better it would be for her happiness and comfort at the Compton
Schools. But how to avoid her without seeming to do so would be the
problem, and she went her way down with the others, wearing a very sober
face indeed.
CHAPTER III
PRIDE OF PLACE
Next morning directly after breakfast, Dorothy, in company with the
other new girls—about a dozen of them—went off to the study of the
Head, to be examined as to place in the form, and general capacity.
It was not usual for any girl, whatever her age, to be received at once
into the Sixth, and Dorothy was accordingly given a Fifth Form paper to
fill. When she had done this, and it had been passed to the Head by the
form-mistress who was assisting her, Miss Arden, after reading down her
answers, immediately passed her another paper—and this a Sixth Form
one—to fill. This was a much stiffer matter, and Dorothy worked away
with absorbed concentration, not even noticing that the other girls had
all done, and left the room. But none of them had been given a second
paper, so she was to be forgiven for being the last.
The Head was called for at that moment. It was a couple of hours later
before Dorothy knew her fate. Meanwhile the whole of the Sixth and the
Upper Fifth were gathered in the lecture hall for a lecture on zoophytes
by Professor Plimsoll, who was the natural history lecturer for the
Compton Schools. He was a young man, and very enthusiastic. Dorothy was
so surprised to find how interesting the subject could be made that she
sat listening, entranced by his eloquence, until a nudge from Daisy
Goatby, sitting next to her, recalled her to her surroundings.
“Take notes, duffer, take notes,” whispered Daisy with quite vicious
energy. “If you sit staring like a stuck pig at my lord, you will get
beans when he has finished, and he has a way of making one feel a very
worm.”
Dorothy made a valiant effort to scribble things on paper; but the next
minute her head was up again, and she was staring at the professor, so
absorbed in what he was saying that she quite forgot Daisy’s kindly
warning anent the need of looking busy.
All round her the girls were bent over their notebooks industriously
scribbling: some of them were taking notes in writing they would
certainly not be able to read later. One or two were writing to friends,
but the main of them were jotting down facts which should serve as pegs
on which to hang their ideas when they had to write out what they could
remember.
Professor Plimsoll was suave in his manner, a gentleman, but withal very
hot-tempered, and a terror to slackers. He noticed Dorothy’s absorbed
attention, and was at first rather flattered by it; then observing that
she took no notes, and that her gaze had a dreamy quality, as if her
thoughts were far away, his temper flared up, and he determined to make
an example of her. Nothing like beginning as he meant to go on. If he
allowed such a flagrant case of laziness to pass unrebuked at the first
lecture of the term, what sort of behaviour might he not have to put up
with before the end of the course?
He was nearly at the end of his lecture, when he stopped with dramatic
suddenness, pointing an accusing finger at Dorothy.
“The name of that young lady, if you please?” he said with a little bow
to the form-mistress, who had come into the lecture with the girls.
“That is Dorothy Sedgewick,” answered Miss Groome with a rather troubled
air. She was sorry that the professor should fall upon a new girl at the
first lecture of term; to her way of thinking it did not seem quite fair
play.
“Miss Dorothy Sedgewick, may I beg of you to step up here?” The
professor’s tone was bland—he was even smiling as he beckoned her to
come and stand by his side; but the girls who had attended his lectures
before knew very well that he was simply boiling with rage, and from
their hearts pitied Dorothy.
She rose in her place and walked forward. She was still so absorbed in
what she had been listening to that she did not sense anything wrong. It
did not even seem strange to her that she should be called forward. She
was the only new girl present at the lecture, and she supposed it might
be the ordinary thing for fresh girls to be called forward in this
fashion.
“Will you permit me to see the notes you have taken?” he asked in a
voice that was curiously soft and gentle, although his eyes were
flashing. He held out his hand as he spoke, and Dorothy handed him her
notebook, saying in an apologetic tone, “I am so sorry, but I have not
taken any notes, I was so interested.”
Professor Plimsoll permitted himself a smile, and again his eyes
flashed, just as if they were throwing off little sparks. He glanced at
the blank page of the notebook, then gave it back to her, saying in that
curiously soft and gentle tone, “Since you have been too interested to
take notes, perhaps you will be so very kind as to tell us what you can
remember of the things I have been telling you; especially I should be
glad to hear what has interested you most.”
Dorothy looked at him in surprise; even now, so restrained and
controlled was his manner, she did not realize how furiously angry he
was, but supposed that he had called her out because of her being a new
girl, and that her position in the school would in some way be
determined by what she could do now. It had been the custom in her old
school for girls to have to stand up and talk in class; and although
this was a much more formidable affair, she was not so much embarrassed
as she would have been but for her training in the past.
Speaking in a rather low tone, she began at the beginning. In many
places she quoted the professor’s own words. Once she left out a little
string of facts, and went back over her ground, marshalling them into
the proper place, and then went steadily on up to the very point where
the professor stopped so suddenly.
The silence in the lecture hall was such as could be felt; some of the
girls, indeed, were sitting open-mouthed with amazement at such a feat
of memory. But there was a ghost of a smile hovering about the lips of
Miss Groome—she was thinking how the professor would have to apologize
to the new girl for having so misjudged her.
If Professor Plimsoll was fiery in temper, he was also a very just man.
The girls must have known he had been angry, even though Dorothy did not
seem to have realized it, and it was due to himself, and to them, that
he should make what amends he could.
“Miss Dorothy Sedgewick,” he began, and he bowed to her as impressively
as he might have done to royalty, “I have to beg your pardon for having
entirely misunderstood you. When I saw that you took no notes I was
angry at what I thought was your laziness, and new girl though you were,
I determined to make an example of you, and that was why I called you
forward in this fashion. I do apologize most sincerely for my blunder,
and I am charmed to think that I shall have a student so able and
painstaking at my lectures this term.”
Great embarrassment seized upon Dorothy now. She turned scarlet right up
to the roots of her hair as she bowed, murmuring something inaudible,
and then she escaped to her seat amidst a storm of cheering from the
excited girls.
Professor Plimsoll held up his hand for silence. The lecture went on to
its end, but it is doubtful whether Dorothy got much benefit from the
latter part. The girls all around her were showing their sympathy each
after her kind, but she was angry with herself because she had lacked
the penetration to see that she had really been an object of pity.
When the lecture was over, and they all streamed out of hall carrying
their notebooks, they fell upon her, cheering her again, and patting her
on the back with resounding thumps just by way of showing friendliness.
“Oh, Dorothy, you were great!” cried Hazel, struggling through the crowd
to reach her. “It was priceless to see you standing there beside my
lord, giving him back his old lecture on creepy-crawlies as calmly as if
you had been brought up to that kind of thing from infancy. His eyes
gogged and gogged until I thought they would have come right out of
their sockets! And then to see the way he climbed down and grovelled at
your feet, oh, it was rich!”
“Dorothy, how did you remember it all?” cried Margaret, thrusting
several girls aside and coming eagerly close up to Dorothy.
“I don’t know; I cannot always remember things so well,” she answered.
“But it was all so interesting, and the professor has such a way of
ticking his facts off, it is so easy to keep them in mind.”
“There is one comfort,” said Hazel. “You will be certain to be in the
Sixth after the little affair of this morning.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied Dorothy, thinking of some of the
questions on the paper she had filled in that morning.
A little later there came to her a message summoning her to the Head’s
private room, and she went in fear and trembling. If she was put in the
Sixth, she would be able to enter for the Lamb Bursary; if she was not
in the Sixth her chance would be gone for always, for she knew that it
was quite impossible for her to stay at school for more than one year.
Miss Arden was very kind; she made Dorothy sit down, and drawing out the
Sixth Form examination paper, began to talk to her about it.
“In many ways,” began the Head, speaking in her calmly assured manner,
“I do not think you are up to the level of the Sixth, but in other
things you are very good indeed. I was still debating whether to put you
straight into the Sixth, or to keep you for one term in the Upper Fifth
to see how you would shape; but before I had really made up my mind,
Professor Plimsoll came in and told me of what happened at his lecture.
He was so impressed with your ability that, acting on his suggestion, I
am going to put you straight into the Sixth, and I hope that you will
work hard enough to justify me in having done this. It is very unusual
for a new girl to be put into the Sixth. Different schools have
different methods of work, and a girl has usually to be with us a little
time before we feel sufficiently sure of her. However, I hope it is all
going to be quite right.”
“Thank you very much; I will be sure to work,” murmured Dorothy, and her
eyes were shining like two stars at the prospect before her; then she
asked in a low tone, her voice a little shaken, “May I enter for the
Lamb Bursary, now that I am going to be in the Sixth?”
Miss Arden smiled. “You can enter if you wish. Indeed, I shall be very
glad if you do. Even if you are not within seeing distance of getting
it, the discipline and the hard work will be good for you. It will be
good for the others too, for the more candidates the better the work
that is done. Rhoda Fleming was to have left last term, but she has come
back for the purpose of competing. I hope that next week, when the
candidates are enrolled, a good number of the Sixth will offer
themselves.”
Dorothy went out from the presence of the Head, feeling as if she was
walking on air. How wonderful that she was in the Sixth! How still more
wonderful that it was really her humiliation at Professor Plimsoll’s
lecture which was the means of putting her there. It had not seemed a
very awful thing to stand up beside the professor and repeat to him what
she remembered of his lecture, but it had been a very keen humiliation
indeed to find that he had considered her a time-waster, and had really
called her out to shame her in the eyes of the others. She had suffered
tortures while the girls were cheering her. Yet if all that had not
happened, she would not have been in the Sixth now, with the possibility
of winning the Lamb Bursary in front of her.
Rhoda Fleming was coming down the stairs as she went up. Just when
passing, Rhoda leaned towards her, and smiling maliciously, murmured,
“Prig!”
Dorothy’s temper flared. It was an outrage that this girl who was a
thief should call her names. She jerked her head round to hurl a
scathing remark after the retreating figure, then suddenly checked
herself. True pride of place was to hold one’s self above the sting of
insults that were petty. After all it did not matter who called her
prig, provided she was not that odious thing.
CHAPTER IV
TOM IS DISAPPOINTING
The rest of the week passed in a whirl of getting used to things and of
settling into place. Dorothy had to find that however good she might be
at memory work, she did not shine in very many things which were
regarded as essentials at the Compton Schools. She was a very duffer in
all matters connected with the gym. She was downright scared at many
things which even the little girls did not shirk. She could not swing by
her hands from the bar, she looked upon punching as a shocking waste of
strength, and even drill had no charm for her.
Miss Mordaunt, the games-mistress, was not disposed to be very patient
with her. Miss Mordaunt was not to be beaten in her encouragement of
little girls and weakly girls; she would work away at them until they
became both fearless and happy in the gym. But a girl in the Sixth ought
to be able to take a creditable place in sports, according to her ideas.
She was really angry with Dorothy for her clumsiness and her ignorance,
which she chose to call downright cowardice and laziness. She was not
even appeased by being told that for the last five years Dorothy had
walked two miles to school every day, and the same distance home again.
In consideration of this daily four miles she had been excused from all
gym work.
“One is never too old to learn, and you do not have to walk four miles
every day now,” Miss Mordaunt spoke crisply. She tossed her head, and
her bobbed hair fluffed up in the sunshine. She was the very best
looking of all the staff, and realizing the unconscious influence of
good looks, she made the most of her attractive appearance, because of
the power it gave her with the girls.
“Oh, I know I am rotten at this sort of thing,” Dorothy admitted with an
air of great humility, as she stood watching little Muriel Adams
somersaulting in a way that looked simply terrifying.
Miss Mordaunt suddenly softened. She had little patience with ignorance,
and none at all with indolence, but a girl who humbly admitted she was
nothing, and less than nothing, had at least a chance of improvement.
“If you are willing to work hard, to start at the beginning, and do what
the little girls do, I shall be able to make something of you in time.”
The air of the games-mistress was distinctly kindly now; she even went
out of her way to pay Dorothy a compliment which all the rest of the
girls could hear. “The amount of walking you have had to do has had the
effect of giving you a free, erect carriage, and you have an alert,
springy step that is a joy to behold. I shall have long and regular
walks as part of our course this term, just for the sake of improving
the girls in this respect; the manner in which some of them slouch along
is awful to behold.”
* * * * *
“I wish you had kept quiet about your long walks to school,” grumbled
Daisy Goatby on Friday afternoon, when the long crocodile of the Compton
Girls’ School swung along through Sowergate, and, mounting the hill to
the Ilkestone promenade, went a long mile across the scorched grass of
the lawns on the top of the cliffs, and then turned back inland, to
reach the deep little valley of the Sowerbrook.
“Why? Don’t you like walking?” asked Dorothy, who had been revelling in
the sea and the sky, and all the unexpectedness of Ilkestone generally.
“I loathe it!” Daisy said with almost vicious energy. She was so fat
that the exercise made her hot and uncomfortable; she had a blowsed
appearance, and was rather cross.
“That is because you are so fat,” Dorothy laughed, her eyes shining with
merriment. “Why don’t you put in half an hour every morning punching in
the gym, then do those bar exercises that Hazel and Rhoda were doing
yesterday? You would soon find walking easier.”
“Why, I take no end of exercise,” grumbled Daisy. “What with tennis, and
hockey, and bowls, and swimming, one is on all the time. My fat is not
the result of self-indulgence; it is disease.”
“And chocolates,” laughed Dorothy, who had seen the way in which her
companion had been stuffing with sweets ever since they had started out.
“I am obliged to take a little of something to keep my strength up,”
Daisy said in a plaintive tone; then she burst out with quite
disconcerting suddenness, “What makes Rhoda Fleming have such a grouch
against you, seeing that you were strangers until the other day?”
Dorothy felt her colour rise in spite of herself, but she only said
quietly, “You had better ask her.”
“Bless you, I did that directly I found out how she did not love you,”
answered Daisy, breathing hard—they were mounting a rise now, and the
pace tried her.
“Well, and what did she say?” asked Dorothy, whose heart was beating in
a very lumpy fashion.
“She said that you were the most untruthful person she had ever met, and
it was not safe to believe a word you said,” blurted out Daisy, with a
sidelong look at Dorothy just to see how she would take it.
Dorothy flushed, and her eyes were angry, but she answered in a serene
tone, “If I said I was not untruthful, it would not help much; it would
only be my word against Rhoda’s. The only thing to do is to let the
matter rest; time will show whether she is right or wrong.”
“Are you going to sit down under it like that?” cried Daisy, aghast.
“Why, it will look as if she was right.”
“What can I do but sit down under it?” asked Dorothy with an impatient
ring in her tone. “If I were a boy I might fight her, of course.”
“Talking of fighting,” burst out Daisy eagerly, “Blanche Felmore, who is
in the Lower Fifth, told me this morning that your brother Tom has had a
scrap with her brother Bobby, and Bobby is so badly knocked out that he
has been moved to the san. There is a bit of news for you!”
“Oh, I am sorry!” exclaimed Dorothy, looking acutely distressed. “I hate
for Tom to get into such scraps, and it is horrid to think of him
hurting some one so badly.”
“Oh, as to that, if he had not hurt Bobby, he would have been pretty
considerably bashed up himself,” replied Daisy calmly. “Bobby Felmore is
ever so much bigger than your brother—he is in the Sixth, and captain
of the football team, a regular big lump of a boy, and downright beefy
as to muscle and all that. The wonder to me is that Tom was able to lick
him; it must have been that he had more science than Bobby, and in a
fight like that, science counts for more than mere weight.”
“What made them fight?” asked Dorothy, a shiver going the length of her
spine. It seemed to her little short of disastrous that Tom should get
into trouble thus early in the term.
Daisy gave a delighted giggle, and her tone was downright sentimental
when she went on to explain. “Tom is most fearfully crushed on Rhoda
Fleming; did you know it? We used to make no end of fun of them last
term. Tom is such a kid, and Rhoda is nearly two years older than he is;
all the same he was really soft about her. They usually danced together
on social evenings, they shared cakes and sweets and all that sort of
thing, and they were so all-round silly that we got no end of fun out of
the affair. Of course we thought it was all off when Rhoda was leaving;
but now that she has come back for another year it appears to have
started again stronger than ever.”
“But how can it have started?” asked Dorothy in surprise. “We only came
on Tuesday—this is Friday; we have not met any of the boys yet.”
Daisy sniggered. “You haven’t, perhaps, but Rhoda has, and Blanche too.
It seems that the evening before last, Blanche, who had no money for
tuck, ran down into the shrubbery beyond the green courts to see if the
boys were at cricket; she meant to signal Bobby, and ask him to send her
some money through his matron, don’t you see. Rhoda saw the kid loping
off, and wanting some amusement, thought she would go along too. Bobby
saw the signalling, and knowing it was Blanche, came to see what she
wanted. It seems that Tom also saw a handkerchief fluttering from the
end of the shrubbery, and thinking it was Rhoda waving to him, came
sprinting along after. He caught Bobby up, too, and passed him. Rhoda
was at the fence, and so they had a talk, while Blanche told Bobby about
having no money, and got him to promise that he would send five
shillings by his matron that same evening. Things were pleasant enough
until the girls were coming away; they expected the bell to go in a
minute, and knew that they would have to scoot for all they were worth.
Then Tom said something about thinking that Bobby was coming across to
see Rhoda, and he was just jolly well not going to put up with it.”
“Yes, what then?” said Dorothy sharply.
It was not pleasant to her to find out how little she really knew about
the inside of Tom’s mind. He was a year younger than herself; she
regarded him as very much of a boy, and it was rather hateful to think
that he was making a stupid of himself with a girl like Rhoda Fleming.
Poor old Tom!
“Bobby Felmore said something rude,” replied Daisy. “The Felmores are
rather big in their way, and their pride is a by-word. Bobby remarked
that he would not trouble to go the length of a cricket pitch at the
call of a girl like Rhoda. Tom went for him then and spat in his face,
or something equally unpleasant. After that it had to be a fight, of
course, and they planned it for yesterday. When the boys’ matron brought
Blanche the five shillings she told her that Bobby was licked, and in
bed in the san.”
“Will Tom be very badly punished?” asked Dorothy with dilating eyes; her
lively fancy was painting a picture of dire penalties which might
result, and she was thinking how distressed her father and mother would
be.
Daisy laughed merrily. “When you see Bobby Felmore you will understand
what a most astonishing thing it is that Tom should have whacked him. Oh
no, Tom won’t get many beans over that. He may have an impot, of course;
but he would get that for any breaking of rules. I should think that
unofficially the masters would pat him on the back for his courage. He
must be a well-plucked one to have stood up to Bobby, and to beat him. I
wish I had been there to see.”
“I don’t; and I think it is just horrid for boys to fight!” cried
Dorothy, and was badly ashamed of the tears that smarted under her
eyelids.
“You are young yet; you will be wiser as you get older,” commented Daisy
sagely; and at that moment the crocodile turned in at the lodge gates,
and the talk was over.
Dorothy had furious matter for thought. She had been looking forward to
Sunday because she knew that she would have a chance to talk to Tom for
an hour then; and she had meant to tell him that the girl who did the
shoplifting at Messrs. Sharman and Song’s place was at the Compton
Schools in her form.
If Tom was so fond of Rhoda Fleming as to be willing to fight on her
behalf, he would not be very ready to believe what his sister had to
tell him.
“He might even want to fight me,” Dorothy whispered to herself, with a
rather pathetic little smile hovering round her lips.
She went into the house feeling low-spirited and miserable; but there
was so much to claim her attention, she had so many things to think
about, and next day’s work to get ready for, that her courage bounced
up, her cheerfulness returned, and she was as lively as the rest of
them. After all, Tom would have to fight his own way through life, and
it was of no use to make herself miserable because he had proved
disappointing so early in the term.
CHAPTER V
TOM MAKES EXCUSE
The girls of the Compton Schools attended the church of St.
Matthew-on-the-Hill, which stood on the high ground above the Sowerbrook
valley. A grey, weather-worn structure it was, the tower of which had
been used as a lighthouse in the days of long ago. It was a small place,
too, and for that reason the boys always went to the camp church, a
spacious but very ugly building, which crowned the hill just above their
school.
To both girls and boys it was a distinct grievance that they were
compelled to go to different churches; but St. Matthew-on-the-Hill was
too small to contain them all, and the military authorities looked
askance at the girls, so what could not be cured had to be endured.
The one good thing which resulted from this was that brothers and
sisters were always together for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons.
If the weather was fine they went for walks together; if it was wet they
were in the drawing-room or the conservatories of the girls’ school.
That first Sunday, Dorothy was waiting for Tom. She was out on the broad
gravel path which stretched along in front of the conservatory, for the
girls had told her that the boys always came in by the little bridge
over the brook at the end of the grounds, and she did not want to lose a
minute of the time she could have with her brother.
She had imagined he would be in a tearing hurry to reach her, and she
felt downright flat, after waiting for nearly half an hour, to see him
strolling up the lawn at the slowest of walks, in company with a
lumpy-looking boy whose face was liberally adorned with strips of
sticking-plaster.
“Hullo, Dorothy, are you all on your own?” demanded Tom, looking
distinctly bored; then he jerked his thumb in the direction of his
companion, saying in a casual fashion, “Here is Bobby Felmore, the chap
I licked the other day. Did you hear about it?”
“Yes, I heard,” she answered, and then hesitated, not quite sure what to
say. It would be a bit embarrassing, and not quite kind, to congratulate
Tom on his victory, with the beaten one standing close by, so it seemed
safest to say nothing.
“It was a bit rotten to be licked by a kid like Tom, don’t you think,
Miss Sedgewick?” asked Bobby with a grin. “The fact was, he is such a
little chap that I was afraid to take him seriously, and that was how he
got his chance at me.”
“Hear him!” cried Tom with ringing scorn. “But he is ignorant yet; when
he is a bit older and wiser he will understand that a lump of pudding
hasn’t any sort of chance against muscle guided by science. Besides, he
had to be walloped in the cause of chivalry and right.”
“You young ass!” exploded Bobby, and he looked so threatening that
Dorothy butted in, fearing they would start mauling each other there and
then.
“I think it is just horrid to fight,” she said crisply. “It is a
low-down and brutish habit. Are you going to walk, Tom, or shall we sit
in the conservatory and talk? It is nearly three o’clock, so we have not
very much time.”
“I’m not particular,” said Tom with a yawn. “Where are all the others?
If we go for a walk we have just got to mooch along on our own; but if
we stay in the grounds or the conservatory we can be with the others,
don’t you see?”
“Just as you please.” Dorothy could not help her tone being a trifle
sharp. It was a real disappointment to her that Tom did not want to have
her alone for a little while.
“Very well, then, let us go down to that bench by the sundial. Rhoda
Fleming is there, and the Fletchers; we had a look in at them, and a bit
of a pow-wow as we came up.” Tom turned eagerly back as he spoke, and
Dorothy walked in silence by his side, while Bobby Felmore went on into
the house in search of Blanche, who had a cold, and was keeping to the
house.
So that was why Tom was nearly half an hour late in arriving! Dorothy
was piqued and resentful; but having her share of common sense, she did
not start ragging him—indeed, she was so quiet, and withal pensive,
that Tom’s conscience began to bother him, and he even started to make
excuse for himself.
“You see, Rhoda and I are great friends—downright pals, so to
speak—and, of course, if we went for a walk she would not be able to
come too.” He was apologetic in manner as well as speech, and he slipped
his arm round her waist with a great demonstration of affection as they
went slowly across the lawn.
It was because he was so dear and loving in his manner that Dorothy
suddenly forgot to be discreet, and was only concerned to warn him of
the kind of girl she knew Rhoda to be.
“Oh, Tom, dear old boy, I wish you would not be pals with Rhoda,” she
burst out impulsively. “I don’t think you know what sort of girl she is,
and, anyhow, she——”
Dorothy came to a sudden halt in her hurried little speech as Tom faced
round upon her with fury in his face.
“You had better stop talking rot of that kind.” There was an actual
snarl in his tone, and his eyes were red with anger. “Girls are always
unfair to each other, but I thought you were above a meanness of that
sort.”
Dorothy’s temper flared—what a silly kid he was to be so wrapped up in
a girl. She fairly snapped at him in her irritation.
“If you were not so young, so unutterably green, you would be willing to
listen to reason, and to hear the truth. Since you won’t, then you must
take the consequences, I suppose.”
“Don’t be in a wax, old girl.” He gave her an affectionate squeeze as he
spoke, which had the effect of entirely disarming her anger against him.
“I am not in a wax; oh, I was, but it has gone now.” She smiled up into
his face as she spoke, deciding that come what might she could not risk
losing his love by trying to point out to him what sort of a girl Rhoda
was.
The September afternoon was very sunny and warm, and the group of girls
on the broad wooden bench by the sundial were lazily enjoying the
brightness and the heat as Dorothy and Tom came slowly along the path
between the flower-beds at the lower end of the lawn.
Rhoda Fleming was there, Joan and Delia Fletcher, and Grace Boldrey, a
Fourth Form kid who was Delia’s chum. They all made room for Dorothy and
Tom, as if they had expected them to come.
Dorothy found herself sitting between the two Fletchers, while Rhoda
monopolized Tom, and the Sunday afternoon time, which she had looked
forward to as being like a bit of home, resolved itself into an ordeal
of more or less patiently bearing the quips and thrusts of Rhoda, who
appeared to take a malicious pleasure in making her as uncomfortable as
possible.
The affair of Professor Plimsoll’s lecture was dragged out and talked
about from the point of view of Rhoda, who, perching herself on the
lower step of the sundial, pretended she was Dorothy, standing up beside
the professor, and repeating to him his own lecture.
Rhoda had a real gift of mimicry: the others rocked with laughter, and
Dorothy, although she smarted under the lash of Rhoda’s tongue, joined
in the laugh against herself, because it seemed the least embarrassing
thing to do.
She felt very sore a little later when Tom, in the momentary absence of
Rhoda, said to her, “It was silly of you to make such an exhibition of
yourself at the lecture. No one cares for a prig. I should have thought
you would have found that out long ago.”
“I could not help myself—I had to do as I was told; and, at least, I
owe my place in the Sixth to having been able to remember.” Dorothy was
keeping her temper under control now, although of choice she would have
reached up and slapped Tom in the face for daring to take such a
critical and dictatorial tone with her.
Tom shrugged his shoulders. “Every one to his taste, of course; myself,
I would rather have waited until I was fit for the Sixth, than have got
there by a fluke. You will find it precious hard work to keep your end
up. For my own part, I would rather have been in the Upper Fifth until I
was able to take my remove with credit.”
“Why, Tom, if I had been put into the Upper Fifth I should have stood no
chance of the Mutton Bone,” cried Dorothy in a shocked tone.
Tom smiled in a superior and really aggravating fashion. “Going in for
that, are you? Well, your folly be on your own head; you are more fond
of the wooden spoon than I should be. For myself, I never attempt
anything I’m not likely to achieve. You don’t catch yours truly laying
himself open to ridicule; but every one to his taste. Seeing that Rhoda
has come back to school for another year, it goes without saying that
she will win the Mutton Bone. She is no end clever, and you won’t have
much chance against her.”
“I am going to have a try, anyhow,” said Dorothy in a dogged tone; and
at that moment Rhoda and Joan Fletcher came back, and the chances of any
homey talk between brother and sister were over for that afternoon.
Rhoda and Tom started arguing about a certain horse that was to run at
Ilkestone the following week, and Dorothy, sitting listening to Joan
Fletcher’s thin voice prosing on about the merits of knife pleated
frocks, wondered what her father would have said if he could have heard
Tom discussing the points of racehorses as if he had served an
apprenticeship in a training stable.
Later on, when she walked with him to the little gate at the end of the
grounds, where the bridge went over the brook and the field path which
led to the boys’ school, Tom began to make excuses for himself for the
depth of his knowledge on racing matters.
“A fellow has to keep his eyes open, and to remember what he hears, or
he would get left at every turn, you know,” he said, and again he slid
his arm about his sister’s waist.
“I don’t think father and mother would approve of your keeping your eyes
so wide open about horse-racing and that sort of thing.”
Dorothy spoke in a rather troubled fashion. It was really difficult for
her to lecture Tom for his good when he had his arm round her in that
taking fashion.
“Oh, naturally the governor and mums are more than a trifle stodgy in
their outlook. It is a sign of advancing years.” He laughed
light-heartedly as he spoke, then plunged into talk about football plans
and his own chances of getting a good position in his team.
They lingered at the bridge until the other boys who had been visiting
at the girls’ school came pouring along the path at a run. Then the
first bell sounded for tea, and Dorothy had to scuttle back through the
grounds at racing speed, for she would only have five minutes in which
to put herself tidy for tea.
“Did you have a pleasant afternoon?” asked Hazel, who had been out with
Margaret.
“It was good to be with Tom for a time,” Dorothy answered, hesitated,
and then went on in a hurried fashion, “It would have been nicer, of
course, if we had been alone together, or with you and Margaret, but Tom
elected to spend the time with Rhoda and Joan Fletcher, and—and, well,
it was not all honey and roses.”
“I can’t think what the silly boy can see in Rhoda,” said Hazel
severely. “I never cared much for her myself, and the way in which she
has snubbed Margaret is insufferable. I am thankful that Dora Selwyn is
head girl, and not Rhoda; it would be awful if she set the pace for the
whole school.”
“Dora Selwyn looks nice, but she is rather unapproachable,” said Dorothy
in a rather dubious tone.
Hazel laughed. “Don’t you know the secret of that?” she asked. “Dora is
about the shyest girl alive, and her stand-offishness is nothing in the
world but sheer funk. You try making friends with her, and you will be
fairly amazed at the result.”
CHAPTER VI
RHODA’S JUMPER
The first social evening of term was always something of an event. The
Lower Fifth, the Upper Fifth, and the Sixth of both schools joined
forces for a real merry-making. The juniors had their own functions, and
made merry on a different evening, and they had nothing to do with the
gathering of the seniors.
The lecture hall was cleared for dancing; there were games and music in
the drawing-room for those who preferred them, and supper for all was
spread in the dining-room.
It had been a soaking wet day; the girls, in mackintoshes, high boots,
and rubber hats, had struggled for a mile along the storm-swept sea
front. They had been blown back again, arriving in tousled,
rosy-cheeked, and breathless, but thoroughly refreshed by the blow.
The dressing-bell went five minutes after they reached the house, and
there was a rush upstairs to get changed, and ready for the frolic.
Dorothy was very much excited. She was going to wear the new little
frock which she had bought at Sharman and Song’s place. She danced up
the stairs and along the corridor to the dorm, feeling that life was
very well worth living indeed.
Hazel and Margaret were just ahead of her, and the other girls were
crowding up behind. They had been rather late getting in from their
walk, and so there was not very much time before the boys might be
expected to arrive.
With fingers that actually trembled Dorothy opened the wrapping paper,
and taking out her frock, slipped it on. The looking-glass in her
cubicle was not very big; she would have to wait until she went
downstairs to have a really good look at herself. But oh! the lovely
feeling of it all!
Admiring herself—or, rather, her frock—had taken time. Most of the
girls were downstairs before she was ready. They were standing about the
drawing-room in little groups as she came in through the big double
doors, feeling stupidly shy and self-conscious, just because she
happened to be wearing a new frock that was the last word in effective
simplicity.
No one took any notice of her. The little group just inside the door had
gathered about Rhoda Fleming, who was spreading out her arms to show the
beauty of the jumper she was wearing over a cream silk skirt.
“Isn’t it a dream?” Rhoda’s voice was loud and clear; it was vibrant,
too, with satisfaction. “I bought it at Sharman and Song’s; they are not
to be beaten for things of this sort.”
