CHAPTER XVIITHE MYSTERY SOLVED
Mrs. Posthad the grippe. “Why couldn’t I have waited until the spring vacation?” she sighed forlornly. “Then this house would be empty, and my daughter—the one who’s a nurse—was coming up anyway to visit me. And now I’m bothering everybody and making lots of extra trouble.”
Betty reassured her tactfully. “It’s not the busy season for Student’s Aid secretaries,” she said. “Whatever of your work I specially don’t like, I shall saddle on some girl. They’re all crazy to do things for you. It’s worth being ill once in a while to see how much people think of you.”
Late that afternoon Betty remembered that she had forgotten to distribute towels on the fourth floor, and went up to see about it. The Mystery’s door was open, she noticed, and a group of fourth floor girls were inside, eagerly admiring a dress that had just come to the Thorn from home.
Betty threw them a merry word of greeting and went on to the linen closet. It was a cloudy afternoon and the tiny high window let in very little light. “I must write to Jim to complain of his dark linen-presses,” she thought, with a smile. And then, reaching out her hand to draw the curtain away from some shelves, she jumped back with a scream of terror. Her hand had hit the head of somebody who was crouched in a heap behind the curtains. Betty’s cry brought half a dozen girls on the run to the linen-closet door.
“It’s nothing,” Betty told them, clinging to the door-post to steady herself, for she was trembling with fright. “That is—now, girls, don’t scream or faint or do anything foolish. Some one had hidden in there—some girl in the house, perhaps, for fun. Whoever it is won’t hurt us here all together in broad daylight. Now come out, please,” called Betty, raising her voice and looking hard at the curtains.
There was a moment of awful stillness and then a tall girl straightened to her full height behind the quivering curtains and came forward, flushing hotly, to the door. It wasHelena Mason. She paid no attention to Betty and the girls about her but, looking over their heads, faced Esther Bond, who stood watching the scene with a curious air of detachment from the door of her room. And the look that Helena Mason gave her said as plainly as words could have done, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
But the look the Mystery sent back said, “I am beyond hating you or any one else.”
There was a long silence. Betty and the girls with her were too amazed to speak, and Helena Mason stood quietly defiant, as if daring any one to question her. At last the Thorn, gay in her new dress, broke the tension.
“Come on down to my room, girls, and finish your inspection of me there,” she suggested. “Miss Wales doesn’t need any more protection. We’re just in the way here now.”
They caught her point instantly, and trooped after her down-stairs, leaving Betty, Helena, and the Mystery to settle the matter as best they might. When they had gone Helena laughed a strained little laugh and began to explain herself.
“You’re always catching me in absurd situations, Miss Wales. But this can be explained as easily as the fire-escape affair. I’m sure you know I wasn’t trying to steal your sheets and towels. I had a reason for not wanting the girls in the house to know I was in Esther’s room to-day, so when I came up-stairs and found some of them with her, I slipped in here to wait till they’d gone; and you came and found me. That’s all.”
Betty had been thinking fast. “But the door was locked, Miss Mason—it is kept locked. How did you manage to get in and then lock it again?”
Helena flushed. “The key to any of these doors will unlock any other, Miss Wales.”
“But where did you get such a key?” Betty persisted. “How did you happen to have one ready to-day?”
“I took it out of one of the doors over there.” Helena pointed vaguely toward a cluster of empty rooms.
“Where is it now?” Betty demanded.
Helena flushed redder than ever. “I’m sure I don’t know—on the floor in there, probably.”
Betty got a match and began groping around on the floor of the linen room. But after a minute Esther Bond, who had said nothing so far, came forward and confronted Helena.
“Why don’t you tell the truth at once?” she asked. “You’ll have to in the end. Don’t hunt there, Miss Wales. She’s wearing the key on her watch-chain.”
“Give it to me, please,” Betty said, coming out into the light. She noticed that Helena took her watch off the chain first, and then slipped out the key. “So you didn’t take it to-day,” she said.
“I never said when I took it,” Helena flashed back angrily. “I’ve had it several weeks, if you want to know. The girls in this house are bores and frightfully curious. Whenever I don’t want to see them and have them fussing around, why, I come in here and wait till Esther is alone. There’s no great harm in that, as far as I can see. I’ve done it all winter.”
Betty was frankly puzzled what to answer. “Why, no—except that you gave me a dreadful fright just now,” she said slowly. “And—yes,Miss Mason, there is harm in it. It’s a sly and sneaking way of acting. No girl would hide in here as you say you have done without a good reason, and the reason can’t but be discreditable. I don’t ask you to tell me what it is, but I do ask you and Esther to talk it over and think what you ought to do about it. And if you want any advice from me or Mrs. Post, when she’s better, or want to tell us anything in justice to yourselves or the house, why, we shall be only too glad to help.”
Betty gathered up her towels and departed, hoping she had said the right thing and devoutly wishing, as she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, that she looked older and more impressive, the better to emphasize her good advice. Half-way down the stairs she halted. “Why, she’s the ghost!” she said to herself. “I’ve caught our ghost! How queer that I never thought of that till now. And I’m afraid that in this case the Thorn is right about the connection between ghosts and somebody’s wrong-doing. Either Helena Mason is crazy, or she’s hiding something that she’s ashamed of. I wish Esther would tellMrs. Post all about it. It’s so queer that it worries me.”