Dorothy stood as if transfixed, and at that moment the crowd of girls
about Rhoda shifted and opened out, showing plainly Dorothy standing on
the outskirts of the group.
Rhoda paused suddenly, and there was a look of actual fear in her eyes
as she stood confronting Dorothy. Then she rallied her forces, and said
with a slow, insolent drawl, “Well, what do you want?”
“I—I don’t want anything,” faltered Dorothy, whose breath was fairly
taken away by the calm manner in which Rhoda was exhibiting the jumper,
which was a lovely thing made of white silky stuff, and embroidered with
silver tissue.
“Then don’t stand staring like that.” There was a positive snarl in
Rhoda’s tone, and Dorothy turned away without a word. She heard one of
the girls cry out that it was a shame of Rhoda to be so rude, but there
was more fear than resentment in her heart at the treatment she had
received. It was awful to see the malice in Rhoda’s gaze, and to know
that it was directed against herself, just because she had been the
unwilling witness of Rhoda’s shoplifting.
She would have known the jumper anywhere, even if Rhoda had not declared
so loudly that it had come from Sharman and Song’s, and she shivered a
little, wondering how she would have felt if she had been in Rhoda’s
place just then.
“Oh, Dorothy, what a pretty frock! How perfectly sweet you look!” cried
the voice of Hazel at her side, and then Margaret burst in with admiring
comments, and Dorothy found herself surrounded by a cluster of girls who
were admiring her frock and congratulating her on having an aunt with
such liberal tendencies. But the keen edge of her pleasure was taken off
by the brooding sense of disaster that would come to her every time she
recalled the look in Rhoda’s eyes.
Being healthy minded, and being also blessed with common sense, she set
to work to forget all about the uncomfortable incident, and to get all
the pleasure possible out of the evening.
The boys arrived in a batch. After the manner of their kind, they formed
into groups about the big doors of the drawing-room and at the end of
the lecture hall. But the masters who were with them routed them out
with remorseless energy, and started the dancing. Bobby Felmore, very
red in the face, and still adorned with sticking-plaster, led out the
Head. He was most fearfully self-conscious for about a minute and a
half. By that time he forgot all about being shy, for, as he said
afterwards, the Head was a dream to dance with, and she was a downright
jolly sort also.
Dorothy had danced with big boys, she had danced with cheeky youngsters
of the Lower Fifth who aired their opinions on various subjects as if
wisdom dwelt with them and with no one else, and then she found herself
dancing with Bobby Felmore.
Bobby, by reason of having danced with the Head, was disposed to be
critical regarding his partners that evening, and he began telling
Dorothy how he had plunged through a foxtrot with Daisy Goatby, who was
about as nimble as an elephant, and as graceful as a hippopotamus.
“She is quite a good sort, though, even if she is a trifle heavy on her
feet,” said Dorothy, who was hotly championing Daisy just because Bobby
saw fit to run her down.
“I say, do you always stick up for people?” he asked.
“When they are nice to me I do, of course,” she answered with a laugh.
“Well, you won’t have to stick up for Rhoda Fleming, at that rate,” said
Bobby with a chuckle. “She seems to have a proper grouch against you.
Tom was complaining as we came along to-night because you and Rhoda
don’t hit it off together.”
“We do not have much to do with each other,” murmured Dorothy, resentful
because Tom should have discussed her with this big lump of a boy who,
however well he might dance, had certainly no tact worth speaking of.
“Just what Tom complained of; said he couldn’t think why his womenfolk
didn’t hit it off better: seemed to think that you ought to be pally
with any and every one whom he saw fit to honour with his regard. I like
his cheek; the Grand Sultan isn’t in it with that young
whipper-snapper.” Bobby tossed his head and let out one of his big
laughs then, and Dorothy thought it might be for his good to take him
down a peg.
“Tom is rather small,” she said, smiling at him with mischief dancing in
her eyes; “but he is a force to be reckoned with, all the same.”
“Now you are giving me a dig because of that mauling I had from him last
week,” chuckled Bobby. “It isn’t kind to kick a fellow that is down.”
“I have not kicked you,” she answered; and her tone was so friendly that
Bobby, rather red, and rather stammering, jerked out,—
“I say, I’m really awfully crushed on you, though I have only seen you
about twice. Say, will you be pals, real pals, you know?”
Dorothy turned scarlet, for just at that moment she caught sight of
Rhoda regarding her fixedly from a little distance. It was horribly
embarrassing and uncomfortable, and because of it her tone was quite
sharp as she replied, “I have got as many chums already as I can do
with, thank you; but I am really grateful to you for not being nasty to
Tom over that licking he gave you last week.”
“Oh, that!” Bobby’s voice reflected disappointment, mingled with scorn.
“The licking was a man’s business entirely, and it need not come into
discussion at all. I should like to be pals with you, and I’m not going
to believe what Rhoda says about you.”
“What can Rhoda say about me?” cried Dorothy, aghast. “Why, I have not
known her a week.”
“Bless you, what she doesn’t know she will make up,” said Bobby, who was
by this time quite breathless with his exertions. “Don’t you trust her.
If she tries to be friendly, keep her at arm’s length. I have warned Tom
about her until I’m out of breath; but he will find her out some day, I
dare say. Meanwhile he is not in as much danger of being scratched by
her as you are.”
Dorothy did not dance with Bobby again that evening. Indeed, she did not
dance much after that, for Margaret had a bad headache, and wandered off
to a quiet corner of the drawing-room, where Dorothy found her, and
stayed to keep her company.
“Just think, to-morrow by this time we shall be enrolled for the Lamb
Bursary, and work will begin in earnest,” said Margaret, as she leant
back in a deep chair and fanned herself with a picture paper.
“I think work has begun in earnest, anyway,” Dorothy said with a laugh.
“I know that I just swotted for all I’m worth at maths this morning. I
could not have worked harder if I had been sitting for an exam. I am
horribly stupid at maths, and I can never find any short cuts.”
“I don’t put much reliance on short cuts myself in maths or anything
else,” replied Margaret. “When a thing has to be done, it is the
quickest process in the end to do it thoroughly, because the next time
you have to travel that way you know the road. By the way—I hate to
speak of it, but you are a new girl, and you are not so well up in
school traditions as some of the rest of us—did you use a help this
morning?”
“A help?” queried Dorothy with a blank face. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes when a new girl comes she thinks to catch up in classwork by
using cribs—helps they call them here, because it sounds rather better.
Did you use anything of the sort this morning?” Margaret looked a little
doubtful and apologetic as she put her question, but she meant to get at
the bottom of the matter if she could.
“Why, no, of course I did not.” Dorothy’s tone was more bewildered than
indignant; she could not imagine what had made Margaret ask such a
question. “Do you think if I had been using a help, as you call it, that
I should have to work as I do? Besides, do you not remember how Miss
Groome coached me, and the pains she took, because I was such a duffer?”
Margaret laughed. “You are anything but a duffer, and you are a perfect
whale at work. Oh! I wish they would not say things about you. It is so
unfair on a new girl. You have enough to work against in having been put
straight into the Sixth.”
“Who have been talking about me, and what has been said?” asked Dorothy
quietly, but she went rather white. It was horrid to feel that her good
name was being taken away behind her back.
“I do not know who started the talk,” said Margaret with a troubled air.
“Kathleen Goatby was sitting here before you came. She said you had been
dancing a lot with Bobby Felmore, but she expected he would have danced
by himself rather than have been seen going round with you if he had
known what was being said.”
“I shall know better whether to be angry or merely amused if you tell me
what it is that is being said.” Dorothy’s voice was low, and her manner
was outwardly calm, but there was a fire in her eyes which let Margaret
know that she was very angry indeed.
“Kathleen said she heard Rhoda Fleming telling Joan Fletcher that you
always used cribs, that you owed your position in your old school to
this, and that you said it was the only way in which you could possibly
get your work done. I told Kathleen she could contradict that as much as
she liked, for I was quite positive it was not true. Cribs may help up
to a certain point, but they are sure to fail one in the long run.”
“I have never used cribs,” said Dorothy with emphasis. “What I cannot
understand is why Rhoda should try so hard to do me harm.”
“I think she is afraid of you.” Margaret spoke slowly, and she turned
her head a little so that her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, instead of
on her companion’s face. “It is possible she thinks you know something
about her that is not to her credit, and she is fearing you will talk
about it, so she thinks it is wise to be first at the character-wrecking
business. You had better have as little to do with her as you decently
can.”
“Trust me for that; but even avoiding her does not seem very effectual
in stopping her from spreading slanders,” Dorothy said with a wry smile.
“Fires die out that are not tended,” replied Margaret with a great air
of wisdom. “There goes the bell. Well, I am not sorry the evening is
over because of my beastly headache. I hope you have had a nice time?”
“Yes—no,” said Dorothy, and then would say no more.
CHAPTER VII
THE ENROLLING OF THE CANDIDATES
The September sunshine was streaming in through the big stained-glass
windows of the lecture hall next morning when, at eleven o’clock, the
girls came trooping in from their Form-rooms, and took their places
facing the dais. The Head was seated there in company with Mr. Melrose,
who acted as governor of the Lamb Bursary, and two other gentlemen, who
also had something to do with the bequest which meant so much to the
Compton School for Girls.
When they were all in their places, Mr. Melrose stood up, and coming to
the edge of the dais, made a little speech to the girls about Miss Lamb,
who had been educated at the Compton Schools. “Agnes Lamb came to be
educated here because her father, an officer, was at that time stationed
at Beckworth Camp,” he said in a pleasant, conversational tone, which
held the interest even of those girls who had heard the story several
times before. “She was in residence for three years, during which time
she made many friendships, and formed close ties in the school. It was
while she was being educated here that her father died suddenly, and
Miss Lamb, already motherless, was adopted by an uncle who was very
rich, and who at once removed her from the school. Although surrounded
by every luxury, the poor girl seemed to have left happiness behind her
when she left the school. Her desire had been for higher education. Her
uncle did not believe in the higher education of women: all the poor
girl’s efforts after more knowledge were frowned upon, and set aside.
She might have clothes in prodigal abundance, she might wear a whole
milliner’s shop on her head, and her uncle would not have complained;
but when she wanted lessons, or even books, she was reminded that but
for his charity she would be a beggar: and, indeed, I think many beggars
had greater possibilities of happiness. The years went on. Miss Lamb,
always a gentle soul, lacked the courage and enterprise to break away
from her prison, and continued to languish under the iron rule of her
uncle. Her youth passed in close attendance on the crabbed old man, who
had become a confirmed invalid. She had her romance, too: there was a
man who loved her, and she cared for him; but here again her uncle’s
will came between her and her happiness. The sour old man reminded her
that he had kept her for so many years—that he had provided her with
dainty food, and clothed her in costly array: now, when he was old and
suffering, it would be base ingratitude for her to leave him, especially
as the doctors told him he had not long to live. Because she was so meek
and gentle, so easily cowed, and so good at heart, Miss Lamb sent her
lover away to wait until she should be free to take her happiness with
him. But the old uncle lingered on for several years. The man, who was
only human, got tired of waiting, and on the very day when the death of
the old uncle set Miss Lamb free he was married to a woman for whom he
did not particularly care, just because he had grown tired of waiting
for the happiness that tarried so long. Miss Lamb never really recovered
from that blow. She lived only a few years longer, but she filled those
years with as much work for her fellows as it was possible to get into
the time. When she died, and her will was read, it was found that her
thoughts must have lingered very much on the happy time she had spent
within these walls, for the bulk of her property came for the enrichment
of the Compton Girls’ School. In addition to this she left a sum of
money which should, year by year, entitle one girl to the chance of a
higher education.”
Mr. Melrose was interrupted at this point by a tremendous outburst of
cheering; indeed, it seemed as if the sixty girls must have throats
lined with tin, from the noise they contrived to make.
Mr. Melrose did not check them; he merely stood and waited with a smile
on his face, wondering, as he looked at the wildly cheering mob, if any
one of them would have been as meek under burdens as had been the gentle
soul whose memory they were so vigorously honouring.
The cheering died to silence, and then he began to speak again. “I have
finished the story of how it was that Miss Lamb came to leave so much
money to the school, and now I am going to ask Mr. Grimshaw to read the
rules for the enrolment of candidates for the Lamb Bursary. You will
please follow that reading very carefully, making up your minds as he
proceeds, as to whether you individually can fulfil the terms of the
bequest.”
Mr. Grimshaw was an elderly gentleman of nervous aspect, with a thin,
squeaky voice which would have upset the risibles of the whole school at
any ordinary time; but the girls for the most part listened to him with
gravely decorous faces, although one irrepressible Fourth Form kid
rippled into gurgling laughter, that was instantly changed to a
strangled cough.
The reading began with a tangle of legal terms and phrases as to the
receiving of the money, and the way in which it was to be laid out, and
then the document stated the requirements looked for in the candidate:—
“Each candidate offering herself for the winning of the Lamb
Bursary must be in the Sixth Form of the Compton Girls’ School.
She must be of respectable parentage, which is to say, that
neither of her parents shall have been in prison. She herself
must have a high moral character. No girl known to have cheated,
or to have robbed her fellows in any way, is eligible as a
candidate. It is furthermore required that each candidate shall
take all the general subjects taught in the school, and no
candidate shall be allowed to specialize on any particular
subject; but each one to be judged on the all-round character of
her learning. Candidates must be enrolled for three terms, the
judging being on the marks made in that time. Each girl offering
herself as a candidate will, with right hand upraised, declare
solemnly, that she is a fit person to be enrolled as a
candidate, and that she individually fulfils the conditions laid
down in this document.”
The squeaky voice ceased, and Mr. Grimshaw with some creaking of
immaculate boots sat down, while a profound hush settled over the rows
of bright-faced girls. A robin just outside one of the open windows sang
blithely, and away in the distance a bugle sounded.
There was a stir in the long row of Sixth Form girls. Hazel rose to her
feet, her face rather white and set, for she was the first to enroll,
and the situation gripped her strangely; but her voice rang clearly
through the hall as, with right hand raised, she said,—
“I, Hazel Dring, offer myself as a candidate for the Lamb Bursary. I
promise to abide by the conditions laid down, and I declare myself a fit
person to be enrolled.”
Mr. Melrose looked at the Head, who bowed slightly, then he said to
Hazel, “Will you please come on to the dais and be enrolled.”
She went forward, and the gentleman who had not spoken proceeded to
spread a paper before her, which she had to sign. Meanwhile Margaret
stood up, and raising her right hand, made the affirmation in the same
way, and she was followed by Daisy Goatby.
Dorothy was thrilled to the very centre of her being. She rose to her
feet, she lifted her right hand, while her voice rang out vibrant with
all sorts of emotions.
“I, Dorothy Sedgewick, offer myself as a candidate for the Lamb Bursary.
I promise to abide by the conditions laid down, and I declare myself a
fit person to be enrolled.”
Again the Head bowed in response to the inquiring look of Mr. Melrose,
who asked Dorothy to join the others on the dais, and she went forward,
feeling as if she was treading on air. It seemed such a solemn ceremony,
and there was the same sensation of awe in her heart that she felt when
she was in church.
She was in the midst of writing her name when she heard the stir of
another girl rising and then the words:—
“I, Rhoda Fleming, offer myself——”
Dorothy paused with her pen suspended, and her face went ashen white, as
the glib tongue of Rhoda repeated the declaration that she was a fit
person to be enrolled. Oh, how could she do it? Was it possible that Tom
was right, and the average girl had no sense at all of honour, or moral
obligation?
“Will you finish your signature, if you please, Miss Sedgewick.” It was
the quiet voice of the gentleman taking the signatures that broke in
upon Dorothy’s confused senses. Murmuring an apology, she finished
writing her name, and went across to sit beside Daisy Goatby, while
Rhoda came up to the dais to sign the enrollment paper. Joan Fletcher
was the next, and she was followed by Jessie Wayne. Dora Selwyn, the
head girl, did not compete; she was specializing in botany and geology,
and did not want to be compelled to give her time to other subjects.
There were seven candidates this year: last year there had been four,
and the year before there had been eight. As Miss Groome, the
Form-mistress remarked, seven was a good workable number, sufficient to
make competition keen, but not too many to crowd each other in the race.
At the conclusion of the little ceremony the girls rose to their feet to
sing “Auld Lang Syne,” and then with a rousing three-times-three—the
first for Miss Lamb of evergreen memory, the second for the school, and
the third for the newly-enrolled—they swarmed out to the grounds, for
the rest of the day was to be holiday. They were to have a tennis
tournament among themselves, with a box of chocolates for first prize,
and an ounce of the strongest peppermints to be bought in Sowergate as
consolation to the one who should score the least.
The three gentlemen stayed to lunch, and sat at the high table in the
dining-room with the Head and such of the staff as were not at the lower
tables carving.
The seven candidates had been decorated with huge white rosettes, in
recognition of their position, and the talk at table was chiefly about
Miss Lamb and her unfortunate love story.
“I expect she was afraid if she had married the man her uncle would have
cut her out of his will, and so she would have been poor,” said Rhoda,
who was very bright and gay.
Dorothy shivered a little. Rhoda’s voice made her feel bad just then. It
was to her a most awful thing that a girl who knew herself guilty of
deliberate theft should rise and affirm with uplifted hand that she was
morally fit to compete for the Lamb Bursary.
“Perhaps she didn’t care over-much for him,” said Daisy Goatby with a
windy sigh. “Getting married must be an awful fag. She could look
forward to being free when the old man died; but if she had married, she
might never have been free, don’t you see.”
“I think she was a martyr, poor dear.” Dorothy had the same vibrant
sound in her voice as when she rose to affirm, and the other girls
dropped silent to listen to what she had to say.
“Why do you think she was a martyr?” asked Margaret softly, seeing that
Dorothy paused.
“Because she sacrificed everything to a principle.” Dorothy flushed a
little as she spoke; she was too new to her surroundings to feel at ease
in making her standpoints clear, and she was oppressed also by Rhoda’s
bravado in affirming, in spite of that damaging incident at Sharman and
Song’s.
“There was no principle involved that I can see,” grumbled Joan Fletcher
with wrinkled brows. “There was self-sacrifice if you like, although, to
my way of thinking, even that was uncalled for, seeing that the old man
had the money to pay for any service he might require. I am not going to
grumble at her for putting aside her happiness, because if I win the
bursary I shall be so much the better off in consequence of her deciding
to sacrifice herself for her uncle.”
“I think Dorothy is right,” chimed in Hazel crisply. “Miss Lamb made a
principle out of her duty, real or supposed, to her uncle: she gave up
her chance of married happiness because her sense of what was right
would have been outraged if she had not.”
“Then she was a martyr!” exclaimed Jessie Wayne. “I shall see her as a
picture in my mind next time we sing ‘The martyr first whose eagle
eye.’”
“I dare say you will, goosey”—Dora Selwyn leaned forward past Dorothy
to speak to Jessie, who sat at the end of the table—“meanwhile, you
will please get on your feet, for the Head is rising.”
Jessie scrambled up in a great hurry, punting into Daisy Goatby, who sat
on the other side of her. Daisy, heavy in all her movements, lurched
against a plate standing too near the edge of the table, and brought it
to the ground with a crash. But the crash was not heard, for Hazel, who
saw it falling, and the gentlemen rising to leave the room at the same
moment, swung up her hand for a rousing cheer, and in the burst of
acclamation the noise of smashing was entirely lost.
“What a morning it has been!” murmured Dorothy, as she strolled down to
the tennis court with Margaret for a little practice at the nets before
the serious work of the tournament should begin.
“Yes.” Margaret spoke emphatically. She paused, and then said rather
shyly, “I should not have been very happy about it all, though, if it
had not been for the talk I had with you last night. Oh! I was worried
about that rumour of your depending on helps that are not right for your
work. I think I should have fainted, when you made your affirmation, if
I had known that there was anything not right about it.”
“I do not expect you would have swooned, however badly you might have
felt.” Dorothy’s tone was rather grim as she spoke, for she was thinking
of Rhoda. “It is astonishing what we can bear when hard things really
come upon us.”
“Perhaps so. Anyhow, I am very glad it was all right,” Margaret sighed
happily, and slid her arm in Dorothy’s. “I even had a big struggle with
myself when Rhoda Fleming stood up to affirm, and I forgave her again
from the bottom of my heart for every snub she has ever handed out to
me, for it seemed as if it would make her record sweeter if I did that.”
“I wish I were as good as you.” Dorothy’s tone was a little conscience
stricken. There had been no desire in her heart to have Rhoda clean
enough to affirm; she had been merely conscious of a great amazement at
the girl’s audacity and callousness.
“Oh, rot, I am not good!” jerked out Margaret brusquely; and then, Sixth
Form girl though she was, she challenged Dorothy to race to the nets.
It was a neck-and-neck struggle, and the victor was nearly squashed at
the goal by the vanquished falling on to her, and they helped each other
up, laughing at the figures they must have cut, and the loss of hard-won
dignity involved.
It was Dorothy who won, but that was only because she had a longer
stride. She knew this right well, and Margaret knew it too.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TORN BOOK
The studies at the Compton Girls’ School were at the top of the house,
and consisted of three small rooms set apart for the use of the Sixth,
and one fair-sized chamber that was used as prep room by the Upper
Fifth. The private sitting-room of the Form-mistresses was also on this
floor, the rooms all opening on to one long passage, which had a
staircase at either end.
There were twelve girls in the Sixth, which gave four to a study. Hazel
and Margaret had with them Dorothy, and also Jessie Wayne, who was a
very quiet and studious girl, keeping to her own corner, and having very
little to do with the others. The head girl, Dora Selwyn, had the middle
study with three others, and the remaining four, of whom Rhoda Fleming
was one, had the third room, which was next to the prep room of the
Upper Fifth.
All the rooms on this floor were fitted with gas fires, and were very
comfortable. To Dorothy there was a wonderfully homey feeling in coming
up to this quiet retreat after the stress and strain of Form work. She
shared the centre table with Hazel, while Margaret had a corner opposite
to the one where Jessie worked.
One Friday evening at the end of October they were all in the study,
and, for a wonder, they were all talking. The week’s marks had been
posted on the board in the lecture hall an hour before, and they had
read the result as they came out from prayers.
It was Dorothy’s class position which had led to the talking; for the
first time since she had come to the school she was fourth from the top.
Dora Selwyn, Hazel, and Margaret were above her, and Rhoda Fleming was
fifth.
“Rhoda has been fourth so far this term,” said Jessie Wayne. “She will
not take it kindly that you have climbed above her, Dorothy. How did you
manage to do it?”
“I can’t think how I got above her,” answered Dorothy, who was flushed
and happy, strangely disinclined for work, too, and disposed to lean
back in her chair and discuss her victory. “Rhoda is a long way ahead of
me in most things, and she is so wonderfully good at maths, too, while I
am a duffer at figures in any shape or form.”
“You are pulling up though. I noticed you had fifty more marks for maths
than you had last week,” said Hazel, who had been deep in a new book on
chemistry, which she was annotating for next week’s class paper.
“Yes, I know I am fifty up.” Dorothy laughed happily. “To tell the
truth, I have been swotting to that end. Indeed, I have let other things
slide a bit in order to get level with the rest of you at maths. I have
to work harder at that than anything.”
“Well, you jumped in Latin too; you were before me there,” said
Margaret. “I should not be surprised if you have me down next week or
the week after. You will have your work cut out to do it, though, for I
mean to keep in front of you as long as I can.”
“I can’t see myself getting in front of you,” said Dorothy. “You seem to
know all there is to be known about most things.”
“In short, she is the beginning and end of wisdom,” laughed Hazel. “But
we must get to work, or by this time next week we shall find ourselves
at the bottom of the Form.”
“What a row there is in the next study,” said Dorothy. “Don’t you wonder
that Dora puts up with such a riot, and she the head girl?”
“The noise is not in the next study,” said Jessie, who had opened the
door and gone out into the passage to see where the noise came from. “It
is Rhoda and her lot who are carrying on. They do it most nights, only
they do not usually make as much noise as this. I suppose they are
taking advantage of the mistresses having gone to Ilkestone for that
lecture on Anthropology; Dora has gone too, so there is no one up here
to keep them in order to-night.”
“Well, shut the door, kid, and drag the curtain across it to deaden the
noise. We have to get our work done somehow.” There was a sound of
irritation in Hazel’s voice; she had badly wanted to go to the lecture
herself, but she knew that she dared not take the time. If she had been
free like Dora she would have gone, and not troubled about the fear of
dropping in her Form; but in view of her position as an aspirant for the
Mutton Bone, she dared not run the risk.
There was silence in the study for the next hour. Sometimes a girl would
get up to reach a book, or would rustle papers, or scrape her chair on
the floor; but there was no talking, until presently Jessie pushed her
chair back, and rising to her feet, declared that she was going to bed,
simply because she could not keep awake any longer.
“I am coming too,” said Hazel. “I am doing no good at all, just because
I keep dropping asleep; I suppose it is because it has been so windy
to-day. Are you others coming now?”
Margaret said that she would go—and indeed she was so pale and
heavy-eyed that she did not look fit to stay up any longer; but Dorothy
said that she wanted to finish the Latin she was doing for next day, and
would stay until she had done it.
When the others had gone she rose and turned out the gas fire, fearful
lest she might forget it when she went to bed, and there was a
considerable penalty waiting for the girl who left a gas fire burning
when she left the room.
The upper floor had grown strangely still. The Upper Fifth had gone
downstairs to bed some time ago. There were no mistresses in their
private room, which to-night was not even lighted. The noise in the
third study had died away, and there was a deep hush over the place.
Dorothy worked on steadily for a time, then suddenly she felt herself
growing nervous; there was a sensation upon her that some one was
coming, was creeping along the passage, and pausing outside the door.
She stopped work, she held herself rigid, and stared fixedly at the
door. The handle moved gently—some one was coming in. The horror of
this creeping, silent thing was on her; she wanted to scream, but she
had no power—she could only pant.
The door creaked open for perhaps half an inch. Dorothy sprang up, and
in her haste knocked over a pile of books, which fell with a clattering
bang on the floor. For a moment she paused, appalled by the noise she
had made in that quiet place; and then, wrenching open the door, she
faced the passage, which stretched, lighted and empty, to her gaze.
With a jerk she clicked off the electric light of the study, and with a
series of bounds reached the top of the stairs, fleeing down and along
the corridor to the dormitory. All the girls were in bed except Hazel,
who looked out from her cubicle to know what was wrong.
“Nerves, I expect. Yah, I turned into a horrible coward, and when the
door creaked gently open I just got up and fled,” said Dorothy, who was
hanging on to the side of her cubicle, looking thoroughly scared and
done up from her experience upstairs.
“I guess you have been doing too much; you would have been wiser to have
come down when we did,” said Hazel calmly; and then, as her own toilet
was all but complete, she came and helped Dorothy to get to bed.
It was good to be helped. Dorothy was shaking in every limb, and she was
feeling so thoroughly demoralized that it was all she could do to keep
from bursting into noisy crying. She thanked Hazel with lips that
trembled, and creeping into her bed, hid her head beneath the clothes
because her teeth chattered so badly.
Sleep came to her after a time, for she was healthily tired with the
long day of work and play. But with sleep came dreams, and these were
for the most part weird and frightening. Some evil was always coming
upon her from behind, and yet she could never get her head round to see
what it was that was menacing her. Oh, it was fearful! She struggled to
wake, but was not able; and presently she slid into deeper slumber,
getting more restful as the hours went by. Then the old trouble broke
out again: something was certainly coming upon her, the curtains of her
cubicle were shaking, her bed was shaking, and next minute she herself
would be shaken out of bed. Making a great effort she opened her eyes,
and saw Margaret standing over her.
“What is the matter?” gasped Dorothy, wondering why her head was feeling
so queer and her mouth so parched and dry.
“That is what I have come to ask you,” said Margaret with a laugh. “You
have nearly waked us all up by crying out and groaning in a really
tragic fashion. Are you feeling ill?”
“Why, no, I am all right,” said Dorothy, who began to feel herself all
over to see if she was really awake and undamaged. “I have been having
ghastly dreams, and I thought something was coming after me, only I was
not able to get awake to see what it was.”
“Ah! a fit of nightmare, I suppose.” Margaret’s tone was sympathetic,
but she yawned with sleepiness, and shivered from the cold. “I found you
lying across the bed with your head hanging down, as if you were going
to pitch out on to the floor, so I guess you were feeling bad.”
“What is the time?” Dorothy had struggled to a sitting posture, and was
wondering if she dared ask Margaret to creep into bed with her, for
there was a sense of panic on her still, and she feared—actually
feared—to be left alone.
“Oh, the wee sma’ hours are getting bigger. It is just five
o’clock—plenty of time for a good sleep yet before the rising bell. Lie
down, and I will tuck you in snugly, then you will feel better.”
Dorothy sank back on her pillow, submitting to be vigorously tucked in
by Margaret. She was suddenly ashamed of being afraid to stay alone. Now
that she was wider awake the creeping horror was further behind her,
while the fact that it was already five o’clock seemed to bring the
daylight so much nearer.
She was soon asleep again, and she did not wake until roused by the
bell. So heavy had been her sleep that her movements were slower than
usual, and she was the last girl to leave the dormitory.
To her immense surprise both Hazel and Margaret gave her the cold
shoulder at breakfast. They only spoke to her when she spoke to them.
They both sat with gloom on their faces, as if the fog in which the
outside world was wrapped that morning had somehow got into them.
Dorothy was at first disposed to be resentful. She supposed their
grumpiness must be the result of her having disturbed the dormitory with
her nightmare. It seemed a trifle rotten that they should treat her in
such a fashion for what she could not help. She relapsed into silence
herself for the remainder of breakfast, concentrating her thoughts and
energies on the day’s work, and trying to get all the satisfaction she
could out of the fact that she had pulled up one again this week in her
school position.
“Dorothy, the Head wishes to see you in her study as soon as breakfast
is over.” There was a constraint in Miss Groome’s voice which Dorothy
was quick to feel, and she looked from her to the averted faces of Hazel
and Margaret, wondering what could be the matter with them all.
“Yes, Miss Groome, I will go,” she said cheerfully; and she held her
head up, feeling all the comfort of a quiet conscience, although
privately she told herself that they were all being very horrid to her,
seeing that she was so absolutely unconscious of having given offence in
any way.
The Head’s study was a small room on the first floor, having a window
which gave a delightful view over the Sowerbrook valley, with a distant
glimpse of the blue waters of the English Channel. There was no view to
be had this morning, however—nothing but a grey wall of fog, dense and
smothering.
Miss Arden was sitting at her writing table, and lying before her was a
torn book—this was very shabby, as if from much use. There was
something so sinister about the disreputable volume lying there that
Dorothy felt her eyes turn to it, as if drawn by a magnet.
“Good morning, Dorothy; come and sit down.” The tone of the Head was so
kind that all at once Dorothy sensed disaster, and the colour rushed in
a flood over her face and right up to her hair, then receded, leaving
her pale and cold, while a sensation seized upon her of being caught in
a trap.
She sat down on the chair pointed out by the Head, trying to gather up
her forces to meet what was in front of her, yet feeling absolutely
bewildered.
There followed a little pause of silence. It was almost as if the Head
was not feeling quite sure about how to tackle the situation in front of
her; then she said in a crisp, businesslike manner, pointing to the torn
book in front of her, “This book, is it yours?”
“No,” said Dorothy with decision. “I am sure it is not. I have no book
so ragged and worn.”
“Perhaps you have borrowed it, then?” persisted the Head, fixing her
with a keen glance which seemed to look right through her.
“I beg your pardon?” murmured Dorothy, looking blank.
“I asked, have you borrowed it?” repeated Miss Arden patiently. It was
never her way to harry or confuse a girl.
“I have never seen it before that I can remember. What book is it?”
Dorothy fairly hurled her question at the Head, and rose from her seat
as if to take it.
The Head waved her back. “Sit still, and think a minute. This book was
found with yours on the table of your study this morning. I have learned
that you were the last girl to leave the study last night; your books
were left in a confused heap on the table, and this one was open at the
place where you had been working before you went to bed.”
“I was doing Latin before I went to bed,” said Dorothy, her senses still
in a whirling confusion.
“Just so. This book is a key, a translation of the book we are doing in
the Sixth this time,” said the Head slowly, “Now, do you understand the
significance of it being found among your books?”
“Do you mean that you think I was using a key last night in preparing my
Form Latin?” asked Dorothy, her eyes wide with amazement.
“No; I only mean that appearances point to this, and I have sent for you
so that you may be able to explain—to clear yourself, if that is
possible; if not, to own up as to how far you have been depending on
this kind of thing to help you in your work and advance your position in
your form.”
Dorothy sat quite silent. Her face was white and pinched, and there was
a feeling of despair in her heart that she had never known before. It
was her bare word against this clear evidence of that torn, disreputable
old book, and how could she expect that any one was going to believe
her?
“Come, I want to hear what you have to say about it all.” The voice of
the Head had a ring of calm authority, and Dorothy found her tongue with
an effort.
“I have never used a key to help me with my Latin, or with any of my
work, and I have never seen that book before,” she said in a low tone.
“It was found among the books you had been using before you went to
bed.” There was so much suggestion in the voice of the Head that Dorothy
gave a start of painful recollection.
“Oh! I left my books lying anyhow, and I shall have to take a
bad-conduct mark. I am so sorry, but I was frightened, and ran away. I
ought to have gone to bed when Hazel and Margaret went down, but I
wanted to finish my Latin; it takes me longer than they to do it.”
“What frightened you?” demanded the Head.
“While I was sitting at work, and the place was very still, I had
suddenly the sensation of some one, or something, creeping along outside
the door; I saw the handle turn, and the door creaked open for half an
inch; I cried out, but there was no answer, and I just got up and
bolted.”
“There was not much to frighten you in the fact of some one coming along
the passage and softly opening the door?”
The voice of the Head was questioning, and under the compelling quality
of her gaze Dorothy had to own up to the real cause of her fear.
“The girls have said that the rooms up there are haunted—that a certain
something comes along at night opening the doors, sighing heavily, and
moaning as if in pain.”
“Did you hear sighs and moans?” asked the Head, her lips giving an
involuntary twitch.
“I did not stay to listen; I bolted as fast as I could go,” admitted
Dorothy. “That was why my books were not put away, or any of my things
cleared up.”
“Do you know why the girls say the rooms are haunted?” asked the Head,
and this time she smiled so kindly that Dorothy found the courage to
reply.
“I was told that a girl, Amelia Herschstein, was killed on that
landing.” Her voice was very low, and her gaze dropped to the carpet.
Standing there in the daylight it seemed so perfectly absurd to admit
that she had been nearly scared out of her senses on the previous
evening by her remembrance of a ghost story.
“You don’t seem to have got the details quite right,” said the Head in a
matter-of-fact tone. “About twenty years ago, I have been told, the
landing where the studies are was given up to the Sixth for bedrooms;
girls were not supposed to need studies then—at least they did not have
them here. There was no second staircase then; the place where the
stairs go down by the prep room of the Upper Fifth was a small box-room
which had a window with a balcony. Amelia Herschstein was leaning over
this balcony one night to talk to a soldier from Beckworth Camp who had
contrived to scrape an acquaintance with her, when she fell, and was so
injured that she died a week later. I suppose that the idea of the
haunting comes from the fact of the Governors making such drastic
alterations in that part of the house immediately afterwards. I am sorry
you were frightened by the story, and I can understand how you would
rush away, forgetting all about your books. But your fright is a small
matter compared with this business of the torn book.” As she spoke the
Head pointed in distaste at the ragged, dirty book in front of her, and
paused, looking at Dorothy as if expecting her to speak.
Dorothy had nothing to say. Having told the Head that she had never seen
the book before, it seemed useless to repeat her assertion.
After a little pause Miss Arden went on: “Your Form-mistress says that
she has always found you truthful and straightforward in your work. It
is possible that you have an enemy who put the book among your things.
For the present I suspend judgment. As the matter is something of a
mystery, and others of the Form may be involved, I must also suspend the
Latin marks of the entire Form to-day. Will you please tell Miss Groome
that I will come to her room, and talk about this question of the day’s
Latin, at eleven o’clock. You may go now.”
Dorothy bowed and went out, with her head held very high and her heart
feeling very heavy.
CHAPTER IX
UNDER A CLOUD
Dorothy understood now the reason why Hazel and Margaret had treated her
to so much cold shoulder that morning. There was a keen sense of
fairness in her make-up, and while she resented the unfriendly
treatment, in her heart she did not blame them for the stand they had
taken. If they really believed she did her work by means of such helps
as that torn book represented, then they were quite within their rights
in not wanting to have anything to do with her. The thing which hurt her
most was that they should have passed judgment on her without giving her
a chance to say a word in her own defence. Yet even that was forgivable,
seeing how strong was the circumstantial evidence against her.
She walked into her Form-room, apologizing to Miss Groome for being
late, and she took her place as if nothing had been wrong. The only girl
who gave her a kind look, or spoke a friendly word, was Rhoda Fleming,
and Dorothy was ungrateful enough to wish she had kept quiet.
Work went on as usual. Dorothy had given the message of the Head to Miss
Groome, who looked rather mystified, and was coldly polite in her manner
to Dorothy.
Never had a morning dragged as that one did; it took all Dorothy’s
powers of concentration to keep her mind fixed on her work. She was
thinking, ruefully enough, that she would not have much chance of
keeping her Form position if this sort of thing went on for long. She
blundered in her answers over things she knew very well, and for the
first time that term work was something of a hardship.
Eleven o’clock at last! The hour had not done striking, and the girls
were, some of them, moving about preparing for the next work, when the
door opened, and the Head came in. She looked graver than usual; that
much the girls noticed as those who were seated rose at her entrance,
and those who were moving to and fro lined up hastily to bow as she came
in.
Motioning with her hand for them to sit down again, the Head took the
chair vacated for her by Miss Groome, and sitting down began to talk to
them, not as if they were schoolgirls merely, but as woman to woman,
telling them of her difficulty, and appealing to their sense of honour
to help her out of her present perplexity.
“I am very concerned for the honour of the school,” she said, and there
was a thrill of feeling in her voice which found an echo in the hearts
of the listeners. “This morning the prefect on duty for the study floor
found a pile of books lying partly on the table and partly on the floor
in No. 1 study. Lying open on the table, partly under the other books,
was a torn and dirty Latin key. The books were the property of Dorothy
Sedgewick, who had been the last to leave the study overnight. The
matter was reported to Miss Groome, who brought the book to me; and I,
as you know, sent for Dorothy to come to me directly after breakfast.
Dorothy says she has never used a key, and that she had never seen that
ragged old book. She declares that it was not among her books overnight.
When being frightened by some one stealthily trying to enter her room,
she rose from her seat, and staying only to turn off the electric light,
bolted for the dorm, and went to bed. Miss Groome says she has always
found Dorothy straight in her work and truthful in her speech. This
being so, we are bound to believe her statement when she says she has
never seen that book, and that she has never used a key. But as books do
not walk about on their own feet, we have to discover who put that book
among Dorothy’s things. Can any of you give me any information on the
mystery, or tell me anything which might lead to it being cleared up?”
There was dead silence among the girls. In fact, the hush was so deep
that they could hear a violin wailing in the distant music-room, a
chamber supposed to be sound-proof.
When the pause had lasted quite a long time, Hazel asked if she might
speak.
“I am waiting for some of you to begin,” replied the Head, smiling at
Hazel, though in truth her heart beat a little faster. Hazel had always
been a pupil to be proud of, and it was unthinkable that she should be
mixed up in a thing of this sort.
“There was no book ragged and dirty among Dorothy’s things when we went
to bed. There could not have been a book of that sort in the room during
the evening, for we had all been turning our books out and tidying them
in readiness to start the fresh week of work. It was not more than
twenty minutes after we had come down to bed that Dorothy came rushing
down to the dorm, looking white and frightened. She was shaking so badly
that she could hardly stand. I helped her to bed; but I don’t think she
slept well, as she had nightmare, and woke most of us with her groaning
and crying—she had plainly had a very bad scare. I have had a lot to do
with her since the term began, and I have never known her say anything
that was not true; she does not even exaggerate, as some girls do.”
The brow of the Head cleared, her heart registered only normal beats,
and she said with a smile, “I am very glad for what you have said,
Hazel. Schoolgirls have a way of sticking together in a passive way,
keeping silent when they know that one is in the wrong, and that sort of
thing; but it is wholly refreshing, and a trifle unusual in my
experience, for them to bear testimony to each other’s uprightness as
you have done.”
Dorothy’s head drooped now. It was one thing to hold it high in
conscious innocence, when she was the suspected of all, but it broke
down her self-control to hear Hazel testifying to her truthfulness.
Margaret, who was sitting at the next desk, turned suddenly and gripped
Dorothy’s hand across the narrow dividing space, and Dorothy suddenly
felt it was worth while to be in trouble, to find that she had the
friendship of these two girls.
“Has any other girl anything to say?” asked the Head sweetly, and she
looked from one to the other, as if she would read the very thoughts
that were passing through their heads.
“Perhaps they would come to you quietly?” suggested Miss Groome.
“I shall be pleased to see them if they prefer that way.” The Head was
smiling and serene, but there was a hint of steel under the velvet of
her manner; and then in a few quiet words she delivered her ultimatum.
“Pending the making plain of this mystery of how the torn book came to
be among Dorothy Sedgewick’s things, the whole Form must be somewhat
under a cloud. That is like life, you know; we all have to suffer for
the wrong-doing of each other. If in the past Dorothy had been proved
untruthful in speech and not straight in her dealings, then we might
have well let the punishment fall upon her alone. As it is, you will all
do your Latin for the week without any marks. You will do your very
best, too, for the girl producing poor work in this direction will
immediately put herself into the position of a suspected person. If the
statement of Dorothy, supported by the testimony of Hazel, is to be
believed, that the book was not in the study overnight, then it must
have been put there out of malice, and it is up to you to find out who
has done this thing.”
The Head rose as she finished speaking, and the girls rose too,
remaining on their feet until she had passed out of the room.
Great was the grumbling at the disaster which had fallen upon the Form.
Individual cases of cheating at work had occurred from time to time, but
nothing of this kind had cropped up within the memory of the oldest
inhabitant—not in the Sixth Form, that is to say. It was supposed that
by the time a girl had reached the Sixth she had sown all her wild oats,
and had become both outwardly and in very truth a reliable member of
society.
In this case there was malice as well as cheating. The girl who owned
the key had not merely used it to get a better place in her form, but
she had tried to bring an innocent person into trouble.
There was an agitated, explosive feeling in the atmosphere of the
Form-room that morning. But, thanks to the hint from the Head concerning
the character of work that would be expected of them, Miss Groome had no
cause for complaint against any of them.
As Jessie Wayne sagely remarked, the real test concerning who was the
owner of the torn book would come during the week, when the girl had to
do her work without the help of her key; most likely the task for to-day
had all been prepared before the book was slid in among Dorothy’s
things.
There was a good half of the girls who believed that Dorothy had been
using the key when she was scared by the ghost who haunted that upper
floor. They did not dare put their belief into words, but they let it
show in their actions, and Dorothy had to suffer.
Her great consolation was the way in which Hazel and Margaret championed
her. They had certainly given her the cold shoulder that first morning,
but since she had asserted her innocence so strongly, they had not
swerved in their loyalty. Jessie Wayne also declared she was positive
Dorothy had never used the key, because of the trouble she took over her
Latin.
The talk of the upper floor being haunted reached the ears of Miss
Groome, making her very angry; but she went very pale too, for, with all
her learning and her qualifications, she was very primitive at the
bottom, and she had confessed to being thoroughly scared when the Head
had a talk with her that day after Form work was over.
The Head had asked if Miss Groome suspected any of her girls in the
matter of cribbing.
“I do not,” replied the Form-mistress. “Dorothy Sedgewick has, of
course, the hardest work to keep up with her Form, but she is doing it
by means of steady plodding. She is not brilliant, but she is not to be
beaten at steady work, and it is that which counts for most in the long
run.”
The Head nodded thoughtfully, then she asked in a rather strange tone,
“Did you wonder why I did not bring that tattered book into the
Form-room when I came to talk about it?”
“Yes, I did,” replied Miss Groome.
“I did not dare bring it because of the commotion which might have
sprung up.” The Head laughed softly as she spoke, and unlocking an inner
drawer of her desk, she produced the torn old book which had made so
much discomfort among the Sixth. “Look at this.” As she spoke she put
the dirty old thing into the hands of Miss Groome, pointing to a name
written in faded ink on the inside of the cover.
The name was Amelia Herschstein, and when she had read it Miss Groome
asked with a little gasp, “Why! what does it mean?”
“That is just what I want to find out,” replied the Head crisply. “It
looks as if we are up against a full-sized mystery.”
CHAPTER X
FAIR FIGHTING
The weeks flew by. There had been no clue to the mystery of that torn
book which had Amelia Herschstein’s name written inside the cover, and
in the rush of other things the matter had been nearly forgotten by most
of the girls. The Head and Miss Groome did not forget; but whereas Miss
Groome frankly admitted herself scared stiff by the uncanny character of
the find, and refused to be left alone in the sitting-room on the upper
floor when the others had gone to bed, the Head got into the habit of
walking quietly up the stairs most nights, going along the passage,
opening the doors of the different rooms, and coming down the other
stairs.
She meant to get to the bottom of the mystery somehow, but so far she
had not found much reward for her searching. When the governors had
arrived on their monthly visit to the schools, and had come to lunch
with the girls, she had invited the unsuspecting gentlemen into her
private room, and had led the talk to the days of the past, and then had
put a few searching questions about the tragedy of Amelia Herschstein,
asking who she was, and how it came about that such an accident
occurred. To her surprise she found they resented her questioning, and
her attempts to get information drew a blank every time.
Then she took her courage in her hands, and faced the three gentlemen
squarely. “The fact is,” she said, speaking in a low tone, “I am up
against a situation which fairly baffles me. If you had been willing to
talk to me about this affair of the tragic fate of the poor girl, I
might not have troubled you with my worries, or at least not until I had
settled them. I have found that Amelia is said to walk in the upper
passage where the studies are. This has the one good effect of making
the Sixth Form girls very ready to go to bed at night. But I find that
the mistresses do not take so much pleasure as formerly in their private
sitting-room, which is, as you know, also on that passage. Then a week
or two ago a girl, alone in a study up there, was frightened by the
sensation of something coming; she saw the handle of the door turn, and
the door come gently open for a little way. I am sorry to say she did
not stay to see what would happen next, but bolted downstairs to the
dorm as fast as she could go. The strange part of the affair was that
there was found among that girl’s books next morning a torn old book, a
key to the Latin just then being studied by the Form, and the name
inside the book, written in faded ink across the inside of the cover,
was Amelia Herschstein.”
“Whew!” The exclamation came from the most formal looking of the
governors, and taking out his handkerchief he hurriedly mopped his face
as if he was very warm indeed.
“You understand now why I am anxious to know all there is to be known
about the tragedy.” The Head looked from one to the other of the three
gentlemen as she spoke, and she noted that they seemed very much upset.
“It was a case which landed the school in heavy trouble,” said the
formal man, after a glance at the other two as if asking their consent
to speak. “It was proved pretty clearly from things which came out at
the inquest, and what the soldier afterwards admitted, that it was not
because she had fallen in love with him that Amelia arranged meetings
and talks with this soldier. She was trying to get from him details of a
government invention on which he had been working before he came to
Beckworth Camp. Now, a love affair of that sort was bad enough for the
reputation of the school, but can you not see how infinitely worse a
thing of this kind will prove?”
“Indeed I can.” The Head was frankly sympathetic now, and she was taking
back some of the hard thoughts she had cherished against the unoffending
governors.
“It was proved, too, that the father of Amelia had been in the German
Secret Service,” went on the formal man. “Consideration for the feelings
of the bereaved parents stopped the authorities from taking further
proceedings. The soldier, a promising young fellow, and badly smitten by
the young lady who was trying to make a tool of him, was sent to India
at his own request, and was killed in a border skirmish a few months
later. You understand now how it is we do not care even among ourselves
to talk of the affair.”
“I do understand,” the Head replied. “But what you have told me does not
throw any light on the mystery of how that book came to be with Dorothy
Sedgewick’s things in the No. 1 study.”
“It only points to the probability of some of Amelia’s kin being in the
school, and if that is found to be the case they will have to go, and at
once.” The formal man shut his mouth with a snap as if it were a rat
trap, and the Head nodded in complete understanding.
“Yes, they would certainly have to go,” she said, and then she deftly
turned the talk into other channels; and being a wise, as well as a very
clever woman, she saw to it that the cloud was chased from their faces
before they went away.
Now she knew where she stood, and it was with a feeling of acute relief
that she set herself to the business of finding out the source from
which that torn book came. The first thing to do was to have a talk with
Miss Groome. Her lip curled scornfully as she recalled the terror
displayed by the Form-mistress. Of what good was higher education for
women if it left them a prey to superstitious fears such as might have
oppressed poor women who had no education at all?
* * * * *
A big hockey match was engrossing the attention of every one during the
last week in November. It was big in the sense of being very important,
for they were to play against the girls of the Ilkestone High School,
and the prestige of the school with regard to hockey would hang on the
issue of the game.
It was the only game Dorothy played at all well; she was good at
centring, and she was not to be beaten for speed. The games-mistress
wanted her for outside right, and Dora Selwyn, who was captain, agreed
to this. But she exacted such an amount of practice from poor Dorothy in
the days that came before the one that was fixed for the match that
other work had to suffer, and she had to face the prospect of her school
position going down still lower.
Never once since that affair of finding the torn book among her things
had Dorothy been able to reach the fourth place in her Form. The next
week she had been fifth again, with Rhoda once more above her, and the
week after that she had suffered most fearfully at finding Joan Fletcher
also above her. All this was so unaccountable to her because she knew
that she was working just as hard as before.
Sometimes she was inclined to think she was being downed by
circumstances. She was like a person being sucked down in a
quagmire—the more she struggled the lower down she went.
Of course this was silly, and she told herself that despair never led
anywhere but to failure.
Her keenest trouble was that she knew herself to be, by some people, a
suspected person—that is to say, there were some who said that she must
have used cribs in the past, which accounted for her failures now that
she might be afraid to use them. There was this good in the trouble,
that it made her set her teeth and strive just so that she might show
them how false their suppositions were.
The reason her position had dropped was largely due to the fact that the
other girls had worked so much harder. The words of the Head concerning
the position of slackers had fallen on fruitful ground. No girl wanted
to be looked upon as having used cribs to help her along. The others,
all of them, had the advantage of being used to the work and routine of
the Compton School. Dorothy, as new girl, was bound to feel the
disadvantages of her position.
Rhoda Fleming had a vast capacity for work, and she had also a heavy
streak of laziness in her make-up. Just now she was working for all she
was worth, and the week before the hockey match she rose above Margaret,
who seemed to shrink several sizes smaller in consequence. She had to
bear a lot of snubbing, too, for so elated with victory was Rhoda, that
she seemed quite unable to resist the temptation of sitting on Margaret
whenever opportunity occurred.
It pleased Rhoda to be quite kind, even friendly, to Dorothy, who did
not approve the change, and was not disposed to profit by it.
Two days before the hockey match Rhoda, encountering Dorothy who was
lacing her hockey boots, offered to help with her work.
“I can’t bear to see you slipping back week by week,” she said with
patronizing kindness. “Of course you are new to things. There is that
paper on chemistry that we have to do for to-morrow’s lab work—can I
help you with that?”
Dorothy stared at her in surprise, but was prompt in reply. “No, thank
you; I would rather do my work myself.”
“Yet you use cribs,” said Rhoda with an ugly smile.
Dorothy felt as if a cold hand had gripped her. “I do not!” she said
quietly, forcing herself to keep calm.
Rhoda laughed, and there was a very unpleasant sound in her mirth.
“Well, you don’t seem able to prove that you don’t, so what is the good
of your virtuous pose? If your position drops again this week, don’t say
I did not try to help you.”
The incident caused Dorothy to think furiously. She was sure that Rhoda
had, somehow, a hand in her position dropping. Was it possible that she
was boosting Joan Fletcher along in order to lower Dorothy, and so make
it appear that there could not be smoke without a fire in the matter of
that old book?
She broke into a sudden chuckle of laughter as she sat on the low form
in the boot-room lacing up her second boot. Rhoda had departed, and she
believed herself alone. Then along came Margaret, wanting to know what
the joke was; and leaning back with her head against the wall and her
boot laces in her hand, Dorothy told her of Rhoda’s kind offer, and the
threat which followed.
“Bah! it is a fight, is it?” cried Margaret. “Well, let them rise above
us week by week if they want to. But, mind you, Dorothy, we have got to
keep our end up somehow. Hazel and I have been going through the
marks—dissecting them, you know—and we find that both you and I have
made our steady average week by week; we have not fallen back—it is the
others who have pulled up. Hazel says she is pretty sure that Rhoda will
pull above her next week. There is one comfort—it is awfully good for
Miss Groome; and I am sure the poor thing looks as if she needs a little
something to cheer her up, for she does seem so uncommonly miserable
this term—all the fun is clean knocked out of her.”
“I wish we could work harder,” grumbled Dorothy. “Oh, this hockey match
is a nuisance! Just think what a lot of time it wastes.”
“Don’t you believe it, old thing,” said Margaret. “It is hockey, and the
gym, and things of that sort that make it possible for us to swot at
other things. It makes me mad to hear the piffle folks talk about the
time at school that is wasted on games. If the people who talk such rot
had ever worked at books as we have to work they would very soon change
their tune.”
“Oh! I know all that.” Dorothy’s tone was more than a trifle impatient,
for she was feeling quite fed-up with things. “My complaint is that
hockey makes me so tired; I am not fit for anything but to go to sleep
afterwards.”
“Just so. And isn’t that good for you?” Margaret wagged her head with an
air of great understanding. “Before I came here—when I was working for
the scholarship—I should as soon have thought of standing on my head in
the street as wasting my precious time on games. The result was that I
was always having bad headaches, and breaking down over my work; and I
used to feel so wretched, too, that life seemed hardly worth living.
Indeed, I wonder that I ever pulled through to win the scholarship.”
“All the same, this match is an awful nuisance,” grumbled Dorothy; and
then she was suddenly ashamed of her ill-temper and her general tendency
to grouch.
CHAPTER XI
DOROTHY SCORES
Dora Selwyn was a downright good captain. What she lacked in brilliance
she made up in painstaking. She was always after individual members of
her team when they were playing for practice, and she lectured them with
the judgment and authority of an expert. A lot of her spare time was
taken up in studying hockey as played by the great ones of the game. She
had even gone so far as to write letters of respectful admiration to the
players of most note; and these invariably replied, giving her the hints
for which she had asked with such disarming tact.
The match with the first team of the Ilkestone High School meant a lot
to her. That team had an uncommonly good opinion of themselves, and,
doubtless, they would not have stooped to challenge the senior team of
the Compton Girls’ School but for the fact that they had just been
rather badly beaten by a team of Old Girls, and were anxious to give
some team a good drubbing by way of restoring their self-confidence.
The day of the match came, bringing with it very good weather
conditions. If Dora felt jumpy as to results, she had the sense to keep
her nervousness to herself, and fussed round her team with as much
clucking anxiety as a hen that is let out with a brood of irresponsible
chickens.
The match was to be played at Ilkestone. She would have been much
happier if the fight had been on their own ground; but the arrangement
had been made, and it had to stand.
Dorothy was nervous too, but she would not show it. This was the first
time she had played in an outside match with the team, and she was very
anxious to give a good account of herself.
Her position had been changed at the last minute—that is to say, at
yesterday’s practice. Rhoda had persuaded Dora to give her the outside
right, which left Dorothy the position of outside left, which, as every
one knows, is the most difficult position of the hockey field.
Naturally, too, she smarted at being thrust into the harder task when
she had made such efforts to train for her place.
Still, there is no appeal against the command of the captain, and
Dorothy climbed into the motor charabanc that was taking them to
Ilkestone, seating herself next to Jessie Wayne, and smiling as if she
had not a care in the world.
“My word, you do look brisk, Dorothy, and as happy as if you were going
to your own wedding,” said Daisy Goatby in a grudging tone, as the
charabanc with its load of girls and several mistresses slid out of the
school gates and, mounting the steep hill past the church, sped swiftly
towards Ilkestone.
“Why shouldn’t I look happy?” asked Dorothy. “Time enough to sit and
wail when we have been beaten.”
“Don’t even mention the word, Dorothy,” said the captain sharply; and
she looked so nervy and uncomfortable that Dorothy felt sorry enough for
her to forgive her for the changed position. She was even meek when Dora
went on in a voice that jerked more than ever: “I do hope you will do
your best, Dorothy. I am horribly upset at having to change your
position, but Rhoda declared she would not even try if I left her as
outside left. So what was I to do?”
“Is she going to try now?” asked Dorothy rather grimly. She was
wondering what would have happened if she had done such a thing.
“Oh, she says she will, and one can only hope for the best; but I shall
be downright glad when it is all over, and we are on our way back.” Dora
shivered, looking so anxious that Dorothy had to do her level best at
cheering her, saying briskly,—
“I expect we shall all go back shouting ourselves hoarse, and we shall
have to hold you down by sheer force to keep you from making a spectacle
of yourself. Oh, we are going to win, don’t you worry!”
“I wish I did not care so much,” sighed Dora. Then she turned to give a
word of counsel to another of the team, and did not lean over to Dorothy
again.
The Ilkestone team were on the ground waiting, while the rest of the
High School were drawn up in close ranks to be ready to cheer their
comrades on to victory. Dorothy’s heart sank a little at that sight. She
knew full well the help that shouting gives.
Then Hazel rushed up to her. “Dorothy, your brother Tom has just come;
he says the boys of the Fifth and Sixth are on their way here to shout
for us. Oh! here they come. What a lark it is, for sure!”
And a lark it was. The boys came streaming across the stile that led
into the playing-field from the Canterbury road; and although they were
pretty well winded from sprinting across the fields to reach the ground
in time, they let out a preliminary cheer as an earnest of what they
were going to do later on, when play had begun.
The High School girls, not to be beaten, set up a ringing cheer for
their side. Their voices were so shrill that the sound must have carried
for a long way.
Play was pretty equal for the first quarter, then the High School team
got a bit involved by the fault of the forwards falling back when the
other side passed.
Time and again, when the backs cleared with long hits to the wings,
their skill was wasted, for the wingers were not there.
Suddenly Dorothy’s spirits went up like a rocket. She knew very well
that once falling back of the forwards had begun it was certain to go
on. For herself, she was doing her bit, and a very difficult bit it was,
and there seemed no glory in it; but wherever she was wanted, there she
was, and it was the outburst of shouting which came from the boys that
told her the side was keeping their end up.
The play was fast and furious while it lasted, and the shouting on both
sides was so continuous that it seemed to be one long yell.
Then suddenly, for Dorothy at least, the end came. She was in her place,
when the ball came spinning to her from a slam hard shot. She swung her
stick, and caught it just right, when there was a crashing blow on her
head which fairly knocked her out. She tumbled in a heap on the grass,
and that was the last she remembered of the struggle.
When she came to her senses again she was lying on the table in the
pavilion, and a doctor was bending over her, while the anxious faces of
Miss Groome and the games-mistress showed in the background.
“Why, whatever has happened?” she asked, staring about her in a
bewildered fashion. “Did I come a cropper on the field?”
“Yes, I suppose that is about what you did do,” replied the doctor,
speaking with slow deliberation.
“It is funny!” Dorothy wrinkled her forehead in an effort to remember.
“I thought I hit my head against something—a most fearful crack it
seemed.”
“Ah!” The doctor gently lifted her head as he made the exclamation; he
slid off her hat, and passed his fingers gently through her hair.
“Oh! it hurts!” she cried out sharply.
Then he saw that the back of her hat was cut through, and there was a
wound on her head. He called for various things, and those standing
round flew to fetch them. He and Dorothy were momentarily alone, and he
jerked out a sudden question: “Who was it that fetched you that blow?”
Dorothy looked her surprise. “I am sure I don’t know,” she said
doubtfully; “there was no one quite close to me. I remember swinging my
stick up and catching the ball just right, and then I felt the blow.”
“Some one fouled you, I suppose—a stupid thing to do, especially as
yours was such a good shot.” He was very busy with her head as he spoke,
but she twisted it out of his hands so that she could look into his
face.
“Was it a good shot?” she asked excitedly. “Did we win the game?”
“Without doubt you would have won if it had been fought to a finish,” he
said kindly. “Now, just keep still while I attend to this dent in your
head, or you will be having a fearful headache later on.”
Dorothy did have a headache later on. In fact, it was so bad that she
was taken back to Sowergate in the doctor’s motor, instead of riding in
the charabanc with the others. She felt so confused and stupid that it
seemed ever so good to her to lie back in the car and to have nothing to
think about.
She protested vigorously, though, when the school was reached and she
was taken off to the san, to be made an invalid of for the rest of the
day.
“I really can’t afford the time,” she said, looking at the doctor in an
imploring fashion. “My Form position has been going down week by week of
late, and this will make things still worse.”
“Not a bit of it,” he said with a laugh. “You will work all the better
for the little rest. Just forget all about lessons and everything else
that is a worry. Read a story book if you like—or, better still, do
nothing at all. If you are all right to-morrow you can go to work again;
but it will depend upon the way in which you rest to-day whether you are
fit to go to work to-morrow, so take care.”
Dorothy had to submit with the best grace she could, and the doctor
handed her over to the care of the matron, with instructions that she
was to be coddled until the next day.
“I had been watching the game—that was why I happened to be on the
spot,” he said to the matron as he turned away. “I don’t think I ever
heard so much yelling at a hockey match before. I’m afraid I did some of
it myself, for the play was really very good. I did not see how the
accident happened, though; but I suppose one of the players in lunging
for the ball just caught this young lady’s head instead.”
Dorothy elected to go straight to bed. If her getting back to work
to-morrow depended on the manner in which she kept quiet to-day, then
certainly she was going to be as quiet as possible.
Meanwhile great was the commotion among the hockey team. All the riotous
satisfaction the Compton Schools would have felt at the victory which
seemed so certain was dashed and spoiled by the accident which had
happened just when Dorothy had made her splendid shot. “Who did it?” was
the cry all round the field. But there was no response to this; and
although there were so many looking on, no one seemed to be able to pick
out the girls who were nearest to Dorothy, and there was no one who
admitted having hit her by fluke.
The High School team said and did all the correct things, and then they
suggested that the game should be called a draw. Naturally the Compton
Schools did not like this; but, as Dora Selwyn said, a game was never
lost until it was won, so the High School team had right on their side,
and after a little talking on both sides it was settled to call it a
draw.
Even this raised the Compton team to a higher level in hockey circles;
henceforth no one would be able to flout them as inefficient, and the
High School would have to treat them with greater respect in the future.
“We should not have done so well if the boys had not come to shout for
us,” Dora admitted, when that night she had dropped into the study where
Hazel and Margaret were sitting alone, for Jessie Wayne had hurt her
ankle in getting out of the charabanc, and was resting downstairs.
“Noise is a help sometimes,” admitted Hazel, who wondered not a little
why the head girl had come to talk to them that night, instead of
leaving them free to work in peace.
She did not have to wonder long. After a moment of hesitation Dora burst
out, “Why does Rhoda Fleming hate Dorothy Sedgewick so badly?”
“Mutual antagonism perhaps,” replied Hazel coolly. “Dorothy does not
seem particularly drawn to Rhoda, so they may have decided to agree in
not liking each other.”
“Don’t be flippant; I am out for facts, not fancies,” said the head girl
sharply. She paused as if in doubt; then making up her mind in a hurry,
she broke into impetuous speech. “I have found out that it was Rhoda who
struck Dorothy down on the hockey field. But I am not supposed to know,
and it is bothering me no end. I simply don’t know what I ought to do in
the matter, so I have come to talk it over with you, because you are
friends—Dorothy’s friends, I mean.”
“How did you find it out? Are you quite sure it is true?” gasped Hazel.
“It is a frightfully serious thing, really. Why, a blow like that might
have been fatal!”
“That is what makes me feel so bad about it,” said Dora. “I had a bath
after we came back from the match, and I went to my cubicle and lay down
for half-an-hour’s rest before tea. No one knew I was there except Miss
Groome; she understood that I was feeling a bit knocked out with all the
happenings, so she told me to go and get a little rest. I think I was
beginning to doze when I heard two girls, Daisy Goatby and Joan
Fletcher, come into the dorm, and they both came into Daisy’s cubicle,
which is next to mine. They were talking in low tones, and they seemed
very indignant about something; and I was going to call out and tell
them not to talk secrets, because I was there, when I heard Daisy say in
a very stormy tone that in future Rhoda Fleming might do her own dirty
work, for she had entirely washed her hands of the whole business, and
she did not intend to dance to Rhoda’s piping any more—no, not if next
week found her at the bottom of the Form. Then Joan, in a very troubled
fashion, asked if Daisy were quite sure—quite absolutely positive—that
Rhoda aimed at Dorothy’s head instead of at the ball. Daisy sobbed for a
minute in sheer rage, it seemed to me, and then she declared it was
Dorothy’s head that was aimed at. There was some more talking that I
could not hear, then some of the other girls came up, Joan went off to
her own cubicle, and that was the end of it.”
“Good gracious, what a shocking business!” cried Hazel, going rather
white, while Margaret shivered until her teeth chattered. “Dora, what
are you going to do?”
“What can I do?” cried the head girl, throwing up her hands with a
helpless gesture. “Suppose I went to the Head and made a statement, and
she called upon Daisy to own up to what she knew, it is more than likely
that Daisy would vow she never said anything of the sort. She would
declare she did not see Rhoda strike Dorothy, and in all she said Joan
would back her up. It would be two against one.”
“Daisy would speak the truth if she were pushed into a corner,” put in
Margaret, who had not spoken before.
“She might, and again she might not.” Dora’s tone was scornful. “For all
her size, Daisy is very much of a coward. Her position, too, would be so
unpleasant that really it would take a good lot of real courage to face
it. All the girls would point at her for telling tales, and Rhoda would
pose as a martyr, and get all the sympathy she desired.”
“What are you going to do, then?” asked Hazel.
“I don’t see that anything can be done, except to wait and to keep our
eyes open,” said Dora. “I wish you could find out what it is that
Dorothy has over Rhoda—that might help us a little. It will be rather
fun when this week’s marks come out if Daisy does go flop in her Form
position.”
“Dorothy will have scored then, even though her work may be hindered,”
said Margaret.
CHAPTER XII
DOROTHY IS APPROACHED
Dorothy rested with such thoroughness, that when the doctor came to see
her next day he told her with a laugh that she was a fraud so far as
being an invalid was concerned, and that she could go to work again as
soon as she liked.
Her head was fearfully sore, of course, and if she moved quickly she had
a queer, dizzy sensation, but otherwise she did not seem much the worse,
and she was back in her Form-room before the work of the morning had
ended.
Every one was very nice to her. There was almost an affectionate ring in
Rhoda’s tone when making inquiry as to how she felt, and Dorothy was a
little ashamed of her own private feeling against Rhoda. Then Daisy
Goatby giggled in a silly fashion, and Rhoda’s face turned purply-red
with anger.
Work went all the more easily because of the rest she had had, and
Dorothy thought the doctor must be something of a wizard to understand
so completely what was really best for her. There was more zest in doing
to-day, and the hours went so fast that evening came even more quickly
than usual.
Jessie Wayne’s foot was still bad, and she had not come up to the study.
The other girls had taken her books down to her, and she was given a
quiet corner in the prep room of the Lower Fifth; so the three girls
were alone upstairs.
Being alone, the chance to find out Dorothy’s position with regard to
Rhoda was much too good to be passed by, and sitting at ease in a low
chair by the gas fire, Hazel started on her task.
Dorothy listened in silence, and in very real dismay, while they told
her what Dora had overheard; but she sat quite still when they had done,
making no attempt at clearing the matter up.
“Why don’t you say something, Dorothy?” Hazel’s tone was a trifle sharp,
for there was an almost guilty look on Dorothy’s face, as if she were
the culprit, and not Rhoda at all.
“There is nothing I can say.” Dorothy wriggled uneasily in her chair,
and her hands moved her books in a restless fashion, for she wanted to
plunge into work and forget all about the disagreeable thing which
always lurked in her mind with regard to Rhoda.
“You do admit you know something which makes Rhoda afraid of you?”
persisted Hazel.
“Oh, she need not be afraid of me; I shall not do her any harm.” Dorothy
spoke hurriedly. She was afraid of being drawn into some admission which
might give away her knowledge of what Rhoda had done.
“I think you ought to tell, Dorothy,” Hazel said. “It is all very well
to keep silent because you don’t like to do Rhoda any harm; but when a
girl sets out to work such mischief as Rhoda tried to do yesterday, it
is quite time something is done to stop her.”
“You can’t call it real proof that Rhoda did give me that knock-out blow
yesterday,” said Dorothy slowly. “Or even supposing that she did, you
can’t be certain it was anything but an accident. When one is
excited—really wrought up, as we all were—there is not much accounting
for what happens.”
“Still, she might have owned up.” Hazel meant to have the last word on
the subject, and Dorothy made a wry face—then laughed in a rather
forced manner.
“It would not have been an easy thing to have owned up if it had been an
accident; while, if the blow had been meant to knock me over, it would
have been impossible to have explained it. In any case, she would think
that the least said the soonest mended.”
“What about her coaching Daisy and Joan, so that your Form position
should be lowered?” Hazel’s brows were drawn together in a heavy frown;
she left off lounging, and sat erect in her chair looking at Dorothy.
“Rather a brainy idea, don’t you think?” Dorothy seemed disposed to be
flippant, but she was nervous still, as was shown by her restless
opening and shutting of her books. “When I want to get you and Margaret
lowered in your Form position I will prod a couple of girls into working
really hard, and then we shall all three mount in triumph over your
diminished heads. Oh, it will be a great piece of strategy—only I don’t
quite see how I am going to get the time to do my work, and that of the
other girls too. That is the weak point in the affair, and will need
thinking out.”
“Look here, Dorothy, you are just playing with us, and it is a shocking
waste of time, because we have got our work to do before we go to bed.”
Margaret slid a friendly hand into Dorothy’s as she spoke. “Will you
tell us what you know about Rhoda? You see, she is a candidate for the
Mutton Bone; she is climbing high in the Form, and it is up to us to see
that the prize goes only to some one worthy of it.”
“It is because she is a candidate that my tongue should be tied,”
answered Dorothy. “When Rhoda asserted that there was nothing to prevent
her from being enrolled she took all the responsibility for herself into
her own hands, and so I have nothing to do with it.”
“You will keep silent, and let her win the Lamb Bursary?” cried Hazel in
a shocked tone.
“I won’t let her win the Lamb Bursary if I can help it. I jolly well
want to win it myself,” laughed Dorothy; and then she simply refused to
say any more, declaring that she must get on with her work.
There was silence in the study after that—a quiet so profound that some
one, coming and opening the door suddenly, fled away again with a little
cry of surprise at finding it lighted and occupied.
Dorothy turned as white as paper. She was thinking of the night when she
had been up there alone, and had been so scared at the opening of the
door.
“Now, who is playing pranks in such a silly fashion, I wonder?” said
Hazel crossly, and jumping up, she went into the passage to find out.
Dora Selwyn had two girls in with her; they declared that they had heard
nothing—but as they were all talking at once when Hazel went into the
room, this was not wonderful.
In the next study Rhoda Fleming was busily writing at the table, while
Daisy dozed in a chair on one side of the gas fire, and Joan appeared to
be fast asleep on the other side.
These also declared that they had heard nothing; and as the room of the
Upper Fifth was empty, and there was no one in the private room of the
mistresses, the affair was a bit of a mystery.
Hazel had sharp eyes; she had noticed that Rhoda’s hand was trembling,
and that her writing was not clear and decided. She had seen Daisy wink
at Joan, and she came to certain conclusions in her own mind—only, as
she had no proof, it seemed better to wait and say nothing. So she went
back to the study to tell Margaret and Dorothy that evidently some one
had come to play a silly prank on them, only had been scared to find
that they were all wide awake and at work.
Dorothy stayed awake a good long time that night, thinking matters over,
and trying to find out what was the wisest course to take. She was
disposed to go to Rhoda and tell her what she had heard, and to say that
there was no need for Rhoda to fear her, as there was no danger of her
speaking.
When morning came this did not look so easy, and yet it seemed the best
thing to do. The trouble was to get the chance of a few quiet words with
Rhoda, and the whole day passed without such a thing being possible.
It was two days later before her chance came. But when she tried to
start on something which would lead up to the thing she wanted to say,
Rhoda swung round with an impatient air, speaking sharply, “You and I do
not care so much for each other that we need to hang round in corners
gossiping.”
“There is something I wanted to say to you rather badly,” said Dorothy,
laying fast hold of her courage, and looking straight at the other.
Rhoda flinched. “Well, whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it—so there
you are.” She yawned widely, then asked, with a sudden change of tone,
if Dorothy’s head was better, or if it was still sore.
“It is getting better, thank you.” Dorothy spoke cheerfully, and then
she burst out hurriedly, “I wanted to say to you that there is no need
for you to be afraid of me, or—or of what I may say.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Rhoda, with such offence in her tone that
Dorothy flushed and floundered hopelessly.
“I—I mean just what I say—merely that, and nothing more.” Dorothy
looked straight at Rhoda, who flushed, while a look of fear came into
her eyes, and she turned away without another word.
After that, things were more strained than before. There was a thinly
veiled insolence in Rhoda’s way of treating Dorothy which was fearfully
trying to bear. But if they had to come in contact with each other when
people were present, then there was a kind of gentle pity in Rhoda’s way
of behaving which was more exasperating still.
Dorothy carried her head very high, and she kept her face serene and
smiling, but sometimes the strain of it all was about as much as she
could stand up under.
One thing helped her to be patient under it all. Her Form position was
mounting again. Daisy Goatby and Joan Fletcher had dropped below her,
and by the last week of term she had risen above Rhoda again. Great was
the jubilation in the No. 1 study on the night when this was discovered.
Hazel and Margaret made a ridiculous paper cap, with which they adorned
Dorothy, and Jessie Wayne presented her with a huge paper rosette in
honour of the event.
“I foresee that you will have us down next term, Dorothy, and then,
instead of celebrating, we shall sit in sackcloth and ashes, grousing
over our hard lot in being beaten,” laughed Hazel, as she settled the
paper hat rakishly askew on Dorothy’s head, and fell back a step to
admire the effect.
“There won’t be much danger of that unless we get to work,” answered
Dorothy, and then they settled down to steady grind, which lasted until
bedtime.
Next morning there was a letter from Tom for Dorothy, which bothered her
not a little.
Twice already that term Tom had come to her for money. They each had the
same amount of pocket-money, but he did not seem able to make his last.
He was always in a state of destitution; he was very often in debt.
The letter this morning stated that if she could not let him have five
shillings that day he would be disgraced, the family would be disgraced,
and the doors of a prison might yawn to let him in.
That was silly, of course, and she frowned at his indulging in nonsense
at such a time. She had the five shillings, and she could let him have
it; but it seemed to her grossly unfair that he should spend his own
money and hers too.
The boys were coming over that evening, and Tom asked that he might have
the money then. Dorothy decided that the time had come for her to put
her foot down firmly on this question of always standing prepared to
help him out when he was stoney.
That afternoon they were busy in the gym practising a new set of
exercises, and Dorothy was endeavouring to hang by one hand from the
cross-bar, while she swung gently to and fro with her right foot held in
her left hand—she was succeeding quite well too, and was feeling rather
proud of herself—when a chance remark from Blanche Felmore caught her
ear.
“The boys are having a fine run of luck this term,” said Blanche, as she
poised lightly on the top of the bar to which Dorothy was clinging. “Bob
sent me ten shillings yesterday as a present; he says he has won a pot
of money this week.”
“How did he do it?” asked a girl standing near.
“They get up sweepstakes among themselves, and they get a lot of fun out
of it too,” said Blanche. “Bob told me that half of the boys are nearly
cleaned out this week, and——”
Just then Dorothy’s hold gave way, and she fell in a heap, hearing no
more, as Blanche fell too.
CHAPTER XIII
WHY TOM WAS HARD UP
Dorothy had come to nearly hate that pretty evening frock of hers,
because it seemed to her the buying of it had been at the root of most
of her troubles since she had been at the Compton School. She argued to
herself that if she had not been on the spot when Rhoda stuffed the
jumper under her coat, most of the unpleasant things could not have
happened.
Of choice Dorothy would not have worn the frock again that term, but
when one has only a single evening frock, that frock has to be worn
whenever the occasion demands it. The rules of the school were that each
girl should have one evening frock, and only one, so it was a case of
Hobson’s choice. Dorothy slipped the frock over her shoulders on the
evening when the boys were coming over, and felt as if she would much
rather go up to the study, and grind away at books until bedtime.
Such a state of mind being a bit unnatural, she gave herself a shake,
which served the double purpose of settling her frock and her mind at
the same time; then she went downstairs, and cracked so many jokes with
the other girls, that they all wondered what had come to her, for she
was usually rather quiet, and not given to over-much in the way of
fun-making.
When the boys came trooping in Bobby Felmore made straight for her—he
mostly did. Dorothy received him graciously enough, but there was a
sparkle in her eyes which should have shown him that she was out to set
things straight according to her own ideas.
“How many dances are you going to let me have to-night?” he asked,
bending closer to her and looking downright sentimental.
Dorothy laughed softly, and her eyes sparkled more than ever as she
murmured in a gentle tone, “This one, and never another, unless——”
“Unless what?” he demanded blankly.
“Blanche says you have been winning a lot of money in a sweepstake of
some sort in your school during the last week or so. Is it true?” she
asked.
“You bet it is true,” he answered with a jolly laugh. “I just about
cleaned out the lot of them, and I’m in funds for the rest of the term,
with a nice little margin over to help me through the Christmas vac.”
“I think you are a horrid, mean thing to take my money, that I had saved
by going without things,” she said, with such a burst of indignation,
that Bobby looked fairly knocked out by her energy.
“There were none of the girls in this sweepstake—at least I did not
know of any,” he said hurriedly.
“Perhaps not; and if there had been, I should not have been one of
them,” she answered coldly. “It would not have been so bad if I had put
down the money—I should have felt that at least I had spent it myself,
and I had chosen to risk losing it. As it is, I have to go without the
things I want, just to fill your pocket—and I don’t like it.”
“I can’t see what you are driving at yet,” he said, and he looked
blanker than ever.
“You are teaching Tom to gamble,” she said coldly, “and Tom is not
satisfied with risking his own money, but he must needs go into debt,
and then come to me to help him out. It would have been bad enough if he
had bought more than he could afford to pay for, but it is unthinkable
that he should go and stake more money than he has got. A stop must be
put to it somehow; I could not go home and look my father in the face,
knowing that I was standing by without raising a finger to stop Tom from
being ruined.”
“Oh, he is all right,” said Bobby, who looked rather sheepish and ill at
ease. “All kids go in for flutters of this sort, and it does them no end
of good to singe their wings a bit. He’ll learn caution as he gets
older—they all do. Besides, if he had won, you would not have made any
stir.”
“Perhaps if Tom had won I should not have known anything about it,”
Dorothy said a little bitterly. “It is not merely his own wings that Tom
has singed, it is my wings that have been burned. I am not going to sit
down under it. You are the cause of the trouble, for it is you who have
got up the sweepstake. Blanche said so, and she seemed no end proud of
you for doing it, poor dear little kid. But I am not proud of it. I
think you are horrid and low down to go corrupting the morals of boys
younger than yourself, teaching them to gamble, and then getting your
pockets filled with the money you have won from them. I don’t want
anything more to do with you, and in future I am going to cut you dead.
Good evening!”
Dorothy slid away from Bobby as she spoke, and slipping round behind an
advancing couple, she was out of the room in a moment, and fleeing
upstairs for all she was worth.
She had made her standpoint clear, but she felt scared at her own
audacity in doing it. She could not be sure that it had done any good,
and she was downright miserable about Tom.
Of choice, she would have gone to the Head, and laid Tom’s case before
her. But such a thing was impossible. She could not submit to being
written down sneak and tell-tale, and all the rest of the unpleasant
titles that would be indulged in.
Staying upstairs as long as she dared, trying to cool her burning
cheeks, Dorothy stood with her face pressed against the cold glass of
the landing window. Presently she heard a girl in the hall below asking
another where to find Dorothy Sedgewick; and so she came down, and
passing the big open doors of the lecture hall where they were dancing,
she went into the drawing-room, intending to find a quiet corner, and to
stay there for the rest of the evening if she could.
Margaret found her presently, and dragged her off to dance again. She
saw Bobby Felmore coming towards her with a set purpose on his face, but
she whirled round, and cutting him dead, as she had said she would, she
seized upon Wilkins Minor, a small boy with big spectacles, and asked
him to dance with her.
“That is putting the shoe on the wrong foot; you ought to wait until I
ask you,” said the boy with a swagger.
“Well, I will wait, if you will make haste about the asking,” she
answered with a laugh; and then she said, “You dance uncommonly well, I
know, because I have watched you.”
Wilkins Minor screwed up his nose in a grin of delight, and bowing low
he said, with a flourish of his hands, “Miss Sedgewick, may I have the
pleasure?”
“You may,” said Dorothy with great fervour. Then she and the small boy
whirled round with an abandon which, if it was not complete enjoyment,
was a very good imitation of it.
Tom was waiting for her when she was through with Wilkins Minor—Tom,
with a haggard look on his face, and such a devouring anxiety in his
eyes that her heart ached for him.
“Have you got that money for me?” he asked. He grabbed her by the arm,
leading her out to the conservatory to find a quiet place where they
could talk without interruption.
“What do you want it for?” she asked. “See, Tom, this is the third time
this term you have come to me to lend you money you never attempt to pay
back. You have as much as I have, and it does not seem fair.”
“Oh, if you are going to cut up nasty about it, then I have no more to
say.” Tom flung away in a rage. But he did not go far; in a minute he
was back at her side again, pleading and pleading, his face white and
miserable. “Look here, old thing, you’ve always been a downright good
sport—the sort of a sister any fellow would be glad to have—and it
isn’t like you to fail me when I’m in such an awful hole. Just you lend
me that five shillings, and you shall have a couple of shillings for
interest when I pay it back.”
“How can you be so horrid, Tom?” she cried in great distress. “You are
making it appear as if it is just merely the money that is worrying me.
I know that you have been gambling. You know very well that there is
nothing in the world that would upset Dad more if he found it out, while
Mums would pretty well break her heart about it.”
“It wasn’t gambling; it was only a sweepstake that Bobby Felmore got up.
All the fellows are in it, and half of them are as badly bitten as I
am,” he explained gloomily. “Of course, if I had won it would have been
a different matter altogether. I should have been in funds for quite a
long while; I could have paid you back what I have had, and given you a
present as well. You wouldn’t have groused at me then.”
“You mean that you would not have stood it if I had,” she corrected him.
Then she did a battle with herself. Right at the bottom of her heart she
knew that she ought not to let him have the money—that she ought to
make him suffer now, to save him suffering later on. But it was dreadful
to her to see Tom in such distress; moreover, she was telling herself
perhaps she could safeguard him for the future by making him promise
that he would never gamble again.
“Well, are you going to let me have it?” he demanded, coming to stand
close beside her, and looking down at her with such devouring anxiety in
his eyes that she strangled back a little sob.
“I will let you have it on one condition,” she said slowly.
“Let’s have it, then, and I will promise any mortal thing you like to
ask me,” he burst out eagerly, his face sparkling with returning hope.
“You have got to promise me that you will never gamble again,” she said
firmly.
“Whew! Oh, come now, that is a bit too stiff, surely,” growled Tom,
falling back a step, while the gloom dropped over his face again.
“I can’t help it. They are my terms; take them or leave them as you
like,” she said with decision. But she felt as if a cold hand had
gripped her heart, as she saw how he was trying to back out of giving
the promise for which she asked.
“Do you mean to say that you won’t give me the money if I don’t
promise?” he asked, scowling at her in the blackest anger.
“I do mean it,” she answered quietly, and she looked at him in the
kindest fashion.
“Well, I must have the cash, even if I have to steal it,” he answered,
with an attempt at lightness that he plainly did not feel. “I promise I
won’t do it again; so hand over the oof, there’s a good soul, and let us
be quit of the miserable business.”
“You really mean what you say—that you will not gamble again?” asked
Dorothy a little doubtfully, for his manner was too casual to inspire
confidence.
“Of course I mean it. Didn’t I say so? What more do you want?” His tone
was irritable, and his words came out in jerks. “Do you want me to go
down on my knees, or to swear with my hand on the Bible, or any other
thing of the sort?”
“Don’t be a goat, Tommy lad,” she said softly, and then she slipped two
half-crowns into his hand, and hoped that she had done right, yet
feeling all the time a miserable insecurity in her heart about his
keeping his promise to her.
He made an excuse to slip away soon after he had got the money, and
Dorothy turned back into the drawing-room in search of diversion. She
quickly had it, too—only it was not the sort she wanted.
Bobby Felmore was prowling round the almost empty room, studying the
portraits of the founders of the Compton Schools, as if he were keenly
interested in art; but he wheeled abruptly at sight of her, and came
towards her with eager steps.
“I’ve been nosing round to find you. Where have you been hiding?” he
said, beaming on her. “Come along and have another dance before
chucking-out time. I thought I should have had a fit to see that young
bantam chick, Wilkins Minor, toting you round.”
“I said I did not intend dancing with you again, and I meant it,” she
said coldly.
“You said ‘unless,’ but you did not explain what that meant.” He thought
he had caught her, and stood smiling in a rather superior fashion.
Dorothy coloured right up to the roots of her hair. The thing she had to
say was not easy, but because she was in dead earnest she screwed up her
courage to go through with it, and said in calm tones, “The ‘unless’ I
spoke about was, if you had seen fit to pay back what you have had from
the boys for that sweepstake you got up.”
“A likely old story, that I should be goat enough to do that, after
winning the money!” He burst into a derisive laugh at the bare
suggestion of such a thing.
Dorothy turned away. There was a little sinking at her heart. She really
liked Bobby, and they had been great pals since she had come to the
Compton School. If he could not do this thing that she had put before
him as her ultimatum, then there was no more to be said, and they must
just go their separate ways, for, having made up her mind as to what was
right, she was not going to give way.
“You don’t mean that you are going to stick to it?” he said, catching at
her hand as she turned away.
“Of course I mean it, and you know that I am right, too,” she said,
turning back so that she could stand confronting him. “You know as well
as I do that gambling in any shape or form is forbidden here, and yet
you not only do it yourself, but you teach smaller fellows than yourself
to gamble, and you fill your pocket by the process. You are about the
meanest sort of bounder I have seen for a long time, and I would rather
not have anything more to do with you.”
“Well, you are the limit, to talk like that to me,” snarled Bobby, who
was as white as paper with rage, while his eyes bulged and shot out
little snappy lights, and Dorothy felt more than half scared at the
tempest she had raised.
But she had right on her side. She knew it. And Bobby knew it too, but
it did not make him feel any nicer about it at the moment.
Just then a crowd of girls came scurrying into the room. The foremost of
them was Rhoda, and she called out in her high-pitched, sarcastic voice,
“What are you two doing here? The other fellows are just saying good
night to the Head, and you will get beans, Bobby Felmore, if you are not
there at the tail end of the procession.”
For once in her life Dorothy was downright grateful to Rhoda. Bobby had
to go then, and he went in a hurry. Dorothy could not comfort herself
that she had had the last word, since it was really Bobby who had spoken
last. But at least it was she who had dictated terms, and so she had
scored in that way.
She did not encounter Bobby again until the next Sunday afternoon. It
was the last Sunday of the term, and only a few boys had come over to
see their sisters. It was a miserable sort of day, cold wind and
drizzling rain, so that nearly every one was in the drawing-room or the
conservatory, and only a few extra intrepid individuals had gone out
walking.
Dorothy was looking for Tom. She could not find him anywhere, and was
making up her mind that he had not come over when she encountered Bobby
coming in at the open window of the drawing-room, just as she was going
out to the conservatory in a final search for Tom.
Bobby jerked his head higher in the air at sight of her, and stood back
to let her pass, but he took no more notice of her than if she had been
an utter stranger. Dorothy’s pride flamed up, and with a cold little bow
she went past, walking along between the banks of flowering plants, and
not seeing any of them. It was horrid of Bobby to treat her like that.
Of course she had said that she would cut him dead—she had done it
too—but that was a vastly different matter from being cut by him.
“Still, I had to speak, and I am glad that I did. I don’t want to have
anything to do with any one who will teach younger boys to break rules,
and then will get rich at their expense,” she whispered to herself in
stormy fashion.
She went the length of the conservatory, and was just coming back,
deciding that for some unknown reason Tom had not come over, when
Charlotte Flint of the Fourth called out to her,—
“Your brother Tom has gone out for a walk with Rhoda Fleming. I saw them
go; they slipped out of the lower gate, and went down the road as if
they were going on to the Promenade.”
Dorothy groaned. She did not want to go out walking that afternoon; the
weather was of the sort to make indoors seem the nicer place. But if she
did not go, there would be trouble for Tom, and for Rhoda too. So she
scurried into the cloakroom, and putting on boots and mackintosh, let
herself out by the garden door, meaning to slip out of the lower gate as
they had done.
Miss Groome came into the hall as she was going out by the garden door,
and she said, “Oh, Dorothy, do you know it is raining? Are you going for
a walk?”
“I am going a little way with Tom, only he has started first,” she
answered with a nod and a smile; and then she scurried away, grateful
for the Sunday afternoon liberty, which made it possible for a girl to
take her own way within certain limits.
It would not be pleasant walking with Rhoda and Tom, for Rhoda would
certainly say malicious things, and Tom was not feeling pleased with her
because of the promise she had exacted from him. But the only way to
save Rhoda from getting into trouble was for her to be there.
There was to be a breaking-up festivity over at the boys’ school on
Tuesday night. If Rhoda was hauled up for breaking rules to-day, she
might easily be shut out from that pleasure.
Rhoda and Tom were sheltering from the rain under the railway arch at
the bottom of the lane; it was too wet and windy to face the Promenade.
They walked back to the school with Dorothy, but neither of them
appeared the least bit grateful for her interference.
CHAPTER XIV
TOP OF THE SCHOOL
The Christmas vacation went past in a whirl of merry-making. It was
delightful to be at home again, and to do all the accustomed things.
Dorothy hugged her happiness, and told herself she was just the most
fortunate girl in the world.
Tom at home was a very different person from Tom at school, swanking
round with Rhoda Fleming. Dorothy felt she had her chum back for the
time, and she made the most of it. Her common sense told her that when
they were back at school once more he might easily prove as
disappointing as he had done in the past, so it was up to her to make
the most of him now that he was so satisfactory.
One bit of news he told her three days after they got home which
interested her immensely. She was sitting by the dining-room fire in the
twilight making toast for her father’s tea, because he was out on a
long, cold round in the country.
Tom was lolling in a big chair on the other side of the fire, when
suddenly he shoved his hands deeper in his pocket, and pulling out two
half-crowns, tossed them into her lap, saying with a chuckle, “There is
your last loan returned with many thanks. I did not have to pay up after
all.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, as she picked up the money and looked at
it.
Tom laughed again. “Some sort of a microbe bit Bobby Felmore, and bit
him uncommon sharp, too. He suddenly turned good, and paid back all the
money he had won from the sweepstake, treated us to a full-blown lecture
on the immorality of gambling, and announced that in the future he stood
for law and order, and all the rest of that sort of piffle. Of course we
cheered him to the echo, for we had got our money back, but we reckoned
him a mug for not having the sense to keep it when he had got it.”
Dorothy felt the colour surge right up to the roots of her hair; she was
very thankful it was too dark for Tom to see how red her face was. Then,
because she had to say something, she asked, “What made him do that?”
“He had got a bee in his bonnet, I should say,” answered Tom with an
amused laugh. “It was great to hear old Bobby lecturing us on what sort
of citizens we have got to be, and rot of that sort. Of course we took
it meekly enough—why not? We had got our money back, and could do a
flutter in some other direction if we wished. Oh, he is a mug, is Bobby.
He doesn’t think small beer of himself either. They are county people,
the Felmores. In fact, I rather wonder that they come to the Compton
Schools. But they say that old Felmore has great faith in boys and girls
being educated side by side, as it were, and allowed to mix and mingle
in recreation time. There would be more sense, to my way of thinking, if
the mixing and the mingling were not so messed up and harassed by silly
little rules.”
“I think it is awfully decent of Bobby to give the money back,” said
Dorothy, and then she had to turn her attention to the toast, which was
getting black.
“So do I, since I am able to pay you back, and get free of that stupid
promise you insisted on,” answered Tom, lazily stretching himself in the
deep chair.
Dorothy picked up the two half-crowns and held them out to him. “You can
have the money, and I will hold your promise still. Oh, it will be cheap
at five shillings. Take it, Tommy lad, and go a bust with it; but I have
your promise that you will not gamble, and I am going to keep you up to
it.”
“Not this time you are not,” he said, and there was a surly note in his
voice. “You worried the promise out of me when I was fair desperate.
Now, I have paid the money back, and I will not be bound.”
Dorothy realized the uselessness of urging the point, and pocketed the
money. She tried to comfort herself that she would exact the same
promise if Tom appealed to her for help again, yet could not help a
feeling of disquiet because of the tone he had taken.
It was wild weather when they went back to the Compton Schools. There
was deep snow on the ground that was fast being turned into deep slush,
and a fierce gale was hurtling through the naked woods.
Dorothy went to work with a will. Indeed, she had contrived to do quite
a lot of work during the vacation, and it told immediately on her Form
position. Week by week she rose, and when the marks were put on the
board at the end of the third week of the term she was at the top of the
school.
The girls gave her a great ovation that night; the row they made was
fairly stupendous. She was carried in a chair round and round the
lecture hall, until the chair, a shaky one, collapsed and let her down
on to the enthusiasts who were celebrating her victory, and they all
tumbled in a heap together.
The next week she was top again; but now it was Rhoda Fleming who was
next below her, and Rhoda was putting her whole strength into the task
of beating Dorothy.
The next week was a really fearful struggle. Dorothy worked with might
and main; but all along she had the feeling that she was going to be
beaten. And beaten she was, for when the marks were put up on the board
it was found that Rhoda was top.
There was another ovation this week, but it lacked the whole-hearted
fervour of the one given to Dorothy.
Rhoda Fleming was not very popular. Her tendency to swank made the girls
dislike her, and her fondness for snubbing girls whom she considered her
social inferiors was also against her. Still, there can mostly be found
some who will shout for a victor, and so she had her moment of triumph,
which she proceeded to round off in a manner that pleased herself.
Meeting Dorothy at the turn of the stairs a little later in the evening,
she said, with a low laugh that had a ring of malice in it, “I have
scored, you see, Miss Prig, in spite of all your clever scheming, and I
shall score all along. I have twice your power, if only I choose to put
it out; and I am going to win the Lamb Bursary somehow, so don’t you
forget it.”
Dorothy laughed—Rhoda’s tendency to brag always did amuse her. Then she
answered in a merry tone, “If the Mutton Bone depended on the striving
of this week, and next, and even the week after, I admit that there
would not seem much hope for the rest of us; but our chance lies in the
months of steady work that we have to face.”
Rhoda tossed her head with an air of conscious power, and came a step
nearer; she even gripped Dorothy by the arm, and giving it a little
shake, said in a low tone, “I suppose you are telling yourself that I am
not fit to have the Mutton Bone; but you would have to prove everything
you might say against me, you know.”
Dorothy blanched. She felt as if her trembling limbs would not support
her. But she rallied her courage, and looking Rhoda straight in the
face, she said calmly, “What makes you suggest that I have anything to
bring against you? Of your own choice you enrolled for the Bursary. You
declared in public that there was no reason why you should not enrol; so
the responsibility lies with you, and not with me.”
It was Rhoda’s turn to pale now, and she went white to her very lips.
“What do you mean by that?” she gasped, and she shook Dorothy’s arm in a
sudden rage.
“What are you two doing here?” inquired a Form-mistress, coming suddenly
upon them round the bend of the stairs.
“We were just talking, Miss Ball,” replied Rhoda, with such thinly
veiled insolence that the Fourth Form mistress flushed with anger, and
spoke very sharply indeed.
“Then you will at once leave off ‘just talking,’ as you call it, and get
to work. No wonder the younger girls are given to slackness when you of
the Sixth set them such an example of laziness. I am very much inclined
to report you both to your Form-mistress.” Miss Ball spoke with
heat—the insult of Rhoda’s manner rankled, and she was not disposed to
pass it by.
“Pray report us if you wish, and then Miss Groome can do as she pleases
about giving us detention school; it would really be rather a lark.”
Rhoda laughed scornfully. “I am top of the whole school this week,
Dorothy was top last week and the week before; so you can see how
necessary it is for us to be reported for slackness.”
“You are very rude.” Miss Ball was nearly spluttering with anger, but
Rhoda grew suddenly calm, and she bowed in a frigid fashion.
“We thank you for your good opinion; pray report us if you see fit,” she
drawled, then went her way, leaving Dorothy to bear alone the full force
of the storm which she herself had raised.
It was some tempest, too. Miss Ball was a very fiery little piece, and
she had often had to smart under the lash of Rhoda’s sarcasm. She was so
angry that she completely overlooked the fact of Dorothy’s entire
innocence of offence, and she raged on, saying all the hard things which
came into her mind, while Dorothy stood silent and embarrassed, longing
to escape, yet seeing no chance to get away.
“Is anything wrong, Miss Ball?” It was the quiet voice of the Head that
spoke. She had come upon the scene without either Miss Ball or the
victim hearing her approach.
“I have had to reprimand some of these girls of the Sixth for wasting
their own time, and teaching, by example, the younger girls to become
slackers also,” said Miss Ball, who looked so ashamed at being caught in
the act of bullying that Dorothy felt downright sorry for her.
“I don’t think we can write Dorothy down a slacker,” said the Head
kindly, and there was such a twinkle of fun in her eyes that Dorothy
badly wanted to laugh.
“Example stands for a tremendous lot,” said Miss Ball. “The Sixth are
very supercilious, even rude, in their manner to the Form-mistresses,
and it is not to be borne without a protest.”
“Ah! that is a different matter,” said the Head, becoming suddenly brisk
and active. “Do I understand that you are bringing a charge against the
Sixth collectively, or as individuals?—Dorothy, you can go.—Miss Ball,
come into my room, and we will talk the matter out quietly and in
comfort.”
Dorothy was only too thankful to escape. It was horrid of Rhoda to treat
a mistress in such a fashion. It was still more horrid of her to go away
leaving all the brunt of it to fall upon Dorothy, who was entirely
unoffending.
Hazel and Margaret soothed her with their sympathy when she reached the
haven of the study, and even Jessie Wayne tore herself out of her books
to give her a kindly word. Then they all settled down to steady work
again, and a hush was on the room, until a Fifth Form girl came up with
a message that the Head wanted to see Dorothy at once.
“As bad as that?” cried Hazel in consternation. “Oh, Dorothy, I am sorry
for you!”
“I expect I shall survive,” answered Dorothy with a rather rueful smile,
and then she went downstairs to the private room of the Head.
“Well, Dorothy, what have you to say about this storm in a teacup?”
asked the Head, motioning Dorothy to a low seat by the fire, while she
herself remained sitting at her writing table. A stately and gracious
woman, she was, with such a light of kindness and sympathy in her eyes
that every girl who came to her felt assured of justice and considered
care.
“I think it was rather a storm in a teacup,” Dorothy answered, smiling
in her turn, yet on the defensive, for she did not know of how much she
had been accused by Miss Ball.
“What were you doing on the stairs just then?” asked the Head; and
looking at Dorothy, she was secretly amused at the thought of
catechising a girl of the Sixth in this fashion.
“I was going up to the study,” said Dorothy. “I met Rhoda, who was
coming down from her study; we stopped to speak about her having ousted
me from the top. We were still talking when Miss Ball came, and—and she
said we were slackers, and setting a bad example to the rest of the
girls.”
“That much I have already gathered,” said the Head. “But I am not quite
clear as to what came after. What had you said that caused such a storm
of angry words from Miss Ball?”
Dorothy smiled. She really could not help it—she had been so completely
the scapegoat for Rhoda.
“I had said nothing,” she answered slowly. Then seeing that the Head
still waited, she hesitated a moment, then went on. “I think Miss Ball
was just pouring out her anger upon me because Rhoda had slipped away,
and only I was left.”
“Rhoda was rude to Miss Ball?” asked the Head.
“I think she was more offensive in manner than in actual words,” said
Dorothy, very anxious to be fair to Rhoda, just because of the secret
repulsion in her heart, which had to be fought and to be kept down out
of sight.
“I thought perhaps that was what it was all about.” The Head heaved a
little sigh of botherment—so it seemed to Dorothy—and then she said in
her sweetly gracious manner, “Thank you for helping me out. I knew I
should get the absolute truth from you.”
CHAPTER XV
AT HIGH TIDE
Sowergate felt the full force of a south-westerly gale; sometimes heavy
seas would be washing right over the Promenade, flooding the road
beyond, and rendering it impassable.
It was great fun to go walking by the sea at such times. There was the
excitement of dodging the great waves as they broke over the broad
sea-wall, and there was the sense of adventure in braving the perils of
the road, which at such times was apt to be strewn with wreckage of all
sorts.
In the early part of February the weather was so stormy that for three
days the girls could not get out, their only exercise being the work in
the gymnasium. Of course this meant fresh air of a sort, since they had
the whole range of the landward windows open, and the breeze was enough
to turn a good-sized windmill. But it was not out of doors by any means,
and it was out of doors for which every one was pining.
On the fourth day the wind was still blowing big guns—indeed, it was
blowing more than it had been; but as it did not rain, the whole school
turned out to struggle along the Promenade. Miss Mordaunt, the
games-mistress, was for going up the hill to the church, and taking a
turn through the more sheltered lanes beyond. But the mud was deep in
that direction; moreover, every girl of them all was longing to see the
great waves at play: and, provided they kept a sharp look-out in passing
Sowergate Point, it was not likely they would get a drenching. So the
crocodile turned down the hill outside the school gates, and took its
way along the Promenade in the direction of Ilkestone.
There were very few people abroad this morning; the bus traffic had been
diverted during the heavy weather, and sent round by way of the camp.
The crocodile had the road to themselves, and great fun they found it.
It was quite impossible to walk on the Promenade, for it was continually
being swept by heavy seas. Even on the path at the far side of the road
they had to dodge the great wash of water from breaking waves. Then the
crocodile broke into little scurrying groups of girls, there were
shrieks and bubbling laughter, and every one declared it was lovely fun.
Miss Mordaunt was in front with the younger ones; it was very necessary
that a mistress should be there to pick the road, to hold them back when
a stream of water threatened them, and to choose when to make a rush to
avoid an incoming wave. Miss Groome was at the other end of the
crocodile, and those of the Sixth out walking that morning were with
her.
They had reached as far as the point where the flight of steps go up to
the Military Hospital, when a taxi came along the road at a great rate,
mounting the path here and there to avoid the holes in the road which
had been washed out by the battering of the sea-water.
Miss Mordaunt promptly herded the front half of the crocodile on to the
space which in normal times was a pleasant strip of garden ground. The
other half fell back in a confused group round Miss Groome, while the
taxi came on at a rate which made it look as if the driver were drunk or
demented.
The group squeezed themselves flat against the railings—time to run
away there was not. Indeed, to stand still seemed the safest way, as the
driver would at least have a better chance of avoiding them.
Suddenly they saw that there was purpose in his haste. A tremendous wave
was racing inshore, and he, poor puny human, was trying with all the
power of the machinery under his control to run away from it.
He might as well have tried to run away from the wind. With a swirling
rush the big wave struck the sea-wall, mounted in a towering column of
spray, and dashing on to the Promenade, struck one of the iron seats,
wrenched it from its fastenings, and hurled it across the road right on
to the bonnet of the taxi at the moment when it was passing the huddled
group of girls.
The wind screen was smashed, splinters of glass flying in all
directions. The driver hung on to his wheel in spite of the deluge of
broken glass; he put on the brakes. But before he could bring the car to
a stand the door was wrenched open, and a stout woman, shrieking
shrilly, had hurled herself from the car, falling in a heap among the
startled girls.
Dorothy was the first one to sense what was happening, and being quick
to act, had spread her arms, and so broken the fall of the screaming
woman. The force of the impact bowled her over; but as she fell against
the thickly-clustered group of girls, no great harm was done. The wind
was fairly knocked out of her, for the woman was bulky in size, and in
such a fearful state of agitation, too, that it was as if she had been
overwhelmed by an avalanche.
“Oh, oh, oh! What a truly awful experience, my dear! I should have been
killed outright if it had not been for you!” cried the poor lady; and
then, slipping her arms about Dorothy’s neck, she half-strangled her in
a frantic sort of embrace.
“It was surely a great risk for you to take, to jump in such a fashion,”
said Miss Groome severely. As she spoke she came close to the frightened
woman, who was still clinging fast to Dorothy.
“I had to jump—I was simply rained upon with splinters of broken glass.
See how I am bleeding,” said the unfortunate one, whose face was cut in
several places with broken glass. She was elderly, she was clad in
expensive furs, and was unmistakably a lady.
The taxi-driver reached them at this moment; his face was also cut and
bleeding. He reported that his car was so badly damaged that he would
not be able to continue his journey.
“Oh, I could not have gone any farther, even if the car had escaped
injury. I am almost too frightened to live,” moaned the poor lady, who
was trembling and hysterical.
The taxi-driver treated her with great deference and respect. Seeing how
shaken she was, he appealed to Miss Groome to know what was the best
thing to be done for the comfort of his hurt and badly frightened fare.
“Here is the police station; she could rest here while you find another
car to take her back to Ilkeston,” said Miss Groome.
“That will do very nicely, and thank you for being so kind,” said the
lady, who was still clinging fast to Dorothy. “I wonder if you would be
so kind as to permit this dear girl, who saved me from falling, to go
with me to my hotel? I am staying at the Grand, in Ilkestone. The car
that takes me there could bring her back. I feel too shaken to go
alone.”
“Dorothy could go, of course,” said Miss Groome. But her tone was
anxious; she did not like allowing even a grown-up girl of the Sixth to
go off with a complete stranger. “Would you not rather have some one a
little older to take care of you? Miss Mordaunt would go with you, or I
can hand the girls over to her, and go with you myself.”
“No, no, I would not permit such a thing!” exclaimed the lady, waving
away the suggestion with great energy and determination. “You have
duties to perform; your absence even for a couple of hours might mean
serious dislocation of machinery. But this dear girl—Dorothy, did you
call her?”
“My name is Dorothy Sedgewick,” said Dorothy, her voice having a muffled
sound by reason of one arm of the lady being still round her neck.
“Are you a daughter of Dr. Randolph Sedgewick of Farley in
Buckinghamshire?” demanded the lady in great excitement, giving Dorothy
a vigorous shake.
“Yes—that is my father.” Dorothy smiled happily into the face that was
so near to her own—it was so pleasant to encounter some one who knew
her father.
“My dear, your father is a very old friend of mine. I am Mrs. Peter
Wilson, of Fleetwood Park, near Sevenoaks. It is quite possible you may
not have heard him speak of me by my married name; but you have surely
heard him talk of Rosie O’Flynn?”
“That wild girl Rosie O’Flynn, is that the one you mean?” asked Dorothy,
smiling broadly at the recollection of some of the stories her father
had told of the madcap doings of the aforesaid Rosie.
“Yes, yes; but I have altered a good deal since those days,” said Mrs.
Wilson with a gasping sigh. “I should have welcomed an experience of
this sort then, but now it has shaken me up very badly indeed.”
“May I go with Mrs. Wilson to the Grand?” asked Dorothy, turning to Miss
Groome with entreaty in her eyes. What a wonderful sort of adventure
this was, that she should have had her father’s old friend flung
straight into her arms!
“Yes, certainly you may go,” said Miss Groome, who was decidedly
relieved at hearing of the social status of the lady. “But, Dorothy, you
must come back in the car that takes Mrs. Wilson to the Grand, for I am
sure you must be wet. It will be very unsafe for you to be long without
changing. Ah! here comes the driver, and he has another car coming along
after him; that is fortunate, because Mrs. Wilson will not have to
wait.”
“If I have to send Dorothy straight back to-day, may I have the pleasure
of her company to tea to-morrow afternoon at four o’clock?” asked Mrs.
Wilson, holding out her hand with such friendliness that Miss Groome at
once gave consent.
The driver had secured a taxi from the Crown Inn at Sowergate, and the
driver of the fresh car took his way with infinite care along the
wreckage-strewn road to Ilkestone.
Mrs. Wilson was fearfully nervous. She kept crying out; she would have
jumped out more than once during the journey if Dorothy had not held her
down by sheer force of arm, beseeching her to be calm, and promising
that no harm should come to her.
“Oh, I know that I am behaving like a silly baby; but, my dear, I have
no nerve left,” said the poor lady, who was almost hysterical with
agitation. “I am not very well—I ought to be in peace and quiet at
Fleetwood—but I had to come on rather unpleasant business about a
nephew of mine who is at the Gunnery School at Hayle. I suppose I shall
have to go back to Sevenoaks with the business undone, unless I can do
it from Ilkestone, for certainly I cannot make another journey along
that wreckage-strewn road beyond Sowergate. Oh! it was awful.”
“It was rather grand and terrible; I have never seen anything like it
before,” replied Dorothy, who had been really thrilled by the sight of
the tremendous seas.
“I can do without such sights; I would rather have things on a more
peaceful scale,” sighed Mrs. Wilson, whose face was mottled with little
purply patches from the shock of the accident.
Dorothy helped her out of the car when they reached the Grand. She went
up in the lift to the suite of rooms on the first floor which Mrs.
Wilson occupied. She handed the poor fluttered lady into the care of the
capable maid, and then came back to Sowergate in the car.
CHAPTER XVI
A STARTLING REVELATION
Once—that was in her first term—Dorothy had gone with Hazel and
Margaret to tea with Margaret’s mother at Ilkestone; but with that
exception she had had no invitations out since she had been at the
Compton School, so that it was really a great pleasure to be asked to
take tea with Mrs. Wilson at the Grand next day.
She reached the hotel punctually at four o’clock. She was shot up in the
lift, and was met at the door of Mrs. Wilson’s suite by the same very
capable maid whom she had seen the day before.
She told Dorothy that Mrs. Wilson was still very unnerved and shaken
from the effects of the previous day’s happenings.
“The doctor says she must not be allowed to talk very much about it, if
you please, miss; so if you could get her interested in anything else it
would be a very good thing.” The maid spoke rather anxiously, and she
seemed so concerned, that Dorothy cheerfully undertook to keep the
lady’s mind as far away from Sowergate as possible.
Mrs. Wilson was lying back in a deep chair, and she looked pale and ill.
She roused herself to welcome Dorothy, and began to talk of the previous
day’s happenings.
“Do you think I am like my father?” Dorothy asked, as soon as she could
get Mrs. Wilson’s thoughts a little away from the forbidden subject.
“A little, but the likeness is more of manner than of feature. I suppose
you take after your mother, for you are very nice looking, which your
father never was.” Mrs. Wilson surveyed Dorothy with a critical air,
seeming to be well pleased with her scrutiny.
Dorothy flushed an uncomfortable red; it looked as if she had been
asking for compliments, whereas nothing had been farther from her
thoughts.
“Tell me about my father, please,” she said hurriedly, intent on keeping
the talk well away from recent happenings, yet anxious to avoid any
further reference to her own looks.
“Oh, he was a wild one in those days!” Mrs. Wilson gurgled into sudden
laughter at her remembrances. “Your father, his cousin Arthur Sedgewick,
with Fred and Francis Bagnall, were about the most rackety set of young
men it would be possible to find anywhere, I should think. By the way,
where is Arthur Sedgewick now?”
Dorothy looked blank. “I do not think I have ever heard of him,” she
answered slowly.
“Ah! then I expect he died many years ago, most likely before you were
born. A wild one was Arthur Sedgewick. But your father ran him close,
and the two Bagnalls were not far behind. I was rather in love with Fred
Bagnall at the time, while he fairly adored the ground I walked upon. Ah
me! I don’t think the girls of the present day get the whole-hearted
devotion from their swains that used to fall to our lot. We should have
made a match of it, I dare say, if I had not gone to Dublin for a winter
and met Peter Wilson there. Oh, these little ifs, what a difference they
make to our lives!”
Mrs. Wilson was interrupted at the moment by the entrance of the maid,
who started to lay the table for tea.
“You need not stop to wait on us, Truscot,” said Mrs. Wilson, who
already looked brighter and better from having some one to talk to.
“Miss Sedgewick will pour out the tea for me, and you can get a little
walk; you have had no chance of fresh air to-day.”
Truscot departed well pleased, and Mrs. Wilson sank back in her chair
absorbed in those recollections of the past, which had the power to make
her laugh still.
“Where did father live when you knew him?” asked Dorothy. “Had he
settled in Buckinghamshire then?”
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Wilson. “He was on the staff at Guy’s Hospital when I
first knew him, and afterwards he was in Hull. That was where I became
acquainted with the Bagnalls and with Arthur Sedgewick. Oh, the larks we
used to have, and the mischief those young men got into!” Mrs. Wilson’s
laughter broke out again at the recollection, but Dorothy looked a
little bit disturbed. This was quite a new light on her quiet,
hard-working father, and she was not at all sure that she liked it.
“It is so strange to hear of Dad playing pranks,” she said, and a little
chill crept over her. To her Dr. Sedgewick stood as an embodiment of
steadfastness and power—the one man in the world who could do no
wrong—the man who could always be depended on for right judgment and
uprightness of conduct.
Mrs. Wilson’s laughter cackled out again, and suddenly it grew
distasteful to Dorothy, She wished she had not come; but it was rather
late in the day for wishing that now. The lady went on talking. “I
remember the time when we had all been to a dance at Horsden Priory.
Mrs. Bagnall was chaperoning me—we had chaperones in those days, but we
managed to dodge them sometimes. I did it that night, and we came home
in a fly by ourselves. The Bagnalls and I were riding inside; your
father and his cousin were on the box. We painted the town red that
night, for we raced the Cordells and the Clarksons. We ran into the
police wagonette, and the upshot of it all was that your father had to
go to prison for fourteen days; for, besides the police wagonette being
smashed up, an old woman was knocked down and hurt. There was a fine
commotion at the time, but it was hushed up, for the Bagnalls were
county people, and my father was furious because I was mixed up in the
business.”
“Do you really mean that my father went to prison?” asked Dorothy in a
strained voice.
“Yes, my dear, he did; the others deserved to go—but, as I said before,
the business was hushed up as much as possible. Oh, but they were great
times! It was living then, but now I merely exist.”
Dorothy heard the lady prosing on, but she did not take in the sense of
what was being said. She was facing that ugly, stark fact of her father
having been in prison, and she was trying to measure what it meant to
her personally.
There was a picture before the eyes of her mind of the lecture hall at
the Compton School: she saw the Head sitting with several gentlemen on
the dais; she heard again the voice of one of the gentlemen reading the
conditions for the enrolment of candidates for the Lamb Bursary, and she
heard as if it were the actual voice speaking in her ear, “Whose parents
have not been in prison—” She had smiled to herself at the time,
thinking what a queer thing it was to mention in reference to the highly
respectable crowd of girls gathered in the lecture hall.
If she had only known of this escapade of her father’s in the past she
would not have dared to enrol. She did not know, and so she had become a
candidate with full belief in her own respectability. But now that she
knew——
Mrs. Wilson prosed on. She was talking now of that winter she spent in
Dublin, when she met Peter Wilson, to whom she was married later on.
Dorothy was conscious of answering yes, and no, at what seemed like
proper intervals. She seemed to be sitting there through long months,
and years, and she began to wonder whether she would be grey and bent
with age by the time the visit was over. Then suddenly there was a soft
knock at the door. Truscot entered, and said that a lady had come for
Miss Sedgewick.
This was Miss Mordaunt, and Dorothy came down in the lift to join her in
the entrance hall.
“Why, Dorothy, what is the matter with you?” asked the games-mistress in
consternation. “Do you feel faint?”
“I think the room was hot,” murmured Dorothy in explanation, and then
she turned blindly in the direction of the great entrance door, longing
to feel the sweeping lift of the strong wind from the sea.
Without a word Miss Mordaunt took her by the arm, and led her out
through the vestibule to the open porch, standing with her there to give
her time to recover a little.
How good the wind was! There was a dash of salt spray in it, too, which
was wonderfully reviving.
Out in the stormy west there was a rift of colour yet, where the clouds
had been torn asunder, while a star winked cheerfully out from a patch
of sky that was clear of cloud.
It was all very pleasant and very normal, and Dorothy had the sensation
of just waking up from a particularly hideous nightmare.
The trouble was that the very worst part of the nightmare was with her
still. She could not wake up from that, because it was a reality and no
dream.
“Feel better, do you?” asked Miss Mordaunt kindly, as she noted a drift
of colour coming back to the pale face of Dorothy.
“Oh yes, I am better now, thank you. I shall be quite all right after we
have walked for a little way in the air. What a nice night it is.”
“I was going to take a bus, but we will walk if you would like it
better,” said Miss Mordaunt.
“I should like to walk; it is so cool and fresh out here.” Dorothy was
drawing long breaths and revelling in the strong sweep of the wind.
“It is funny how these elderly ladies will have their rooms so fearfully
overheated,” remarked Miss Mordaunt; and then she asked a string of
questions about Dorothy’s visit, the condition of Mrs. Wilson after her
shock, and that sort of thing, to all of which Dorothy returned
mechanical answers.
Her mind was in a whirl still. She felt quite unable to think clearly,
and her outstanding emotion was intense dislike to Mrs. Wilson, whose
bread and butter she had so recently been eating.
“Bah, it is just horrid!” she exclaimed aloud.
“Is it the mud you don’t like, or are you tired of walking?” asked Miss
Mordaunt a little anxiously.
“I don’t think there is any mud—none to matter, at least—and I simply
love walking at night,” replied Dorothy. “I was thinking of Mrs. Wilson,
and of the perfumes in which she is soaked, and the joss sticks that
were burning in the room most of the time that I was there. Oh! the air
was thick.”
“Of course you would feel bad in such an atmosphere. Forget about it
now. Think of clean and wholesome things, of wide spaces swept by wind
and drenched with rain. Mind is a mighty force, you know, and the person
who thinks of clean things feels clean, inside and out.”
“What a nice idea!” cried Dorothy, and then suddenly her hope roused
again and began to assert itself. For to-night, at least, she would
forget that ugly thing she had heard. She would fix her mind on the path
she meant to climb, and climb she would, in spite of everything.
For the rest of the walk back to Sowergate, and then up the hill to the
Compton School, she was merry and bright as of old, and Miss Mordaunt
was thankful indeed for the restoring power of that walk in the fresh
air.
Rhoda Fleming was crossing the hall when they went in, and she turned
upon Dorothy with a ready gibe. “It is fine to be you, going out to take
tea with county folks, and swanking round generally. The one
compensation we stay-at-homes have is that we can get on with our work,
while you are doing the social butterfly.”
“Even that compensation will seem rather thin if I can work twice as
fast, just because I have been out,” answered Dorothy, smiling back at
Rhoda with such radiant good humour that Rhoda was impressed in spite of
herself.
“Going out seems to have bucked you up, and I suppose you have had the
time of your life,” she said grudgingly. “For my own part, I felt
thankful yesterday because the good lady chose to hang round your neck
instead of mine, but going to tea with her at the Grand, Ilkestone, puts
a different aspect on the affair. I begin to wish she had clawed me
instead of you after all.”
“History would have been written differently if she had.” Dorothy’s
laugh rippled out as she spoke, but as she went upstairs to the study
she wondered what would have happened if Mrs. Wilson had told Rhoda of
that wild doing of her father in those days of long ago. Would Rhoda
have held the knowledge over her as a whip of knotted cords, or would
she have blurted the unpleasant story out to the whole school without
loss of time?
What a clamour there would have been! Dorothy shivered as in fancy she
heard the wild tale going the round of the school, of how Dr. Sedgewick
had been in prison for a fortnight in his reckless youth.
The secret was her own so far. She could hide it until she had time to
sort things out in her mind. Meanwhile she would work. Ah, how she would
work! She must win that Lamb Bursary. She must! Yet would she dare to
keep it?
Would she dare?
CHAPTER XVII
SETTING THE PACE
Hazel Dring, one of the most good-natured of girls, was beginning to
grumble. Margaret Prime was beginning to despair. Both of them were so
much below Dorothy and Rhoda in the matter of marks that their chances
of winning the Mutton Bone grew every week more shadowy.
Sometimes it was Rhoda who was top of the school, more often it was
Dorothy. Professor Plimsoll talked with perfect rapture in his tone of
the pleasure it was to lecture for the Compton Girls’ School, now that
there were such magnificent workers there. Miss Groome was having the
time of her life, and even the Head declared that the strenuous work of
the Sixth must make its mark on the whole of the school.
The Head was quite unusually sympathetic in her nature. That is to say,
she was more than ordinarily swift to sense something hidden. It was not
according to nature, as she knew schoolgirl nature, for two girls to
work at the pressure displayed by Dorothy and Rhoda. She knew Rhoda to
be lazy by nature, and although ambitious, by no means the sort of girl
to keep up this fierce struggle week after week. Dorothy was a worker by
nature, but the almost desperate earnestness that she displayed was so
much out of the common that the Head was not satisfied all was right
with her.
The days were hard for Dorothy just then. She lived in a constant strain
of expecting to hear from some one that the story told by Mrs. Wilson
had become public property. It was just the sort of gossip a talkative
person would enjoy spreading. Dorothy writhed, as in fancy she heard her
father’s name bandied from mouth to mouth, and the scathing comment that
would result. She even expected to hear her position as candidate for
the Lamb Bursary challenged.
She was not at all clear in her own mind about it being right for her to
remain a candidate. She had enrolled in ignorance of there being any
impediment, she was entirely innocent of wrong in the matter, and as it
was by the purest accident she had learned the true facts of the case,
it seemed to her that there was no need for her to withdraw, or to make
any declaration about the matter.
Still, she was not at rest. The way in which she eased her conscience on
the matter savoured a good deal of drugs and soothing powders. When she
felt most uneasy, then she just worked the harder, and so drowned care
in work.
The term wore on. February went out in fierce cold, and March came in
with tempests one day, and summer sunshine the next. Dorothy went down
then with a sharp attack of flu, and for a week was shut up in the san
fretting and fuming over her inability to work, and was only consoled by
discovering that Rhoda had sprained her right wrist rather badly at gym
work, and was unable to do anything.
Hazel mounted to the top of the school in marks that week, and the week
following Margaret took her down. The two declared it was just like old
times back again. But, strangely enough, they were not so elated by
their victory as they might have been. Dorothy had become in a very real
sense their chum, and her disaster could not fail to be something of a
trouble to them.
Rhoda was unpopular because of her unpleasant trick of snubbing. Dorothy
had a way of making friends; she was sympathetic and kind, which counted
for a good deal, and really outweighed Rhoda’s splashes of generosity in
the matter of treating special friends to chocolates, macaroons, and
that sort of thing.
Dorothy came back to work looking very much of a wreck, but with
undiminished courage for the fray. She could not recapture her position
at first. Hazel was top most weeks, or was edged down by Margaret. Rhoda
was finding her sprained wrist a severe nuisance. Being her right wrist,
she could not write, and having to trust so largely to her memory with
regard to lectures and that sort of thing, found herself handicapped at
every turn.
There was one thing in Rhoda’s limitation that was a great comfort to
Dorothy, and that was the inability of Rhoda to write to Tom. It had
come to Dorothy’s knowledge, that although Bobby Felmore was putting
down sweepstakes among the boys with a vigorous hand, gambling in some
form or other was still going on, and Tom was mixed up in it.
Rhoda openly boasted in the Form-room of having helped some friends of
hers to win a considerable sum of money by laying odds on Jewel, Mr.
Mitre’s horse that ran at Wrothamhanger. Two days later, when Tom came
over to see Dorothy, he was more jubilant than she had ever seen him,
and he offered to pay back the money he had borrowed from her last term.
“How did you manage to save it?” she asked, with a sudden doubt of his
inability to deny himself enough to have saved so much in such a short
time.
“I did not save it, I made it,” he answered easily. “The great thing
with money is not to hoard it, but to use it.”
“How could you use it, just a little money like that, to make money
again?” she asked in a troubled tone.
He laughed, but refused to explain. “Oh, there are ways of doing things
that girls—at least some girls—don’t understand,” he said, and refused
to say anything more about it.
Dorothy handed the money back. “I think I had better not take it,” she
said with brisk decision. “If you had made it honourably you would be
willing to say how it had been done. If it is not clean money, I would
rather not have anything to do with it, thank you.”
“Very well, go without it, then—only don’t taunt me another day with
not having been willing to pay my debts,” growled Tom, pocketing the
money so eagerly that it looked as if he thought she might change her
mind, and want it back again.
“Tom, how did you make that money?” she asked. She was thinking of the
boast Rhoda had made of having helped a friend to land a decent little
sum of money.
Tom laughed. He seemed very much amused by her question. He would not
tell her how it had been done, but poked fun at her for saying she would
not take it because she was afraid it had not been made in an honourable
fashion.
“It is great to hear a girl prating about honour, when every one knows
girls have no sense at all of honour in an ordinary way.” He spread
himself out and looked so killingly superior when he said it, that she
felt as if she would like to slap him for making himself appear so
ridiculous.
“I shall know better how to respect your sense of honour when I have
heard how you made that money,” she said quietly.
Tom flew all to pieces then, and abused her roundly, as brothers will,
for being a smug sort of a prig. But he would not tell her anything more
about it, and he went away, leaving Dorothy to meditate rather sadly on
the way in which Tom had changed of late.
There was another matter for thought in what he had said. He had gibed
at her again about a girl’s sense of honour being inferior to that of a
man, and she, with that rankling, secret knowledge of what had happened
to her father, began again to worry, and to wonder what really she ought
to do.
“Perhaps I shall not win the Mutton Bone, and then it will not matter,”
she murmured to herself. Yet in her heart she knew very well that she
was going to strive with all her might to win it.
The next day Miss Groome called her aside, and put the local newspaper
into her hand. “Read that, Dorothy. I am so glad you had a chance to be
kind to the poor lady that day on the front.”
The paragraph to which Miss Groome pointed was an announcement of the
death of Mrs. Peter Wilson, of Fleetwood Park, Sevenoaks.
“Dead, is she?” gasped Dorothy, her face white and a great awe in her
heart. Then suddenly it flashed into her mind that if Mrs. Wilson were
dead, there would be no danger of that disastrous fact leaking out of
her father having been in prison.
How good it was to be able to draw her breath freely again! Dorothy went
upstairs to the study feeling as if she trod on air.
No one could know how she had dreaded that Mrs. Wilson would gossip
about that ugly fact of the past to some one who would bring the story
to the school, and make it public there.
Now, now, the danger was past! That garrulous tongue was stilled, and
the past might lie buried for always. How good it was!
Dorothy drew long breaths of satisfaction as she sat down in her
accustomed chair. How good life was! How glorious it was to work, and to
achieve! Perhaps she would win the Lamb Bursary. Then she would go to
the university. She would have her chance of making a mark in the world,
and—and——
By a sudden movement of her arm one of the books piled round her on the
table was sent spinning to the floor. It opened as it fell, and as she
stooped to reach it she read on the opened page—
“That which seemeth to die may only be lying dormant, waiting
until the set time shall come, when it shall awake and arise,
ready to slay, or to ennoble, according as it shall be written
in the Book of Fate.”
“Humph! There does not seem to be much comfort in that!” muttered
Dorothy under her breath.
“What is the dear child prattling about, and what gem of knowledge has
it lighted on from that old book, which might well have been used to
light a fire, say, a generation ago?” Hazel leaned over from her corner
of the table to look curiously at the shabby old volume Dorothy was
holding in her hands.
“Oh, it is not so very old,” said Dorothy, with a laugh. “To have
consigned it to the fire a generation ago would have been to burn it
before it had a being. It is only a dictionary of quotations, and the
one the book opened at seemed to give the lie direct to the thing I was
thinking about. That is why I made noises with my nose and my mouth,
disturbing the studious repose of this chamber of learning.”
“Chamber of learning be blowed! What is the quote?” and Hazel stretched
herself in a languid fashion as she held out her hand for the book.
She read the quotation aloud, then in keener interest demanded, “What do
you make of it anyhow? ‘To slay, or to ennoble, according as it shall be
written in the Book of Fate’—the two ideas seem to knock each other
over like the figures in a Punch and Judy show.”
“I don’t know what it means,” said Dorothy slowly. “It gave me the
sensation of there being a dog waiting round the corner somewhere, to
jump out and bite me.”
“Don’t be a silly sheep, Dorothy; the meaning is plain enough,” put in
Margaret, who had left her seat, and was leaning over Hazel, staring
down at the quotation. “What it just means is this: we have in us
wonderful powers of free will, and the ability to make our own fate. The
thing that lies dormant, but not dead, is the influence upon us of the
things we come up against in life. If we take them one way they will
slay us—that is, let us down mentally, and morally, and every way; if
we take them the other way—perhaps the very much harder way—they will
lift us up and make us noble.”
“Well done, old girl; you will be a senior wrangler yet, even if Dorothy
or Rhoda snatch the Mutton Bone from your trembling jaws,” cried Hazel,
giving Margaret a resounding whack on the back, while Jessie Wayne
clapped her hands in applause, and only Dorothy was silent.
The old quotation had hit her hard. Margaret’s explanation of it hit her
harder still. She was thinking of the thing which had seemed to fade out
of life with the death of Mrs. Wilson, and she was wondering what its
effect would be on her, and what was the writing for her in the book of
Fate.
Margaret turned to her books again; but before she plunged into them she
said slowly, “I think we are our own Fate—that is, we have the power to
be our own Fate.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THAT DAY AT HOME
The term ended with Dorothy at the top of the school, and she went home
feeling that the Lamb Bursary might be well within her grasp, if only
she could keep up her present rate of work. The girl who was running her
hardest was Rhoda. Hazel and Margaret, very close together in their
weekly position, were too far behind to be a serious menace.
The first thing which struck Dorothy when she reached home was the
careworn look of her father. Dr. Sedgewick had not been very well; some
days it was all he could do to keep about, doing the work of his large
practice.
“Mother, why doesn’t father have an assistant to tide him over while he
is so unfit?” asked Dorothy.
She had been home three days, and on this particular morning she was
helping her mother in sorting and repairing house-linen, really a great
treat after the continuous grind of term.
“Times are bad, and he does not feel that he can afford the luxury of an
assistant,” said Mrs. Sedgewick with a sigh. “Dr. Bowles is very good at
helping him out: he has taken night work for your father several times,
which is very good of him. I think that professional men are really very
good to each other.”
“Dr. Bowles ought to be good to father; think how father worked for him
when he had rheumatic fever—so it is only paying back.” Dorothy spoke
with spirit, then asked, with considerable anxiety in her tone, “Is it
the expense of my year at the Compton School that is making it so hard
for father just now?”
Mrs. Sedgewick hesitated. Of choice she would have kept all knowledge of
struggle from the children, so that they might be care free while they
were young. But Dorothy had a way of getting at the bottom of
things—and perhaps, after all, it was as well that she should
appreciate the sacrifice that was being made for her. “We had to go
rather carefully this year on your account, of course. Tom is an
expense, too, for although he has a scholarship there are a lot of odds
and ends to pay for him that take money. But we shall win through all
right. And if only you are able to get the Lamb Bursary you will be set
up for life—you may even be able to help with the twins when their turn
for going away comes.”
“Mother, if I did not go in for the Lamb Bursary, I could take a post as
junior mistress when I leave school; then I should be getting a salary
directly.” Dorothy spoke eagerly; she was suddenly seeing a way out, in
her position with regard to the Mutton Bone—a most satisfactory way
out, so she said to herself, as she thought of the horrible story of her
father’s past that had been told to her by Mrs. Wilson.
A look of alarm came into the face of Mrs. Sedgewick, and she broke into
eager protest. “Don’t think of such a thing, Dorothy. A mistress without
a degree can never rise above very third-rate work. Your father and I
are straining every nerve to fit you to take a good place in the world;
it is up to you to second our efforts. You have got to win the Lamb
Bursary somehow. If you can do that your father’s burden will be lifted,
and he will have so much less care. Oh! you must win it. We sent you to
the Compton School because of that chance, and you must not disappoint
us.”
Dorothy shivered. Next moment a hot resentment surged into her heart.
She was doing her best to win it, and it was not her fault that in real
truth she was not eligible for it.
She had told her mother of her meeting with Mrs. Wilson. What she did
find impossible to tell Mrs. Sedgewick was about the stories Mrs. Wilson
had told her of her father’s past; there was a certain aloofness about
Mrs. Sedgewick—she always seemed to keep her children at arm’s length.
Greatly daring, Dorothy did try to find out what she could about those
old days, and she ventured to ask, “Mother, what has become of that
cousin of father’s, Arthur Sedgewick? Mrs. Wilson spoke of him to me.”
“Then try and forget that you ever heard of him.” Mrs. Sedgewick spoke
harshly; she seemed all at once to freeze up, and Dorothy knew that she
would not dare to speak of him to her mother again.
She sighed a little impatiently. Why could not mothers talk to their
daughters with some show of reasonable equality? She was nearly a woman;
surely her mother might have discussed that old-time story with her,
seeing she had been compelled to hear of it from an outsider.
There was a sort of desperation on her that morning—she did so badly
want some sort of guidance on the subject of her fitness to work for the
Lamb Bursary. Presently she brought the talk back to the subject of the
Bursary. She described the enrolment ceremony for her mother’s benefit,
and she watched keenly to see the effect it would produce. She told how
the provisions of the Bursary read that no girl could be a candidate
whose parents had been in prison; she said no girl might enrol who knew
herself guilty of cheating or stealing. She waxed really confidential,
and told her mother of one girl whom she had seen stealing who had yet
dared to enrol.
“That was very wrong of her,” said Mrs. Sedgewick, who was looking
rather pale. “Should you not have told about her, Dorothy?”
“Oh, mother, I could not! They would have called me a sneak!” cried
Dorothy in distress.
“Well, see to it, then, that the girl does not get a chance of winning
the Bursary, or you will be compounding a felony.” Mrs. Sedgewick spoke
brusquely, so it seemed to Dorothy, who felt that she could dare no more
in the way of extracting guidance in her present dilemma. Several times
she tried to say, “Mother, Mrs. Wilson told me about father having to go
to prison—was it true?” but the words stuck in her throat—they
positively refused to be uttered.
Then a doubt of her mother’s sense of honour crept into her mind. Tom
declared that women had no hard-and-fast standpoints with regard to
honour, and that it was second nature with them to behave in a way which
would be reckoned downright dishonourable in a man.
Was it possible Tom was right? Dorothy set herself to watch her mother
very carefully for the remainder of the vacation; but she got no
satisfaction from the process, except that of seeing that her mother
never once deviated from the lines of uprightness.
She was out with her father a great deal during those holidays. He was
old-fashioned enough to still use a horse and trap for most of his
professional work. Dorothy drove him on his rounds nearly every day.
This should have been Tom’s work; but Tom was choosing to be very busy
in other directions just then, and as Dorothy loved to be out with her
father, she was quite ready to overlook Tom’s neglect of duty.
Never, never did she dare to ask him the question which she had tried to
ask her mother. She spoke to him of Mrs. Wilson, and although his face
kindled in a gleam of pleasure at hearing of an old acquaintance, he did
not seem to care to talk about her, or of the part of his life in which
she figured, and again Dorothy was up against a stone wall in her
efforts at further enlightenment on that grim bit of history.
Then came the morning before the two went back to school, and, as usual,
Dorothy was out with her father, whose round on this particular day took
him to Langbury, where he had to see a patient who was also an old
friend. He was a long time in that house; but the spring sunshine was so
pleasant that Dorothy did not mind the waiting.
She was sitting with her eyes taking in all the beauty of the ancient
High Street, when a car came swiftly round the corner, hooting madly,
and missing the doctor’s trap, which was drawn up on the right side of
the road, only by inches.
Dorothy heard herself hailed by a familiar voice, and saw Rhoda Fleming
leaning out and waving wildly to her as the car went down the street.
Dr. Sedgewick came out at the moment and stood looking at the fluttering
handkerchief which was being wagged so energetically.
“Was that some one you know?” he asked. “Downright road hogs they were,
anyhow. Why, they almost shaved our wheel as they shot past. It was
enough to make a horse bolt. It is lucky Captain is a quiet animal.”
“The girl who was waving her handkerchief was Rhoda Fleming, one of the
Sixth, and a candidate for the Lamb Bursary,” said Dorothy, as she
guided Captain round the narrow streets of Langbury, and so out to the
Farley Road.
“Where does she come from?” asked Dr. Sedgewick, and he frowned. Rhoda’s
face had been quite clear to him as she was whirled past in the racing
car, and he had been struck by a something familiar in it.
“Her people live at Henlow in Surrey, or is it Sussex?” said Dorothy.
“Her father is a rather important person, and has twice been mayor of
Henlow.”
“I know him—Grimes Fleming his name is—but I do not know much good
about him.” The doctor spoke rather grimly, then asked, “Is this girl a
great chum of yours?”
“Not exactly.” Dorothy laughed, thinking of the openly avowed dislike
Rhoda had displayed for her. “I think Tom and she are great pals; but I
do not know that she is particularly good for him.”
“Seeing she is her father’s daughter, I should say that she is not.
Can’t you stop it, Dorothy?” There was anxiety in her father’s tone that
Dorothy was quick to sense.
“I have tried, but Tom won’t listen to me,” she said in a troubled tone.
“He is like that, you know; to speak against her to him would only make
him the more determined to be friends with her.”
“Oh yes, Tom is a chip off the old block, and in more senses than one, I
am afraid.” The doctor sighed heavily, thinking of the abundant crop of
wild oats which he had sown in those back years. Then he went on, taking
her into confidence, “I am a bit worried about Tom: he seems to have got
a little out of the straight; there are signs about him of having grown
out of his home. He asked me, too, if I could not increase his allowance
so that he could spread himself a little for the benefit of his future.”
“Oh, father, what did you say to him?” Dorothy’s tone was shocked. She
thought of all the evidence of sacrifice that she had seen since she had
been at home, and she wondered where Tom’s eyes were that he had not
seen them too.
“I laughed at him.” The doctor chuckled, as if the remembrance was
amusing. “I told him he would best advance his future by sticking at his
work rather tighter, and leave all ideas of spreading himself out of
count until he was in a position to earn his own living. Why does he
want a girl for a pal? Are there not enough boys at the Compton School
to meet his requirements?”
“Oh, lots of the boys and girls are pally. It is rather looked upon as
the right thing in our little lot; and Rhoda is enough older than Tom to
be of great use in rubbing down his angles, if she chose to do it,”
Dorothy answered, and her cheeks became more rosy as she thought of the
part she herself had had in putting down gambling in the boys’ school,
by her influence over Bobby Felmore.
“Humph, there is sense in the idea certainly,” the doctor said. “Of
course it depends for success on what sort of a girl a boy like Tom gets
for a pal. I should not think a daughter of Grimes Fleming would be good
for Tom. Do what you can to stop it, Dorothy. Remember, I depend on
you.”
“Oh dear, I am afraid you will be disappointed, then,” sighed Dorothy.
“I do not seem to have any power at all with Tom. I am older than he is,
but that does not count, because he says he is the cleverer, as he won a
scholarship for Compton and I did not. I suppose he is right, too, for
he has won his way where I have had to be paid for.”
“It looks as if you are going to beat him now, if you keep on as you
have done for the last two terms,” said her father. “We are looking to
you to win that Lamb Bursary, Dorothy. You have got to do it, for our
sakes as well as your own. It will mean a tremendous lot to your mother
and me.”
Something that was nearly like a sob came up in Dorothy’s throat and
half-choked her. She realized that her father was actually pleading with
her not to fail. In the background was that damaging story told to her
by Mrs. Wilson. Because of that she was in honour bound not to go in for
the Lamb Bursary. What was the right thing to do? If only—oh! if only
she knew what was the right thing to do!
The hard part was that she could find no help at home, and she had to
face going back to school with her question unsolved.
CHAPTER XIX
A SUDDEN RESOLVE
The first three weeks of term slipped away with little to mark their
going. Rhoda was sweetly polite to Dorothy in public, but on the rare
occasions when the two met with no one else within sight or hearing,
then the ugly spirit that was in Rhoda came uppermost, and words of
spite slipped off her tongue. It was almost as if she was daring Dorothy
to speak of that incident which occurred in the showrooms of Messrs.
Sharman and Song. For the first two weeks Dorothy had been top, but the
third week Rhoda was above her—a fiercely triumphant Rhoda this time,
for it had been a heavy struggle, and by nature she was not fond of
work.
Dorothy had not been able to do her best at work that week; the term was
going so fast—the end was coming nearer and nearer. She felt she could
win the Bursary if only she could be free in her mind that she had a
right to it. It was the fear in her heart that she was in honour barred
from the right to strive for it which was doing her work so much harm
just now.
Her mental trouble had to be kept to herself—it would have done no good
to go about wearing a face as long as a fiddle. This would have excited
comment directly: it would probably have ended in the doctor being
called to see her, and he would have stopped her work. Oh no! She had
just to wear a smiling face and carry herself in a care-free manner,
taking her part in every bit of fun and frolic that came her way.
It was in the early mornings that the trouble hit her hardest. She would
wake very early, when the day was breaking and all the birds were
starting their day with a riot of bird music. Then she would lie
sleepless until the rising-bell rang, and she would search and grope in
her mind for a way out of the muddle.
She was lying in this fashion one morning while a cuckoo called outside
her window and a blackbird trilled from the top of an elm tree growing
just outside the lodge gate. What a cheerful sort of world it was, with
only herself so bothered, so fairly harassed with care!
Suddenly a wild idea flashed into her mind. She would tell the Head
about it, and then the responsibility would be lifted from her
shoulders. What a comfort it would be to cease from her blind groping to
find a way out!
With Dorothy to resolve was to do. But for that day at least she had to
wait, for the Head had gone to London on business and did not return
until the last train.
It was a little difficult even for one of the Sixth to get a private
interview with the Head. Try as she would, Dorothy could not screw her
courage to the point of standing up and asking for the privilege. In the
end she wrote a note begging that Miss Arden would permit her to come
for a private interview on a matter that was of great importance to
herself. Even when the letter was written there was the question of how
to get it into the hands of the Head. But finally she slipped it with
the other letters into the box in the hall, and then prepared to wait
with what patience she could for developments.
These were not long in coming. She was in the study with the others that
evening, and she was trying hard to write a paper on English
literature—a subject that would have been actually fascinating at any
other time—when Miss Groome, on her way to the staff sitting-room, put
her head in at the door, saying quietly,—
“Dorothy, the Head wants to see you in her room; you had better go down
at once.”
Dorothy rose up in her place; her heart was beating furiously and her
senses were in a whirl.
“Oh, Dorothy, what is the matter? Have you got into a row?” asked Hazel
kindly, while Margaret looked up with such a world of sympathy in her
eyes that Dorothy was comforted by it.
“No, I’m not in a fix of that sort,” she managed to say, and she smiled
as she went out of the room, though her face was very pale.
Her limbs shook and her teeth chattered as she went down the stairs and
along the corridor to the private room of the Head.
“Silly chump, pull yourself together!” she muttered, giving herself a
shake; then she knocked at the door, feeling a wild desire to run away,
now that the interview loomed so near.
“Come in,” said the Head, and Dorothy opened the door, to find Miss
Arden not at the writing table, which stood in the middle of the room,
but sitting in a low chair by the open window.
Dorothy halted just inside the open door; she was still oppressed by
that longing to run away, to escape from the consequences of her own
act. She looked so shrinking, so downright afraid, as she stood there,
that a grave fear of serious trouble came into the heart of the Head as
she pointed to another low chair on the other side of the window, and
bade Dorothy sit down.
“It is such a lovely evening,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Look
through that break in the trees, Dorothy; you can just see the sun
shining on the sea.”
“It is very pretty,” said Dorothy; then she sat down suddenly, and was
dumbly thankful for the relief of being able to sit.
“What is the trouble?” asked the Head.
Her manner was so understanding that Dorothy suddenly lost her desire to
run away, the furious beating of her heart subsided, and she was able to
look up and speak clearly, although her words came out in a rather
incoherent jumble because of her hurry to get her story told.
“I am not sure that I have any right to keep trying for the Lamb
Bursary—I mean I am by honour bound to tell you everything, and then
you will decide for me, and tell me what I have to do.”
“Do you mean that when you enrolled you kept something back?” asked the
Head gravely. She was thinking this might be a case of having been unfit
at the first, and refusing to own up to it.
“Oh no,” said Dorothy earnestly. “When I enrolled I had no idea there
was anything to prevent me from becoming a candidate.”
“Then it is nothing to do with yourself personally?” There was a throb
of actual relief in the heart of the Head. She was bound up in her
girls; the disgrace of one of them would be her own disgrace.
“No.” Dorothy hesitated a minute; it was fearfully hard to drag out that
story about her father. She had a vision of his dear careworn face just
then, and it seemed to her a desecration—even an unfilial thing—to say
a thing of his past which might lower him in the esteem of the Head.
“If it is not yourself, then at least you could not help it.” The Head
spoke kindly, with a desire to make Dorothy’s task easier.
“Do you remember the day of the very high tide, when an accident
happened on the front, and I met a lady, Mrs. Wilson, of Sevenoaks, who
asked me to take tea with her at the Grand, Ilkestone, next day?”
Dorothy spoke in a sort of desperate burst, anxious to get the story out
as quickly as possible.
“Yes, I remember.” The Head smiled in a reassuring fashion. “Mrs. Wilson
was an old friend of your father’s, I think?”
“Yes; she used to know him when he was a medical student. She said that
he and his cousin, Arthur Sedgewick, with two others named Bagnall, were
a very wild lot; they did all sorts of harum-scarum things. They were
coming home from a dance one night, and father was driving a cab that
was racing another cab. Father’s cab collided with a police wagonette,
which was badly smashed up, and an old woman was hurt. For that father
had to go to prison for a fortnight.” It was out now—out with a
vengeance. Dorothy fairly gasped at her own daring in telling the story.
The Head looked blank. “This was not pleasant hearing for you, of
course. Still, I do not see how it affects your standing.”
“Oh! don’t you remember the rules that were read out at the enrolment
ceremony?” cried Dorothy, with a bright spot of pink showing in both her
white cheeks. “It was read out that no girl was eligible whose parents
had at any time been in prison.”
“Of course; but I had forgotten.” There was a shocked note in the tone
of the Head, her eyes grew very troubled, and she sat for a moment in
silence.
A moment was it? To Dorothy it seemed more like a year—a whole twelve
months—of strained suffering.
“Dorothy, are you quite sure—quite absolutely sure—that this is a
fact?” Miss Arden asked, breaking the silence.
Choking back a sob, Dorothy bowed her head. Speech was almost impossible
just then. But the Head was waiting for a detailed answer, and she had
to speak. “Mrs. Wilson was there—she was in the cab—so she must
certainly have known all about it. She told the story to me as if it
were a good joke.”
“You have been home since then—did you speak of this to your father and
mother?” The Head was looking so worried, so actually careworn, that
Dorothy suddenly found it easier to speak.
“I tried to ask my mother about it, but she would not discuss it with
me.” Dorothy’s tone became suddenly frigid, as if it had taken on her
mother’s attitude.
“Did you speak to your father about it?” The Head was questioning
closely now in order that she might get at the very bottom of the
mystery.
“Oh, I could not!” There was sharp pain in Dorothy’s tone; her father
was her hero—the very best and bravest, the very dearest of men.
Something of this she had to make clear to the Head if she could, and
she went on, her voice breaking a little in spite of her efforts at
self-control. “Daddy is such a dear; he is so hard-working; he is always
sacrificing himself for some one or doing something to help some one—I
just could not tell him of that awful old story. He would have felt so
bad, too, because he kept urging me to win the Lamb Bursary if I could.”
“Did you tell him of that rule—that stupid, foolish rule—about no one
being eligible whose parents had been in prison?” asked the Head.
Dorothy put out her hands as if to ward off a blow. “Oh, I could not!
Why, it would have broken his heart to think that any action of his in
the past was to bar my way in the future. I did tell mother about it.”
“What did she say?” The insistent questioning of the Head was beginning
to get on Dorothy’s nerves; then, too, it was so unpleasant to be
obliged to own up to the stark truth.
“Mother said nothing,” she answered dully. And then the interview became
suddenly a long-drawn-out torture: she was racked and beaten until she
could bear no more, while all the time she could hear the cynical words
of Tom about woman having no sense of honour.
Perhaps the Head understood something of what Dorothy was feeling, for
her tone was so very kind and sympathetic when she spoke.
“I think we will do nothing in the matter for a week. I will take that
time to think things round. But, Dorothy, I am very specially anxious
that this talk shall make no difference to your work or your striving.
Go on doing your very utmost to win the Bursary. I cannot tell you what
a large amount of good this hard work of the candidates is doing for the
whole school. You are not working merely to maintain your own
position—you are setting the pace for the others. Don’t worry about
this either. Just put the thought of it away from your mind. It may be I
can find a way out for you—at least I will try.”
Dorothy rose to her feet. The strain was over, and, marvel of marvels,
she was still where she had been—at least for another week.
CHAPTER XX
PLAYING THE GAME
It was a wonderful relief to Dorothy to have her burden of
responsibility lifted. She could give her whole mind to her work now,
without having to suffer from that miserable see-saw of doubt and fear
about her right to work for the Lamb Bursary.
So good was it, too, that she had no longer to pretend to be cheerful.
She could be as happy as the other girls now, and the week that followed
was one of the happiest she had ever spent at the Compton School. As was
natural, her work gained a tremendous advantage from her care-free
condition, and when the marks for the week were posted up on the board
she found that she was top again, a long way ahead of Rhoda this time,
while Hazel and Margaret were lower still.
“It looks—it really does—as if Dorothy Sedgewick was going to cart off
the Mutton Bone,” said Daisy Goatby with a tremendous yawn, as she came
sauntering up to the board to have a look at the week’s marks. Dorothy
had already gone upstairs, and for the moment there was no one in the
lecture hall except Daisy and Joan Fletcher.
“There is one thing to be said for her—she will have earned it,”
answered Joan. “Dorothy must work like a horse to get in front of
Rhoda—and she hasn’t had Rhoda’s chances, either, seeing that she only
came here last autumn. I think she is the eighth wonder of the world. It
makes me tired to look at her.”
“Won’t Rhoda just be in a wax when she sees how much she is down?” Daisy
gurgled into delighted laughter, her plump cheeks fairly shaking with
glee.
“I don’t mind what sort of a wax she is in, if it does not occur to her
to coach us into getting ahead of Dorothy,” said Joan with a yawn. She
was tired, for she had been playing tennis every available half-hour
right through the day, and felt much more inclined for bed than for
study. But she was in the Sixth—she was, moreover, a candidate for the
Lamb Bursary—so it was up to her to make a pretence of study at night,
even if the amount done was not worth talking about.
“I don’t think Rhoda will try that old game on again—at least I hope
she won’t,” said Daisy, as the two turned away to mount the stairs to
the study. “I never had to work harder in my life than at that time. I
expected to have nervous breakdown every day, for the pace was so
tremendous. If she had kept it up, I believe I should have stood a
chance of winning the Mutton Bone—that is to say, if Dorothy had not
been in the running. Rhoda is a downright good coach; she has a way of
making you work whether you feel like it or not. The trouble is that she
gets tired of it so soon. She dropped us all in a hurry, just as I was
beginning to feel I had got it in me to be really great at getting on.”
“I know why she dropped us.” Joan shrugged her shoulders and glanced
round in a suddenly furtive fashion, as the two went side by side up the
broad stairs, and the June sunshine streamed in through the open
windows.
“Why?” sharply demanded Daisy, scenting a mystery, and keen to hear what
it was.
“I can’t tell you now,” said Joan hastily. “I am afraid some one might
catch a word, and it is serious. I’ll tell you to-morrow when we are
resting after a bout of tennis.”
“To-morrow? Do you think I am going to wait until then? Come along into
the prep room—the Upper Fifth are not at work to-night. See, there is
no one here. We will sit over by the window, then only the sparrows can
hear what you have to say. Now, then, out with it; I hate to wait for
anything.”
“Rhoda had to leave off using cribs—that is why she left off coaching
us,” said Joan, jerking her shoulders up in a way peculiar to her in
moments of triumphant emotion.
“Cribs wouldn’t be of much use in a good bit of our work,” said Daisy
scornfully. “For instance, what sort of a crib could you use to remember
one of old Plimsoll’s lectures?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” snapped Joan. “There are plenty of things we have
to do where cribs would be useful—Latin, French, mathematics—oh! heaps
of things. It was Rhoda who had that old book of Amelia Herschstein’s
that was found in the No. 1 study among Dorothy’s things.”
“I was quite sure of that.” Daisy nodded and chuckled in delight. “I was
not quite so fast asleep as I was supposed to be that night, and I knew
that Rhoda had been out of the room, although she did go and come like a
cat. But what I want to know is what made her have Amelia Herschstein’s
book in her possession. Did she find it anywhere about the premises, do
you think?”
“Now, in the name of common sense is it likely that a book of that sort
would be left lying round for any girl to pick up and use if she felt so
inclined?” Joan fairly snorted with disgust at Daisy’s want of
understanding. “That book was in the school because Rhoda brought it
here. I never could imagine why she chose to stuff it among Dorothy’s
things, except from blind spite, because, of course, she has had to work
much harder since she has had to do without its help.”
Daisy looked the picture of bewilderment. “How did it come about that
she had the book at all?” she gasped, staring open-mouthed at Joan.
“Ah! do you know what I found out last vac?” Joan pursed up her mouth in
a secretive fashion. She nodded her head, and looked wise, and so smug
with it all, that Daisy forgot the dignity due in one of the Sixth, and
actually fell upon her, cuffing her smartly, while she cried, “Out with
it, then, or I will bang your head against the window-frame until you
see stars and all that sort of thing.”
“Don’t behave like a Third Form kid if you can help it, and, for pity’s
sake, don’t make such a noise, or some one will spot us, and then we
shall get beans for not being at work,” protested Joan, wresting herself
free from the rough grip of Daisy, and patting her hair into place. Joan
was beginning to revel in being nearly grown-up, and she was very
particular about her hair being just right.
“Tell me, tell me quickly!” said Daisy, with a stamp of her foot. “If
you don’t, I will ruff your hair all up until it is in a most fearful
tangle, and I will throw your ribbon, your combs, and those lovely
tortoise-shell pins all out of the window. A nice sight you will look
then, old thing.”
“And nice beans, a regular boiling of them, you would get for doing it,”
laughed Joan, who loved to tease Daisy into an exhibition of this sort.
“Tell me, tell me!” cried Daisy, with another stamp of her foot.
“My father told me,” said Joan, nodding her head. “He said that Grimes
Fleming—Rhoda’s father, you know—was closely related to the
Herschsteins. It has been kept very dark, because, of course, no one in
any way connected with that family would have been received at the
Compton Schools if it had been known. Dad would not have told me about
it if I had not insisted that this floor was haunted by Amelia’s ghost,
and that the spirit actually left books in the studies. I thought my dad
would have had a fit then, he was so choked with laughing. That is when
he told me, and he said I was to keep it dark, for it did not seem fair
that Rhoda should have the sins of those who went before fastened on her
shoulders to weigh her down.”
“It isn’t playing the game, though, to let a girl like that win the Lamb
Bursary,” said Daisy in a tone that was fairly shocked.
“Just what I said to my dad. But he told me it was up to me to stop her
doing it by jolly well beating her myself. I think I would have a real
vigorous try to do it, too, if it were not for Dorothy. I might beat
Rhoda if I tried hard enough, and kept on trying. Dorothy is a different
matter; she is forcing the pace so terribly that I can’t face the fag of
it all. Rhoda would not put out her strength as she does if it were not
for her spite against Dorothy.”
“Why does she hate Dorothy so badly?” asked Daisy, whose excitement had
subsided, leaving her more serious than usual.
“Ask me another,” said Joan, flinging up her hands with a gesture that
was meant to be dramatic. “I think it would need a Sherlock Holmes to
find that out. I have pumped her—I have watched her—but I am no nearer
getting to the bottom of it. It is my belief that Dorothy knows
something about Rhoda, and Rhoda knows she knows it. Oh dear, what a mix
up of words, but you know what I mean.”
“I don’t think she ought to be allowed to win the Lamb Bursary—it was
not meant for a girl of that sort.” Daisy sounded reproachful now, for
it did seem a shame that the chief prize of the school should go to one
who was unworthy.
Joan wagged her head with a knowing air. “I know how you feel, for it is
just my opinion. I am keeping quiet now, as I promised my dad I would.
If Dorothy or Hazel or any one else wins the Bursary, then there will be
no need to say anything at all; but if Miss Rhoda comes out top, then I
am going to say things, and do things, and stir up no end of a dust.”
It was at this moment that two of the Upper Fifth came scurrying up to
their prep room, and the two who had been talking there had to get out
in a hurry.
Rhoda was carrying things before her in the Sixth. She had contrived to
chum up a great deal with Dora Selwyn, who by reason of being head girl
was a power in the place. Dora was rarely top of the school in the
matter of marks; the fact that she was specializing naturally tended to
keep these down. But in every other sense she was top, and she was
leader—in short, she was IT, and every one realized this.
Dora had fallen foul of Rhoda a good many times during the years they
had both been at the Compton School, but they had seemed to get on
better of late. Right down at the bottom Dora was fearfully
conservative. To her way of thinking it was quite wrong that a new girl
like Dorothy Sedgewick should have been put straight into the Sixth. It
was, in fact, a tacit admission that education in another school might
be as good as it was at the Compton Schools—a rank heresy, indeed! Dora
would have got over that in time, perhaps, if Dorothy had been something
of a slacker; but it did not please her that the new girl—that is to
say, the comparatively new girl—should be mounting to the top of the
school in the matter of marks week by week, so she veered round to the
side of Rhoda and championed her cause.
The days simply flew now. The summer term was always delightful at
Sowergate. There was sea-bathing; there was tennis and golf; frequent
picnics livened things up for all who cared for that sort of thing;
there were bicycle trips; some of the girls were learning to ride; two
were having motor lessons—so that, taken all round, every one was so
full of affairs that each night as it came was something of a surprise,
because it had arrived so speedily.
Dorothy seemed to live only for the end of the week, when the Head was
to give her decision. In some ways it was the longest week she had ever
lived through; in many other ways it was so short that Dorothy felt
fairly frightened by the speed with which it went.
It was evening again when she was summoned to the private room of the
Head, and she rose up in her place to obey the call, feeling as if she
were going to the place of execution.
“Dorothy dear, I am so sorry for you!” murmured Margaret, jumping up to
give her a hug as she went out of the room, while Hazel nodded in
sympathy, and Jessie Wayne from the far corner blew her a kiss.
It was good to feel that she had the sympathy of them all, but a wry
little smile curved Dorothy’s lips as she went downstairs. She was
thinking how they would all have stared if she could have told them what
was the matter—and then, indeed, they would have been sorry.
She was sorry for herself, except when she thought of her father; and
then, in her pain for him, she forgot to suffer on her own account.
CHAPTER XXI
THE HEAD DECIDES
Miss Arden was writing at the table in the middle of the room when
Dorothy entered. She looked up and motioned to a low chair near the
window. “Sit there for a few minutes, Dorothy; I shall not be long
before I am free to talk to you.”
Dorothy sat down, and instinctively her glance went out to that bit of
shining sea visible through the gap in the trees, which the Head had
pointed out to her a week ago. It was an evening just like that one had
been, with the sun shining on the water, and the trees so still that
they did not sway across that little patch of brightness.
Presently the Head finished writing, rang the bell for the letters to be
taken away for posting, and then, leaving her writing table, came over
to sit by Dorothy at the open window.
“How has your work gone this week?” she asked a little abruptly. Then,
seeing that Dorothy seemed puzzled, she went on speaking in her crisp
tones, “I was not asking in reference to your school position—I know
all about that. I wanted to know how you had felt about your work, and
whether it was easier because of our talk last week.”
Dorothy’s face flashed into smiles, and she answered eagerly, “Oh, it
was much easier, thank you. I have had no worry of responsibility, you
see. I have been free to keep on working without any wonder as to
whether I had the right to work in that special way.”
The Head nodded in sympathetic fashion, and was silent for a few
minutes, as if she were still considering that decision of hers; then
she asked, “Are you willing to trust the responsibility to me for the
rest of the term?”
Dorothy looked blank. “I don’t think I quite understand,” she said. “It
is for you to decide what I have to do.”
The Head laughed, then flung out her hands with a little gesture of
helplessness as she answered, “I know the decision rests with me. The
trouble is that I cannot at the present see any light on the situation.
Until that comes you have just to go on as you are doing now. You have
to make the very bravest fight you can. You have to work and to
struggle—to do your very best; and having done this, you have to wait
in patience for the issue of it all.”
“I can do that, of course,” said Dorothy; but her tone was a little
doubtful—it was even a little disappointed. It was a hard-and-fast
decision she craved: a pronouncement that could not be set aside—which
put an end to hope and fear, and that left her nothing to be anxious
about.
“I want you to do it, feeling that it is the best—and, indeed, the only
way.” The Head spoke with a slow deliberation which carried weight. “You
see, Dorothy, you have to think not merely of yourself and your own
sense of honour, which is a very fine one; but you have to think also of
your father and the effect it might have on him and his career if you
withdrew from your position as a candidate now. You know very well how
serious it is for a doctor to be talked about in such a way as would
inevitably occur if this story became common property. A doctor smirched
is a doctor destroyed. We have to be very careful on his account.”
“I know; I had thought about that,” said Dorothy in a curiously muffled
tone.
“That is good. Your consideration for him will help you more than
anything else.” The Head smiled with such kindly approval that Dorothy
was thrilled. “I am not even going to suggest that you may not win the
Lamb Bursary; to fail in doing that, through any lack of striving on
your part, would be the coward’s way out of a difficulty, and that could
never be the right way. Your chance of winning is very good. Rhoda
Fleming is your most serious rival. In some ways she has the advantage,
because she has been here so much longer that she has been better
grounded on our lines of work. On the other hand, you have an advantage
over her of steadier application. You keep on keeping on, where she goes
slack, and has to pull herself up with extra effort. This may succeed
where the struggle is a short one, but will not be of much use in a long
strain.”
“I can’t work by starts like that,” said Dorothy. “I should soon get
left if I did not keep straight on doing my utmost.”
“It is the only way to real success,” the Head remarked thoughtfully.
Then she went on, hesitating a little now, picking her words very
carefully, “In the event of your winning, then I should think it best to
call the governors of the Bursary together, and make a plain statement
of the case to them. If they decided that you were unfit to receive the
benefit of the Bursary, the matter could be kept from becoming public.
The story about your father need never leak out, and although he would
have the pain of knowing all about it, the outside world would not be
any the wiser.”
“Oh! it would hurt him so dreadfully to know it was his action which had
shut me out from the chance of a university training!” cried Dorothy,
shrinking as if the Head had dealt her a blow.
“I know, dear, and it is painful even to think about it. But the
governors, taking all things into consideration, may even decide to let
you take it, in which case your father may be spared ever hearing of the
affair. I cannot think why such a strange provision was put into the
rules for enrolment. It might have been that poor Miss Lamb had been
compelled to suffer in her time at the hands of some girl whose parent,
one or the other, had been in prison, and so it was a case of avenging
herself at the expense of the girls who might come after her. Such
things do happen. Then, too, it is not as if your father had been in
prison from any deliberate attempt at law-breaking. If he had embezzled
money—if he had set himself up against what was right and
honourable—it would have been a different matter. I think the
punishment was far in excess of the wrong-doing, which appears to have
begun and ended in an outburst of larkiness and high spirits; but I
suppose it was the old woman being hurt which caused the sentence to be
imprisonment.”
“Would the governors have the power to set aside that old rule?” asked
Dorothy, whose eyes had brightened with a sudden stirring of hope.
“I fancy the governors have all power to do as seems wisest to them,”
the Head replied; and then she said, with a low laugh, “As they are men,
it would be no question of their sense of honour being shaky.”
Dorothy gave a start of pure amazement at such an utterance from the
Head; she was even bold enough to ask, “Do you think that women are less
honourable than men?”
“Now, that is a rather difficult question to answer,” replied the Head.
“Taken in the broadest sense, I should be inclined to think that the
great mass of women are less honourable than men. But that is the result
of long ages of being regarded as irresponsible beings—the mere
appendage or chattel of man—with no moral standing of their own. Taken
in the individual sense, I believe that when a woman or a girl is
honourable, she is far more so than a man—that is to say, she would be
honourable down to the last shred of detail, while a man under like
conditions would be honourable in the bulk, but absolutely careless of
the smaller details. That is largely theory, however, and does not
concern the present business in the least. We have talked about it
enough, too, and now we will leave it alone. I do not forget—and I am
sure the governors will not forget—that you, of your own free will,
came to me with this uncomfortable fact from your father’s past, and
that you offered to withdraw, or to do anything else which I might
decide was best.”
Dorothy rose to go. There was one question she had to ask, a fearfully
difficult one, but she screwed her courage to the attempt. “Supposing I
came out top in the running for the Bursary, but the governors decided I
might not take it, would they give the Bursary to the girl who was next
below me?”
The Head looked thoughtful—she even hesitated before replying; then she
said slowly, “I do not know. I do not think such a case as this has ever
arisen before. They might even decide not to give the Bursary at all
this year. Why did you ask?”
The hot colour flamed over Dorothy’s face, it mounted to the roots of
her hair, she was suddenly the picture of confusion, and stammered out
the first answer which came into her head, “I—I just wanted to know.”
“Dorothy, what is it that you know against Rhoda Fleming, which would
put her out of the running for the Bursary if you told?”
The voice of the Head was so quiet, so curiously level, that for a
moment Dorothy did not grasp the full significance of the question. Then
it flashed upon her that she held Rhoda in her hand, and, with Rhoda,
her own sense of honour also.
“Oh! I could not tell you—I could not. I beg of you do not ask me,” she
cried, stretching out her hands imploringly, then questioned eagerly,
“How did you even guess there was anything?”
“By the way Rhoda has treated you all the term; but I could not be sure
until I had asked you a point-blank question at a moment when you were
not expecting it,” replied the Head; and then she said kindly, “Why can
you not trust me with your knowledge, Dorothy?”
The colour faded from Dorothy’s face. She was white and spent; indeed,
she looked as if tears were not far away as she stood with her back to
the door and the strong light of the sunset full on her face. “The
knowledge I have came to me without my seeking,” she said in a low tone.
“I have no means of proving what I know, and if I told you it would seem
like taking a dishonourable way of downing a rival in work.”
“I understand that,” said the Head. “Why did you ask me about Rhoda, if
she would have the Bursary if you were not allowed to keep it?”
Dorothy moved uneasily. Her tongue felt so parched that speech was
difficult; then she said in a low tone, “I spoke to my mother when I was
at home, without, of course, giving her facts or names, and I asked her
what I ought to do.”
“What did she say?” The Head was smiling, and Dorothy took heart again.
“Mother told me to make such an effort to win the Bursary for myself,
that it would not matter in the end whether the girl was fit or unfit to
have enrolled as a candidate.”
“Very good advice, too. But I see your position again. If you speak you
let your rival down; from your point of view, it would not be playing
the game. If you keep silent, and win the Bursary, but yet because of
this story of your father’s past you are passed over and it is given to
Rhoda, the irony of the situation will be fairly crushing.” The Head was
looking at Dorothy with great kindness in her manner, and Dorothy was
comforted because she was understood.
“You will not force me to speak?” she asked, greatly daring, for the
Head was by no means a person to be trifled with.
“No; I will even admire you for your desire not to do so, though it
makes me feel as if I were compounding a felony.” The Head laughed as
she spoke; then, becoming suddenly grave, she went on, “If it should
turn out that you win the Bursary, and the governors will not let you
take it, I shall require of you that you tell me and tell them of this
thing you are keeping to yourself. The honour of the school demands this
at your hands. It is not fair that the Lamb Bursary should go to a girl
who has won it by a trick or by any keeping back of that which should be
known.”
“No, it is not fair,” admitted Dorothy, and a dreadful dismay filled her
heart to think that she might have to tell of what she had seen in the
showroom of Messrs. Sharman and Song.
“Good night, and now let us leave all these problems for the future to
solve,” said the Head, holding out a slim white hand for Dorothy to
shake.
Such a wave of gratitude flowed into the heart of Dorothy, to think she
had not to betray Rhoda, that, yielding to impulse, she carried that
slim white hand to her lips, kissing it in the ardour of her devotion
and admiration. Then she went out of the room with her head carried
high, and such a feeling of elation in her heart that it was difficult
to refrain from dancing a jig on the stairs.
“Dorothy, you are a fraud!” cried Hazel, as Dorothy came into the study,
smiling, radiantly happy, and looking as if it were morning instead of
nearly bedtime. “Here have Margaret and I been snivelling in sympathy
with you, because we thought you were having a ragging from the Head for
some misdemeanour or other, instead of which you come prancing upstairs
as if the whole place belonged to you.”
“That is how I feel,” said Dorothy blithely. “The Head—bless her—has
not been ragging me; she has only been laying down rules for my conduct
in future, and that, you know, is why we come to school, to be taught
what we do not know.”
“It looks as if you are having us on,” said Margaret, glancing up from
her work.
“Never mind, we will go to bed now, and sleep it off,” answered Dorothy,
and then would say no more.
CHAPTER XXII
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CUP
Just below the stained-glass window which was at the back of the dais in
the lecture hall stood a silver cup of great beauty. Other and lesser
cups were ranged on each side of it, and all of them were protected by a
glass case of heavy make.
This principal cup had been in the girls’ school for two years now. It
had to be fought for on the tennis courts each year at the end of the
summer term. Until two years ago the boys had won it for six or seven
years in succession, and great had been the jubilation among the girls
when at last they had succeeded in winning it for themselves. Having had
it for two years, they were preparing to fight for it again with might
and main when the time for the struggle should come round again.
Realizing that the best players were not always to be found in the Sixth
Form, the contest was fought by the united efforts of the Fourth, Fifth,
and Sixth Forms, the finals being fought amid scenes of the wildest
enthusiasm.
The struggle was fixed for just one week before the end of term, and was
indeed the beginning of the end—the first break of the steady routine
of the past three months. Fortunately the weather was all that could be
desired, and every one was in wild spirits for the fray.
The Fourth and the Fifth of both schools were early on the ground. The
excitement at the courts was tremendous. Exasperated by having lost the
cup for two years in succession, the boys had been working hard at
tennis this summer, and they were out to win—a fact the girls were
quick to realize.
The games had already started when the Sixth of the boys’ school came
pouring out from their school premises across the cricket field to the
courts of the girls’ school, where the battle was being fought. Two
minutes later the girls of the Sixth also arrived on the scene. They
were a little late because of a history exam which had held them until
the last minute.
The governors of the schools left nothing to chance, and the exams of
the last two weeks of the summer term were things of magnitude.
Dorothy came down to the courts with Joan Fletcher. Hazel and Margaret,
her special chums, were in front, but Dorothy had been delayed by Miss
Groome, and was the last on the scene—or would have been if Joan had
not waited for her.
“What a jolly old day it is!” exclaimed Joan, anxious to show a friendly
front. Both she and Daisy Goatby had completely veered round in these
last weeks, and showed themselves very anxious to be on friendly terms
with Dorothy.
“Oh, it could not be better!” Dorothy flourished her racket, and
executed a festive skip as she hurried along. “It is just perfect
weather for tennis, and I think—I really think we shall beat the boys
if we play hard enough. And oh! we must keep that cup if we can, for the
honour of the school.”
“What a lot you think of honour.” Joan half turned as she hurried along,
and she surveyed Dorothy closely, as if trying to find out what made her
so keen on upholding the traditions of the place.
“Why, of course! But that is only right and natural. Don’t you think
so?” There was surprise in Dorothy’s tone, for Joan seemed to be hinting
at something. Her scurrying run had dropped to a walk, and Dorothy
slowed up also.
“It isn’t what I think that matters very much in this case,” burst out
Joan explosively. “I was only thinking what a pity it is that some of
the rest of our crowd are not as keen on the honour of the school as you
are.”
“Now, just what do you mean by that?” Dorothy halted abruptly, staring
at Joan.
They were just at the edge of the nearest court now, and the shouts and
yells from boys and girls resounded on all sides.
Joan looked up at the sky, she looked down at her white tennis shoes,
and then her gaze went wandering as if she were in search of
inspiration. Finally she burst out, “I hate to have to tell you, but
Daisy and I tossed up as to which should do it, and I am the unlucky
one: your brother has mixed himself up in a particularly beastly sort of
scrape.”
“Tom is in a scrape?” breathed Dorothy, and suddenly she felt as if it
were her fault, for she had seen so little of Tom this term, and when
she had seen him he had not cared to be in any way confidential.
Joan nodded in an emphatic fashion. “A silly noodle he must be to be
cat’s-paw for a girl in such a silly way.”
“What has he done?” asked Dorothy, striving to keep calm and quiet, yet
feeling a wild desire to seize and shake the information out of her.
“I don’t know the real rights of it,” said Joan. “I know a little, and
guess a lot more. Rhoda has dropped quite a considerable lot of money
lately in hospital raffles and in the sweepstakes that were got up to
provide that new wing for the infirmary. As she has helped Tom to so
many plums in the way of winning money in the past, it was only natural
that she turned to him when she got into a muddle herself. She was in a
rather extra special muddle, too, for she was holding the money we
raised for the archery club, and when the time came to pay it over, lo!
it was not, for she had spent it, and her dump from home had not
arrived. To tide her over the bad bit she applied to Tom. He said he had
no money, and did not know where to get it. She, in desperation—and
Rhoda knows how to scratch when she is in a corner—wrote to Tom that if
the money was not forthcoming in twenty-four hours, she would tell his
Head of the doings at the night-club.”
“What night-club?” demanded Dorothy, aghast.
“Oh, I don’t know. Boys are in mischief all the time, I think,” said
Joan impatiently; and then she went on, “The time-limit passed; Rhoda
got still more desperate and still more catty. Finding Tom did not pay
up—did not even send to plead for longer time, or take any other notice
of her ultimatum—Rhoda wrote her letter to Tom’s Head, and actually
posted it. This letter had not been in the post half an hour when her
money from home arrived. She was able to get out of her fix, but she was
not able to stop having got Tom into an awful sort of row. And now she
is so mad with herself, that the Compton School is not big enough to
hold her in any sort of comfort.”
“This night-club, what is it exactly?” Dorothy turned her back on the
tennis players, and faced Joan with devouring anxiety in her eyes.
“I don’t know really; I think it is got up by some of the young officers
at the camp. Lots of them are Compton old boys, you know. I think they
meet somewhere at dead of night to drink and play cards, and go on the
burst generally. They call it going the pace. I suppose they let some of
our boys in for old sake’s sake, though it would be kinder to the boys
if they did not. Anyhow, it is all out now. The boys will get in a row,
the young officers may get court-martialled, or whatever they do with
them up there, and all because a girl lost her temper through not being
able to twist Tom round her little finger.”
“Joan, I am ever so grateful to you for telling me all this, even though
I can’t see any way of helping Tom,” said Dorothy; and then she asked,
“Does he know that Rhoda has told Dr. Cameron?”
“He did not. The letter did not go until yesterday, you see,” replied
Joan. “The trouble for Tom will be that he will not only get beans from
the authorities, but the boys will cut him dead for having been such a
donkey as to trust a girl with a secret.”
“I don’t see why a girl should not be trusted as well as a boy,” said
Dorothy, who always felt resentful at this implied inferiority of her
sex.
“You may not see it, but your blindness does not alter the fact,” said
Joan bluntly. “There goes Rhoda, holding up her head with the best
because she can pay up the money she copped to pay for her old raffles.
I wonder how she feels underneath, when she thinks how her letter to
Tom’s Head will make history for the Compton Boys’ School, and for the
camp as well? You see, she has let the whole lot into it, and there will
be no end of a dust up.”
“Even scavengers have their uses,” said Dorothy, feeling suddenly better
because she realized that Tom would have entirely lost faith in Rhoda;
and although he might have to suffer many things at the hands of his
outraged companions, he would learn wisdom from the experience, and come
out of the ordeal stronger all round.
“It is our turn—come along,” cried Joan with an air of relief. She was
thankful indeed to have got her unpleasant task over, and to find that
Dorothy did not look unduly upset.
The struggle for the cup was being put through amid displays of wild
enthusiasm. The first sets were played by boys against boys, and girls
against girls, and the yelling grew fairly frantic when the semi-finals
were reached.
The girls for the semi-final were Dora Selwyn and Rhoda against Dorothy
and a Fifth Form girl, Milly Stokes, who had carried all before her in
previous sets, though she was small, and younger than most of her Form.
It was rather hard for Dorothy to have to play against Dora and Rhoda,
and she had little hope of surviving for the final. Rhoda was a good
all-round player; she was great, too, at smashing and volleying; while
Dora, with no great pace in her strokes, was very accurate, and always
inclined to play for safety first.
There was no holding Milly Stokes. She behaved like one possessed. She
sent the balls flying with a reckless abandon which looked as if it must
spell ruin, yet each time made for success. Dorothy was wrought up to a
great pitch. It was not tennis she seemed to be playing; it was the
contest between right and wrong—she and Milly Stokes pitted against
Rhoda and the head girl. She was not nervous. That story of Tom’s
impending disgrace had so absorbed her that she could not think about
herself at all. She was standing for what was upright and ennobling, so
she must play the game to win.
Louder and louder grew the cheering; now she could hear the shouting for
“Little Stokes” and “Sedgewick of the Sixth.”
They had won, too, and now Milly Stokes rushed at her, flinging a pair
of clinging arms round her, and crying, “Oh, Dorothy, Dorothy, you are a
partner worth having! We have beaten those two smashers, and surely,
surely we can beat the boys!”
“We will have a good try, anyhow,” answered Dorothy with a laugh; and
then she went off to the little pavilion to have a brief rest while the
boys played their last set for semi-final.
So far she had not caught a glimpse of Tom, but as she came out of the
pavilion with Milly Stokes and went across the court to her place, she
saw him standing by the side of Bobby Felmore.
Her heart beat a little faster at this sight. She knew that he and Bobby
had not been on good terms lately; that they should be together now,
made her jump to the conclusion that Tom’s punishment at the hands of
the boys had begun, and Bobby was proving something of a refuge for him.
“Bless you, Bobby!” she murmured under her breath as she nodded in their
direction; and she was very glad to think that Bobby had not survived to
the final, so that she would not have to beat him.
Their opponents were a long, sandy-haired youth, perspiring freely, and
a dark boy of uncertain temper and play to match. It was a fine
struggle. Milly dashed about more wildly than ever, but Dorothy played
with a gay unconcern that surprised even herself. She had vanquished the
wrong in the semi-final, and this last bit of struggle was merely for
the glory of the school. They won, too, and the shrill cheering of the
girls frightened the birds from the trees, while the boys booed with a
sound of malice in their tone, which was partly for the loss of the cup,
but still more for the loss of the dubious privilege of their
night-club.
CHAPTER XXIII
TROUBLE FOR TOM
Dorothy and Milly Stokes were chaired round the courts by ardent
admirers, and they were cheered until their heads ached from the noise.
As soon as Dorothy could escape she went in search of Tom. It was some
time before she could find him; and when she did run him down he was in
a temper that was anything but sweet.
“Oh, Tom! I am so sorry for the trouble,” she burst out with ready
sympathy. Tom usually wore such a happy face, that it was just dreadful
to see him looking so glum.
“It is pretty rotten,” he growled. “We are to be hauled up before the
Head in the morning, and goodness knows what will happen then. There is
one comfort—I am not the only one in the soup; there are about
twenty-five of us involved. The thing that passes my comprehension is
how it all came out.”
“Don’t you know?” gasped Dorothy, so amazed at his words that she had no
time to think of being discreet.
“How should I know?” he said blankly. “Why, you might have knocked me
down with a feather when Clarges Major told me we’d been spotted, and
that the game was up so far as our night-club was concerned. It has been
such a jolly lark, too! We used to go about three nights a week, and get
back about three o’clock in the morning. Some club it was, too, I can
tell you! Say, Dorothy, how did you know anything about it?”
“Joan Fletcher told me. She told me how Rhoda had written all about the
club to your Head, because you would not lend her the money when she was
in a hole about the archery club subscriptions.” Dorothy spoke in a
quiet tone; she was determined that Tom should know the true facts of
the case. But she quailed a little when he turned upon her with fury in
his face.
“Rhoda told because I would not lend her the money! What on earth are
you driving at? That time when she talked to me about being so short, I
told her then that I was in the same boat—absolutely stoney.”
“It was because you did not answer her letter, when she gave you
twenty-four hours to find some money to help her out of her fix.”
Dorothy stopped suddenly because of the surprise in Tom’s face. “Didn’t
you have that letter?” she asked.
“I have never set eyes on it,” he answered. “When did she send it, and
how?”
“I don’t know,” answered Dorothy. “Joan told me that Rhoda was so angry
and so very desperate because you did not answer her letter, that, to
pay you out for leaving her in the lurch, she wrote a letter to Dr.
Cameron, telling him about the night-club. A little after her letter
went she got the money she wanted from home, and she would have recalled
her letter to your Head then if she had been able to do it, but, of
course, it was too late.”
“The insufferable little cad, to blow on us like that out of sheer
cattish spite!” growled Tom. Then he asked, with sharp anxiety in his
tone, “Has it leaked out yet among our crowd that Rhoda told?”
“I am afraid so,” answered Dorothy, and again she quailed at the look in
his eyes. “Didn’t you hear all the booing when we won the cup?”
“Of course. I booed myself with might and main; but that was only
because we had lost it,” said Tom.
Dorothy shook her head. “I am afraid it is more than that—there was
such a lot of malice in the noise. Hazel told me that some one threw a
bag of flour at Rhoda, and written across the bag were the words ‘For a
sneak’; so it looks as if they knew.”
“If that is the case, you bet I am in for it right up to my back teeth,”
growled Tom; and turning he walked away with never another word to
Dorothy, who reflected sorrowfully that he was much more concerned at
the prospect of losing the goodwill of his fellows than because he was
implicated in such a serious breach of rules and regulations.
Dorothy did not see him again that day. She did not see him on the next
day either; but rumours were rife in the girls’ school that the boys
involved in the night-club business were in for a row of magnitude.
The work of the week was so exacting and absorbing that Dorothy found
herself with but little time for thinking of Tom and his troubles.
On Sunday—the last Sunday of term it was—Tom appeared with the other
boys in the gardens of the girls’ school; but he looked so miserable
that Dorothy had a sudden, sharp anxiety about him.
“Oh, Tom, what is it?” she cried.
“Don’t you know?” he said, looking at her with tragic eyes. “The Head
has sent for the governor, and I don’t feel as if I could face him when
he comes.”
“For the governor?” echoed Dorothy blankly, and in the eyes of her mind
she was seeing those grave frock-coated gentlemen who had sat on the
dais in the lecture hall that day last autumn, at the enrolment of the
candidates for the Lamb Bursary. She wondered why Dr. Cameron had
thought it necessary to send for one of the school governors about a
case of school discipline.
“Father, I mean, and he is coming to-morrow.” Tom spoke impatiently, for
he thought Dorothy was much more thick in the head than she ought to
have been.
“Father coming to-morrow?” Dorothy’s voice rose in a shout of sheer
ecstasy. “Why, Tom, we will make him stay over Wednesday, and then he
will be present when the Bursary winner is declared!”
No sooner had she uttered that joyful exclamation than a cold chill
crept into her heart. How dreadful for her father to be present if she
had really won the Mutton Bone; for he would have to be told perhaps
that she could not be allowed to keep it because of that ugly fact of
his past, which had landed him in prison for fourteen days.
What a shame that there should be any clouds to mar his coming—and it
was really a cloud of an extra heavy sort that was the reason of his
being obliged to come.
“It is pretty rotten that he should have been sent for,” growled Tom.
“All the fathers have been asked to come. So you see Rhoda raised a
pretty heavy dust when she butted in.”
“Why have they all been sent for?” asked Dorothy in dismay. To her way
of thinking such extreme measures boded very ill for the culprits.
“The fathers and the masters are going to confer as to what is to be
done with us,” explained Tom, who was leaning against a tree and moodily
kicking at the turf. “Dr. Cameron has got a bee in his bonnet about the
gambling stunt going on in the schools; he is making a bid to wipe it
out for always—don’t you wish he may do it? He thinks the best way is
to let our governors take a hand in the business. He told us that if it
had only been a question of our sneaking out of dorm when we were
supposed to be fast asleep in bed, he would have dealt with the matter
himself, and taken care that we had so much work to do that we would be
thankful to stay in bed when we had a chance to get there.”
“Oh, Tom, how I wish you had never given way to betting and that sort of
thing!” cried Dorothy, dismayed at the turn things had taken.
“You’ll have to be more sorry still if I have to lose the scholarship,”
said Tom with a savage air.
“It won’t—it surely won’t come to that!” said Dorothy in dismay. Again
a pang smote her as she thought of the double trouble there might be in
store for the dear father. It did not even comfort her at the moment to
remember how wholly innocent she was of any hand in bringing on the
trouble which might arise on her account.
“It may do.” Tom’s tone was gloomy in the extreme. “On the other hand,
it may tell in my favour that I am a scholarship boy. The authorities
may argue that there must be good in me because I have worked so well in
the past. They will say that, as I am one of the youngest of the crowd,
I was doubtless led away by the seniors. Oh, there is certain to be a
way out for me.”
“I am not sure that you deserve to have a way out found for you,” she
said severely. “Oh, Tom, how could you bring such trouble on them at
home!”
“Don’t preach,” burst out Tom impatiently. “I get more than enough of
that from Bobby Felmore.”
“Bobby wasn’t in with the night-club crowd?” questioned Dorothy.
“Not he.” Tom snorted in derision of Bobby and Bobby’s standpoints. “He
is too smug for anything these days. Downright putrid, I call it. I’ve
no use for mugs.”
“Here comes Rhoda!” cried Dorothy with a little gasp of fright. “Oh,
Tom, what are you going to say to her?”
“Nothing,” he answered with a snarl. “If she were a boy I would fight
her. Seeing she is a girl, I can’t do that; so the only thing to be done
is to look right through her and out the other side without taking any
further notice of her.”
Rhoda bore down upon them with a little rush, her hands held out in
imploring fashion. “Oh, Tom,” she cried, “I am thankful to see you here!
Why have you not answered my letters? I have fairly squirmed in the dust
at your feet, begging forgiveness for my cattish temper. But I was
fairly desperate, or I should never have been so mad as to let you down,
and your crowd as well. Words won’t say how sorry I am——”
She broke off with a jerk, for Tom, after looking at her with a cold and
steady stare, turned on his heel and walked away, calling over his
shoulder as he went,—
“So long, Dorothy, old girl; see you later.”
For a moment Rhoda stood staring at Tom’s retreating figure as if she
could not believe her eyes, then she turned upon Dorothy with fury in
her face.
“This is your work, then?” she cried shrilly. “I always knew you were
jealous because Tom thought so much of me. A fine underhand piece of
work, to try and separate me from my friend!”
“I have not tried to separate you from Tom; it would not have been any
use,” said Dorothy calmly. “The separating, as you call it, was your own
work. Tom will have to bear such a lot from his crowd because of your
letter to his Head that he says he will not speak to you again.”
“Oh, he will come round,” Rhoda said, and tried to believe it; but she
was hurt in her pride—the more so because she had the sense to see that
she had brought the whole disaster on herself.
Dorothy turned away. She was feeling pretty sore herself because of the
trouble that was bringing her father to the Compton Schools just then.
It took away all her joy at the prospect of seeing him, to think how he
might have to suffer on her account before he went away. She could not
even comfort herself with the thought that she might not win the
Bursary, because if she did not win it herself, the probabilities were
that Rhoda would win it, in which case she was pledged to the Head to
reveal that thing against Rhoda which she had seen in the showrooms of
Messrs. Sharman and Song. What a miserable tangle it all was, and what a
shame that people could not be happy when they so badly wanted to be
free from care.
Monday came with hours of examination work. Happily, she was so absorbed
in it that she hardly noticed how the hours went by. There was an
archery contest in the afternoon. The younger boys came over, and some
of the seniors, but there were big gaps in the Fifth and the Sixth of
the boys’ school. None of the luckless twenty-five were present, they
being gated for that day and the next—that is to say, until the council
of fathers and masters had determined on what to do with them.
Dorothy guessed that she would not see her father that day. Tom had told
her he would reach Sowergate by the six-thirty train, and as he would go
straight to the boys’ school to dine with Dr. Cameron, and would have to
be at the council afterwards, there would be no chance of seeing him
until next morning.
She heard the train run in to Sowergate station, and there was a thrill
in her heart to think of her father being so near. The worst of it was
that she felt so bad on his account, because of what he would have to
face both for Tom at the boys’ school, and for herself at the girls’
school.
She was so tired that night when bedtime came that she fell asleep
directly her head touched the pillow, and she slumbered dreamlessly
until morning. It was early when she woke, and sitting up in bed she
thought of all the things that were before her in the day. She wondered
what she would say to her father, and whether she ought to tell him of
the arrangement the Head had made with her. It did not seem fair that he
should have to face a situation of such gravity without some
preparation.
“I can’t tell him! Oh, I can’t tell him!” she murmured distressfully,
and then, because lying still and thinking about it was so intolerable,
she sprang out of bed, beginning to dress with feverish haste. It was
such a comfort to pitch straight into work, and to lose sight for a
little while of the things which bothered her so badly.
The whole of the Sixth were to work at term finals from eleven o’clock
until one that day, and they set off down to the beach at half-past
nine, to bathe and get back for a little rest before the time for the
exam. The Fourth Form girls had already gone down; the Fifth were
sitting for their finals, and would go to bathe when their work was
done.
As the group of girls with Miss Groome turned out of the school gates,
they met Dr. Sedgewick coming in. Dorothy’s heart gave a great bound
when she saw him, for he looked so tired and so very careworn.
Miss Groome stayed with her to speak to him, while the rest of the girls
went on.
“I have not come to see you at this moment, Dorothy,” he said, with his
hand on her shoulder, while his gaze travelled over her with great
content. “Your Head has sent a message asking to see me, and I am going
to her now. If you are back from the beach in good time, I may have a
few minutes with you; and then later in the day, when your finals are
over, we will have a great time together, and a regular pow-wow. You are
looking fine; it is evident that work agrees with you.”
“Dorothy is a very good worker,” said Miss Groome graciously; and then
she hurried on with Dorothy, to catch up with the girls who were in
front, while Dr. Sedgewick walked on to the hall door for his interview
with the Head.
CHAPTER XXIV
DOROTHY TO THE RESCUE
The girls of the Compton School bathed from the strip of beach just
beyond the steps and in front of the lock-house. It was a steep and not
very safe bit of shore. But all the girls could swim fairly well, while
some of them were really expert.
The Fourth Form girls had two mistresses with them, and they were all in
the water, splashing about with tremendous zest, when the Sixth, who had
come to bathe, arrived on the scene.
Coming up the steps from the lock-house, they reached the Promenade, and
were just going to spring down the wall to reach the tents when a shrill
cry rang out that Cissie Wray was drowning.
There was instant commotion. Some of the girls who were in the water
came hurrying out, scrambling up the beach in a panic; others launched
themselves into deep water with a reckless disregard for their own
safety, and swam out to help in the rescue.
Dorothy, standing on the edge of the wall, and looking out over the
water, saw an arm shoot up, then disappear. She saw Miss Mordaunt, the
games-mistress, and Miss Ball, the mistress of the Fourth, making wild
efforts to reach the place where Cissie Wray was in trouble; she saw the
girls who were in the water crowding together, getting in the way of the
rescuers, endangering themselves, and adding to the confusion. Acting on
impulse, she sprang from the wall, then running down the steep beach,
and tearing off her skirt as she ran, she kicked off her shoes, and
running still, took to the water as lightly as a duck, going forward
with long, even strokes that carried her swiftly on.
“Go back! go back!” she shouted to the small girls who were bobbing up
and down in the water, anxious to help. “Get out of the deep as quickly
as you can, and get ready to make a chain to pull us up.”
Chain-making for rescue was one of the most usual swimming exercises.
Sometimes half the chain would be straggling up the beach, and the other
half in deep water; then the last one of the chain would drop limp and
passive, while the chain struggled shorewards with the helpless one in
tow.
Dorothy’s quick wit had seen that the great hope of rescue lay in the
chain. The tide was running in fast, and the beach at this point rose so
steeply that a swimmer with a burden was most fearfully handicapped. Oh!
a rescue in such a sea would be a task of magnitude, and she suddenly
realized that Cissie must have been very far out. Miss Ball was nearest
to the place where Dorothy had seen the arm flung up. She was swimming
with desperate haste, but she was not saving her strength in the least
possible way. She was not a strong swimmer, either, and even if she
reached the little girl, she would not be able to do more than hold her
up in the water.
Miss Mordaunt had been right away at the outer edge of the group. She
had been helping the younger ones to get more confidence in their own
powers; she had to see these headed for safety before she could come to
the help of Miss Ball and Cissie, so she was behind Dorothy.
Miss Ball shot forward, gripped hold of Cissie by the bathing-dress, and
was holding her fast, when poor, frantic Cissie, with a thin shriek of
pure panic, seized Miss Ball in a frenzied grip, clinging with all her
might, and choking the Fourth Form mistress by the tightness of her
clutch.
Dorothy made a wild effort and shot forward. Would she ever cover the
distance that separated her from the two who were in such dire peril?
She almost reached them—she shot out an arm to grip Miss Ball, who was
nearest; a great wave heaved up and swept the Fourth Form mistress
farther to the left. Dorothy put out another spurt; she flung every
ounce of strength she had into the effort; she summoned all her will
power to her aid, and suddenly, just as she was feeling that she simply
could not do any more, Cissie Wray was flung into reach of her groping
fingers, and she had the little girl fast.
Cissie was still clinging with might and main to the neck of Miss Ball,
who, strangled and helpless in that suffocating grip, was slowly
beginning to sink.
Treading water to keep herself afloat, Dorothy hung on to Cissie’s
bathing-dress with one hand, and with the other she wrenched the little
girl’s hand from its frantic clasp of Miss Ball’s throat. Quite well she
realized her own danger in doing this, but she trusted to her swiftness
of movement to be able to elude Cissie’s clutching fingers. She had
seized Cissie well by the back of the bathing-dress, and was keeping her
at arm’s length. But the trouble now was with Miss Ball, who, having
been so badly choked, could not regain the strength that had been
squeezed out of her, and was being sucked down into the water.
Dorothy made a clutch at her, and catching her by the arm, held her
fast. “Buck up!” she said sharply. “Buck up and strike out, or we’ll all
be drowned. Keep afloat a minute; help is coming.”
Miss Ball had done her bit, and there was no more do in her. She flung
out her hands with a feeble and spasmodic effort, which amounted to
nothing as far as helping herself went.
Dorothy was in despair. Her own strength was waning, her heart was
beating in a choking fashion, there was a loud singing in her ears, and
her arms felt as if they were being dragged out of their sockets. She
could not stand the strain another moment. Where was Miss Mordaunt, and
why did she not come to the rescue?
Miss Ball was sinking—oh! she was surely sinking. Dorothy felt she
could not hold the poor thing up for another second, for she was having
to keep Cissie afloat too, and Cissie was squirming and kicking in the
most dangerous fashion.
“Courage, Dorothy, I am here!” panted a voice close to her, and
realizing that Miss Mordaunt was close at hand, Dorothy’s courage began
instantly to revive.
Miss Mordaunt laid hold of Miss Ball, who was by this time limp and
unconscious.
“Can you hold Cissie until I come?” panted Miss Mordaunt, who was moving
rapidly to get the helpless Miss Ball ashore.
“I can manage,” Dorothy called out cheerily. She put every bit of
courage she possessed into her voice so that Miss Mordaunt might be
helped. There is nothing like courage to inspire courage, and although
the others were doubtless swimming out to their help, there was a good
distance to cover, and it was a very choppy sea.
Dorothy shifted Cissie, because the little girl’s face was so low down
that it kept getting under water.
Cissie, feeling the movement, and believing that her rescuer was letting
her go, made a sudden, despairing effort, and gripped Dorothy round the
shoulders. Lucky for Dorothy it was that the choking grip did not get
her round the throat. It was bad enough as it was, for she could not
move her arms, and was dependent on her feet for keeping herself and
Cissie from drifting farther out to sea.
“Cissie, let go; leave yourself to me—I will save you!” she panted. But
Canute ordering the waves back from the shore was not more helpless in
altering their course than she was in making any impression on poor,
frantic Cissie. The child clung like a limpet to a rock; Dorothy had
never felt anything like the clutch of those thin arms.
She could not hold up against it. She was being dragged down in spite of
her struggles. Oh! it was awful, awful. Scenes from her past flashed
into the mind of Dorothy as she felt herself slipping, slipping, and
felt the thin arms about her neck clutching tighter and tighter.
Then suddenly a great peace stole into her heart; if she had to die in
such a way, at least it would solve the problem of to-morrow. If she
were not there to win the Lamb Bursary, the governors would not have to
be told of that ugly bit in her father’s past which would shut her out
from taking the Bursary even after she had won it. Supposing that she
did not win it, and it came to Rhoda, if she were dead there would be no
one to remind Rhoda that she might not have the Bursary because she was
not fit to hold it. Perhaps her death was the best way out for them all.
Anyhow, she had no longer strength to struggle—no more power to hold
out against the cramping clutch of Cissie’s arms; and it was a relief,
when one was so weary, to drop into peace which was so profound.
CHAPTER XXV
SAVED BY THE CHAIN
There was a wild commotion on the shore. Following the example of
Dorothy, the Sixth dropped their skirts as they ran, and kicking off
their shoes at the edge of the water, plunged in. But they were all
under control and acting in concert—no one girl made any attempt to
branch out on her own. They were acting now under the orders of Miss
Groome, who, also skirtless and shoeless, was standing in the shallow of
the water, directing the work of the chain.
“Keep to the left, Hazel,” she called—“more to the left; keep within
touch of the Fourth’s chain, but don’t foul them—don’t foul them,
whatever you do.”
Hazel was the first of the chain; clinging to her was Joan Fletcher, a
powerful swimmer, and calm in moments of crisis—an invaluable helper at
a time like this. Following her came Daisy Goatby, blubbering aloud
because of the peril of those out there, a girl who turned pale and ran
away when a dog yelped with pain at being trodden upon. She hated to be
obliged to look on suffering—the thought of any one in extremity made a
coward of her—but she could obey orders. Miss Groome had ordered her
into the chain, and she would cling to the girl who was in front of her
even though she felt her life was being battered out of her. Dora Selwyn
was behind her. Rhoda was also somewhere at the back of that wriggling
procession, with Margaret and Jessie Wayne. They had reached the chain
of plucky Fourths; they were encouraging the kids to hold on, and
bidding them not come farther, but rest, treading water until the time
for action came. The Sixth pushed ahead with all their strength. They
could not swim so fast, hampered by each other; but it was safety first,
and they had to obey orders if their work was to succeed.
Miss Mordaunt struggled towards them, holding the unconscious Miss Ball
in a tense grip.
“Can you get her ashore, girls? I must go to Dorothy,” she panted; and
thrusting Miss Ball within the grabbing clutch of the two first girls,
she struck out again to reach Dorothy, who was dropping low in the
water, dragged down by the grip of poor Cissie.
Hazel, with a dexterous twist of her arm, passed Miss Ball to Joan, who
did not release her grip of the unconscious mistress until Daisy had
hold of her and was passing her to Dora. This passing was the extreme
test of the power of the chain. It would have been a comparatively easy
thing to have towed her ashore. In that case, however, they would not
have been on hand to help Miss Mordaunt with Dorothy and Cissie. So they
had to pass their burden, and to do it as quickly as they could.
Hazel never looked behind her—she did not speak even; but, lightly
treading water, she waited until Miss Mordaunt could reach her. Even
then she would have to hold her place, for Cissie would have to be
passed before they could tow Dorothy ashore. And it took time—oh, what
an awful time it took!
Miss Mordaunt was coming towards them. She was holding Dorothy, to whom
Cissie clung with the fierce clutch of despair.
“We cannot pass Cissie along—she is too frightened,” panted Miss
Mordaunt, as she reached Hazel with her burden, and clung to the chain
for a minute to get back her breath. “Dorothy is so frightfully done,
too; but she will bear that clutch until we can get her ashore.”
“We can pass Dorothy along, with Cissie clinging to her,” said Hazel,
raising herself a little in the water, and reaching out her hand to get
a grip of Dorothy. “Can you swim alongside, Miss Mordaunt, to see that
Cissie does not slip away?”
“That will be best,” agreed Miss Mordaunt, and striking out, she swam
slowly along the chain of girls as they one after the other accepted and
thrust forward the helpless two. When Dora, fourth from the end, laid
hold of Dorothy, Hazel swung slowly round in the water, and swimming up
behind Dorothy seized her on the other side, holding on to her, and
helping to push her from girl to girl as the chain accepted and passed
her on.
Cissie was not struggling at all now, though the tightness of her clutch
never relaxed; she was realizing that she was being rescued, and her
panic was dropping from her. She was acutely conscious, and her black
eyes looked so frightened and mournful that no one had the heart to
reproach her for all the peril into which her wild panic had brought the
others.
The Fourth had managed to hold the chain without a break, and mightily
proud they were of their prowess. They even raised a cheer when the last
of the Sixth came out of the water; but it died away as they saw Dorothy
lying helpless on the beach, while Miss Ball, at a little distance, was
being wrapped in blankets by the woman from the lock-house.
Dorothy was not unconscious; she was only so battered and beaten by the
struggle in the water that just at the first she could not lift a finger
to help herself.
Miss Ball was coming round, so the woman from the lock-house said, and
she offered her own bed for the use of the two who had suffered most.
Miss Groome felt that, having borne so much, it was better for them to
bear a little more, and be carried to where they could have more
comfort. She issued a few crisp orders. The girls, still in their wet
clothes, ran to obey. Then, while the Fourth dived into their tents to
dress with all the speed of which they were capable, the Sixth in their
wet garments loaded Miss Ball, Dorothy, and Cissie on to three trucks
which were standing under the wall of the lifeboat house, and harnessing
themselves to them, started at a brisk pace for the school. They had no
dry clothes on the shore to change into, and so it was wisdom to
move—and to move as quickly as they could. The woman from the
lock-house had lent them blankets to cover the half-drowned ones; on to
these blankets they spread skirts; then each girl wrapping her own skirt
round her, they set off from the shore at the best pace they could make.
Dorothy was bumped along on that fearful hand-truck. She felt she could
not bear much of such transport, and yet knew very well that she had no
strength to walk. She was so tired—so fearfully weary—that she simply
could not bear anything more.
When she had been in such danger of drowning, dragged down by Cissie’s
frenzied clasp of her shoulders, it had seemed such deep peace and rest,
she had not even wanted to struggle. Then had come the confusion of Miss
Mordaunt’s rough grip, and the girls dragging her here and pulling her
there as they passed her along. Then had come the moment when she was
hauled to safety up the steep shingly beach. How the stones had hurt her
as she lay! Yet even that was as nothing to this. At least she had been
able to lie still on the stones, but now the life was being bumped out
of her! She could certainly stand no more! She must shriek—she must do
something to show how intolerable it all was——
“Why, Dorothy, it looks as if you had been getting it rough. Have you
been competing for a medal from the Humane Society, or just doing a
swimming stunt off your own bat?”
Dorothy opened her eyes with a little cry of sheer rapture. “Oh, Daddy,
Daddy, I had forgotten you were here! I can’t bear this old truck one
minute longer—I can’t, oh, I can’t!” she wailed.
Dr. Sedgewick had been warned by the girl who had run on ahead of the
procession to tell matron of what was coming, and he had met the girls
and the hand-trucks down the lane a little beyond the school grounds. He
gave a rapid glance round to size up the possibilities of the situation.
Catching sight of the little gate into the grounds which would cut off a
big piece of the way, he called to them to open it, and stooping down,
he lifted Dorothy from the truck, swinging her over his shoulder.
“Guide me by the shortest way to the san,” he said to the nearest girl;
and while she ran on ahead of him, he followed after her, carrying
Dorothy.
“I am so heavy, you will never manage it,” she protested, yet
half-heartedly, for it was such a delightful change to be borne along
like this after that awful bumping on the truck.
“I think I shall be able to hold out,” he answered, laughing at her
distress, and then he passed in at the door of the san, where the matron
met him, and showed him where to carry Dorothy.
The hours after that were a confusion of pain and weariness, a
succession of deep sleeps and sudden, startled wakings. Then presently
Dorothy came out of a bad dream of being dragged down to the bottom of
the sea by Cissie, and awoke to find a light burning, and her father
sitting in an easy-chair near her bed, absorbed in a paper—or was it a
book?
Her senses were confused—she did not seem as if she could be sure of
anything; and there was something bothering her very badly, yet she
could not quite remember what it was.
“Daddy, is it really you?” she asked half-fearfully. It was in her mind
that she might be dreaming, and that it was not her father who was
sitting there, only a fancy her imagination had conjured up.
Dr. Sedgewick dropped the paper he had been reading, and came quite
close to the bed, stooping down over her, and slipping his fingers along
her wrist in his quiet, professional manner.
“Better, are you?” he asked cheerfully, and his eyes smiled down at her,
bringing a choking sob into her throat. The heavy sleep was clearing
from her now, and she was remembering the big trouble which lay behind.
“Oh, Daddy, I can’t bear it!” she wailed.
“What is the matter?” he asked in sudden concern. “Have you pain
anywhere?”
“Oh, I am all right; there is nothing the matter with me,” she burst out
wildly. “It would have been better if I had gone down with Cissie, when
I was so nearly done; it would have saved all the explaining that would
have to come after.”
“What explaining?” he asked quietly, and then he dragged his chair
closer to the bed, and leaning over her, gently stroked the hair back
from her forehead.
She lay quite still for a few seconds, revelling in the peace and
comfort that came from his touch. Then, wrenching her head from under
his hand, she asked anxiously, “Daddy, you have seen the Head—do you
think I shall win the Lamb Bursary?”
“I very much hope you will,” he answered. “The Head, of course, could
make no hard-and-fast pronouncement, but there seems not very much doubt
about the matter.”
Dorothy’s brows contracted—there was such a world of misery in her
heart that she felt as if she would sink under the weight of it. “Oh, I
wish I had not enrolled! I wish I had not come to Compton!” she burst
out distressfully.
“Why do you wish that?” he asked quietly. “I thought you had been so
happy here, and you have certainly done well—far, far better than Tom.”
“Ah, poor Tom! What have you done with him and with all the others?” she
asked, catching at anything which seemed as if it might put off for a
minute the necessity of explaining to her father her trouble about the
Lamb Bursary.
Dr. Sedgewick laughed, and to her great relief there was real amusement
in the sound. “We all agreed—and there were fifteen of us to agree,
mark you—that we had absolute confidence in Dr. Cameron’s methods in
dealing with boys. We felt the affair was a problem we would rather
leave him to solve free-handed, and we have left their punishment to
him. They are all to return next term, and he will decide on what course
to take with them.”
“Won’t they be punished in any way now?” she asked in surprise.
“Yes, in a way, I suppose,” he answered. “They will, of course, lose all
conduct marks, because they were acting in known defiance of
regulations—that goes without saying. The great majority of us were in
favour of flogging, but our suggestion met with no encouragement from
the Head. He told us there were some things for which flogging was a
real cure, but gambling was not one of them. The only real and lasting
cure for gambling was to lift the boy to a higher level of thought and
outlook—in short, to fill his life so full of worthier things that the
love of gambling should be fairly crowded out. He argued, too, that if
it were crowded out in youth, it would not have much chance to develop
later on in life.”
“It sounds like common sense,” said Dorothy, turning a little on her
pillow, and looking at the shaded night lamp as if the softened glow
might show her a clear way through her own problems. Then she asked,
with a timid note in her voice, “So you are not being anxious about Tom
any more?”
“I did not say that,” Dr. Sedgewick answered quickly. “You know,
Dorothy, a doctor never gives up hope while there is life in a patient;
so one should never give up hope of recovery of one suffering from—what
shall I call it?—spiritual disease. We will say that Tom has shown a
tendency to disease. But checked in its first stages—arrested in
development—he may be entirely cured before he reaches full manhood.
That is what I am hoping, and what those other fathers are hoping and
believing too. We feel that the discipline of school is the best
medicine for them at the present stage, and that is why we are so
content to leave the whole business in the hands of Dr. Cameron.”
Dorothy lay silent for a minute or two, and again her eyes sought the
soft glow from the lamp. Then making a desperate effort, she made her
plunge. “Daddy,” she whispered, catching at his hand and resting her
cheek upon it, “Daddy, I have got a trouble—a real, hefty-sized
trouble.”
“I know you have,” he answered gravely, and then he sat silent, waiting
for her to speak.
How hard it was! Why did he not help her? She held his hand tighter
still. Oh! if only she could make him understand how it hurt her to
speak of that old story to him! And yet it had to be done! She could not
in honour take the Bursary, knowing herself disqualified for it.
“Had you not better out with it, and get it over, Dorothy?” he asked
quietly.
She gasped, and suddenly burst out with a jerk, “Daddy, Mrs. Wilson told
me you had been sent to prison for a fortnight when you were a young
man, and the rules of enrolment for the Lamb Bursary candidates state
specially that girls cannot compete whose parents have been in prison.”
It was out now—out with a vengeance—and Dorothy hid her face so that
she might not have to see the pain she had caused. So strained was she
that it seemed a long, long time before her father spoke, and when he
did, his voice seemed to come from a great distance.
“Mrs. Wilson made a little mistake; it was not I who went to prison, but
my cousin Arthur,” he was saying. “It was Arthur who was driving home
from the dance that night, and I was sitting beside him trying to hold
him back from his mad progress. You would have spared yourself a lot of
suffering, Dorothy, if you had come to me with that old story when you
were home last vacation.”
“Then you have never been in prison?” cried Dorothy, her voice rising in
a shout of sheer joyfulness. “And I can have the Mutton Bone!”
“You have to win it first,” Dr. Sedgewick reminded her.
CHAPTER XXVI
DOROTHY GETS THE MUTTON BONE
In consequence of the trouble at the bathing place, and the tired and
chilled condition of the Sixth, the examination for finals was put off
until next morning at eight o’clock.
Dr. Sedgewick had said that Dorothy would certainly not be fit to sit
for it; but when the Sixth went into early breakfast at seven o’clock
Dorothy joined them. She was a bit shaky still, and she looked rather
white, but there was such radiant happiness in her eyes that she seemed
fairly transfigured by it.
The examination was over by ten o’clock, and the girls dispersed to
amuse themselves in any way they liked best. Cissie Wray fell upon
Dorothy as she came out of the examination room—literally fell upon
her—hugging her with ecstasy.
“Dorothy, Dorothy, are you better? Oh, I want to say ‘Thank you!’—I
want to shout it at you; and yet it does not seem worth saying, because
it is so little to all I feel inside—for your goodness in saving me
yesterday.”
“Poor Cissie, you were badly scared,” said Dorothy, and she shivered a
little even in the warm sunshine as she thought of the frenzied clutch
of Cissie’s thin arms and the agony in her big black eyes.
“Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful! I don’t ever want to go into the sea
again, though I am not afraid in the swimming bath.”
“How is Miss Ball?” asked Dorothy, wanting to get Cissie’s attention
away from the previous day’s terror.
“She is better, but she is not up yet. And the girls say I nearly
drowned her as well as myself, and that we should both have been dead if
it had not been for you! Oh dear, how awful it was! I can’t bear to
think about it!”
“Then don’t think about it,” said Dorothy, looking down at Cissie with
kindness in her eyes. “I can see my father coming by the shrubbery
path—shall we go and meet him?”
“Oh, rather!” cried Cissie, skipping along by the side of Dorothy. “Dr.
Sedgewick is a dear; he took such lovely care of me yesterday, and
teased me about wanting to be a mermaid. I think he is the most
wonderful doctor I have ever seen. But I have never had a doctor before
that I can remember—so, of course, I have not had much experience.”
Cissie seized upon one of the doctor’s arms, while Dorothy held the
other, and they took him all round the grounds. They showed him the
gymnasium, the archery and tennis courts, the bowling green, and all the
other things which made school so pleasant. Then Cissie had to go off to
a botany examination, which was the last of the term’s work for the
Fourth, and Dorothy strolled with her father to the seat under the beech
tree that overlooked the boys’ playing-fields.
“I have sent a wire to your mother to say that I shall not be home until
the night train,” said Dr. Sedgewick, slipping his arm round Dorothy as
she sat with her head resting against his shoulder. “Your Head says that
I must stay for the prize-giving this afternoon. If I skip tea, I think
I can manage the five o’clock train, which will put me in town with time
to catch the last train to Farley.”
“Then Tom and I shall get home to-morrow. Oh! how lovely it will be.”
Dorothy nestled a little closer in her father’s arm, and thought
joyfully that now there was no shadow on her joy of home-coming.
“Yet you have been very happy here?” The doctor looked round upon the
grounds and the playing-fields as he spoke, and thought he had never
seen a pleasanter place.
“Indeed I have—it has been lovely!” said Dorothy with satisfying
emphasis. “It has been good to be near Tom. Only the worst of it has
been that he did not seem to need me very much.”
“Tom will be happier when he has cut his wisdom teeth,” said Dr.
Sedgewick. “By the way, Dorothy, what other fairy stories did Mrs.
Wilson tell you of my past? I should think the poor lady’s brain must
have been weakening, though, in truth, it was never very strong.”
“I don’t think she told me any others,” answered Dorothy. “I thought she
seemed very fond of your cousin, Arthur Sedgewick, by the way she spoke
of him. Daddy, why did you never tell us anything about him, and why did
mother refuse to talk about him when I mentioned the matter to her?”
“He turned out such a detrimental, poor fellow, that your mother hated
the very mention of him, especially as it laid such a burden on my
shoulders for years. When he died he left debts, and he left an invalid
wife. For the sake of the family honour the debts had to be paid, and
the poor wife had to be supported until she died. There was good reason
for your mother’s unwillingness to talk about him. It was getting into
bad habits as a boy that was his undoing.” The doctor sat for a while in
silence, and then he said, “It is because of Arthur having made such a
mess of life that I am so glad to leave Tom here for another couple of
years—he will have learned many things by that time.”
* * * * *
The lecture hall was crammed to its utmost capacity. Many visitors
occupied the chairs in the centre of the hall, while round the
outskirts, in the corners, along the front of the dais, and everywhere
that it was possible to find a place to sit, or stand, girls in white
frocks were to be seen. Prize-giving for the boys had been the previous
afternoon—a function shorn of much of its glory, for the double reason
that the disaster on the beach in the morning had taken away much of the
joyfulness of the girls, and the fact that twenty-five of the boys would
not receive even the prizes they had earned, because of the trouble in
regard to the night-club.
The boys who had come over to the prize-giving at the girls’ school were
accommodated in the gallery. There were not so many of them present as
was usual on such occasions, but those who had come did their loudest
when it came to the cheering. The wife of the M.P. for the division gave
away the prizes; and as she was gracious and kindly in her manner, she
received a great ovation.
Dorothy had the conduct medal—she had also the first prize for English
Literature; but that was all. The fact of having to be an all-round
worker was very much against the chances of winning prizes.
It seemed a fearfully long time to wait until all the prizes had been
given. Then the wife of the M.P. sat down, and the legal-looking
gentleman who managed the Lamb Bursary stepped on to the dais. He had a
paper in his hand; but he had to stand and wait so long for the cheering
to subside that the Head rose in her place and came forward to the edge
of the dais, holding up her hand for silence.
At once a hush dropped on the place—a hush so profound and so sudden
that it gave one the sensation of having had a door shut suddenly on the
great noise of the past few minutes.
Then, in his quiet but penetrating voice the governor of the Bursary
read the names of the candidates in the order in which they had
enrolled, with the total of marks to each name.
Dorothy sat white and rigid. As the names were read out she tried to
remember them, to determine, which girl had the most, but she was so
confused that she could not hold the figures in her head. When the seven
names had been read there was a pause, and again the hush was so
profound that the humming of a bee in one of the windows sounded quite
loud by contrast.
“I have therefore great pleasure,” went on the cool, rather didactic
tones of the governor, “in stating that the Lamb Bursary for this year
goes to Dorothy Ida Sedgewick, who has won it, not by a mere squeeze,
but with a hundred marks above the candidate nearest to her in point of
number.”
Now indeed there was a riot of cheering, of clapping, and of jubilation
generally, until, standing up, the whole crowd of white-frocked girls
burst into singing,—
“For she’s a jolly good fellow,
Who well has earned the prize.”
Then they linked hands, joining in “Auld Lang Syne,” in compliment to
their visitors, this merging at the end into the National Anthem, after
which the visitors were to be entertained to tea on the lawn. But Dr.
Sedgewick had to hurry away to catch his train.
Dorothy went with him as far as the little gate at the end of the
grounds through which she had been carried the previous day.
She had not much to say for herself, but the radiant content of her face
was just the reflection of the happiness in her heart. She was thinking
how differently she would have felt but for that talk with her father
last night.
“It will be good news for your mother, Dorothy. You have made us very
happy,” said Dr. Sedgewick in a moved tone as he bade her good-bye at
the gate.
“Daddy, it is just lovely, and I am so happy about it all,” she said.
“Of course it is hard for Margaret that she did not win; but she is
going to stay at Compton another year, so she will have her chance
again.”
“It was not Margaret who was next to you, but that rather bold-looking
girl, Rhoda Fleming,” her father said, thinking she had made a mistake
as to who was next to her.
Dorothy smiled. “Oh, I am not sorry for Rhoda—I did not want her to
win,” she said quietly. “Perhaps I should not have worked so hard myself
if it had not been because I knew I had to beat her somehow, for the
honour of the school.”
“Well, she was your friend if she inspired you to greater effort,” he
answered, and dropping another kiss on her forehead hurried down the
road to catch his train.
Dorothy went back to the others. She did her part in waiting on the
visitors. She was here, she was there—and everywhere it was kindly
congratulation she had for her hard work.
Later on, when the visitors were taking leave of the Head, Dorothy,
alone for a moment, was pounced upon by Rhoda, who said sharply, “So you
did beat me after all—I was afraid you would.”
“I was bound in honour to beat you if I could,” Dorothy answered,
looking her straight in the face. “My father says I ought to be grateful
to you for making me work so hard. And I am. I am very grateful to you.”
Rhoda went very red in the face. A look of something like shame came
into her eyes as she turned away in silence.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Illustrations have been relocated due to using a non-page layout.
When nested quoting was encountered, nested double quotes were changed
to single quotes.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "By Honour Bound" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.