A few minutes later there was a knock on Betty’s door. The Mystery, a strained, frightened look in her big eyes, stood outside.
“I’ve come to explain myself,” she said. “You’ve been very kind, and Mrs. Post—I couldn’t bear to have her know this, Miss Wales. But I owe it to you that you should understand, and then I want you to advise me. Helena wouldn’t come. She has decided what to do, she says—she will leave college at the spring recess. I am as bad as she in a way, and perhaps I ought to leave too. Indeed, I may have to.”
“Begin at the beginning and tell me about it,” urged Betty.
The Mystery nodded. “It began when we were little girls. She and her mother used to spend the summers in our village. Her mother took a fancy to me. She used to tell us that if Helena had my brains or I Helena’s face she should have an ideal daughter. She’s very ambitious. She was always pushing Helena along in her schools—bringing down tutors in the summer to teach her languagesand coach her in her theme-work. She let me study with them, too, because she thought my work would inspire Helena. Helena hates to study, and hasn’t much head for it. Her mother had set her heart on her coming to Harding and making a name for herself here. When she heard that I wanted dreadfully to come, she sent for me and offered to pay my expenses if I would help Helena, especially in theme-work.
“I never thought how it would be—it sounded all right—like tutoring. So I promised. Helena insisted that I should live off at the end of nowhere, so she could come to me without any one’s finding it out. I soon saw what she wanted of me—not tutoring, but help. I was to write all her papers, take all her notes and read them to her,—do all her work and see that she got the credit. At the end of last year I got tired of it, and I thought I could pay my own way. But when I spoke to Helena she said she would tell the whole story, and that it would look as black for me as for her. ‘Only I shall go home where no one knows or cares,’ she said, ‘except mother, who can’t defend herplan, and you will stay here—or you’ll stop and teach and never get a decent position, because they won’t recommend a cheat.’ So I’ve kept on. When you asked me to come and live here Helena was furious. She said she couldn’t come to see me here without being seen—of course things have leaked out, and she’s been suspected of getting help, but nothing has ever been proved. I wouldn’t give in—I wanted so to come.
“But I did arrange to have a room away from the others, and I’ve kept the door locked so they wouldn’t come in suddenly and find her here or see a paper I’d written for her to hand in. She gets stupider and lazier all the time, I think. She can’t do the simplest thing for herself now. She had an absurd story ready to explain all this. I told her I wouldn’t help her with it. I’m sick of being the brains of Helena Mason. I want to be myself—to have the use of my own ideas and abilities. I’m tired of selling my brains and my self-respect for a college education that other girls earn easily with their hands. It wasn’t a fair bargain. Of course I shall pay back the money as soon as I can. Butwhether I go or stay, I shall be free from now on to be myself—not a nonentity sucked dry to help a rich girl get into Dramatic Club and Philosophical and the Cercle Français, and to make a reputation for the brains her mother admires. Now you understand me, Miss Wales. Tell me what to do.”
Betty hesitated. “I’m not sure that I do understand. You mean that you’ve actually written all Helena Mason’s papers?”
Esther nodded. “Ready for her to copy. At first I only corrected hers, but for nearly two years I’ve written them outright. And I’ve studied nearly every lesson for her—taken all the notes for us both, and recited as little as possible myself, so the resemblances in our work shouldn’t be noticed. Now I shall come forward and take part in things. Oh, it will be splendid, Miss Wales!” She paused uncertainly. “But perhaps you think I’ve been too dishonest to deserve a loan from the Student’s Aid, or any chance of earning money. If I’d only known, before I came, that there were plenty of chances! I didn’t realize it even after I came, when Helena first proposed my doing the things that seemed tome unfair. I did them because I hated to quarrel with her—and after I’d done them she held them over me. She’s not as mean as she seems, Miss Wales. Her mother has brought her up to feel that appearances are the only thing that count.”
The cloak of diffidence and reserve had fallen away from the girl. She could speak for herself and for her friend in eloquent defense. Betty watched and listened, amazed at the sudden change in her. She was free at last to be herself.
“No,” Betty said at last, “I don’t think you have forfeited your chance. Mrs. Mason was most to blame, in suggesting the plan and not then seeing that her daughter did her own work. Helena shall have another chance too, if I can arrange it for her and she will take it; but it will probably mean explaining to her teachers how her work has been done so far. With you”—Betty considered—“I don’t see why you shouldn’t let them explain the change in you to suit themselves. You’ll be a great mystery to them”—Betty smiled at her. “We’ve called you that—the Mystery—Mrs. Post and I, when we’ve talked about you.I’m glad our Mystery is solved at last. You haven’t seemed quite real to me up in your lonely tower room.”
“Haunted by ghosts,” added Esther, with a sad smile. “I know what the girls have thought, you see. I couldn’t say anything. Now I suppose there’ll be more stories, especially if Helena leaves college.”
But the Thorn had arranged that. “I’ve told the girls that loyalty to you means silence, Miss Wales,” she explained to Betty. “I proved to them how dangerous it is to guess about queer things like that, and they’ve all promised not to say a word about anything they saw. Of course”—the Thorn couldn’t resist so fine a chance to plume herself on her superiority—“finding that paper and the fire-escape business and Miss Mason’s story about it can’t help giving me some very interesting suspicions, but they shall never pass my lips.”
Next Betty went to see Helena, prepared to offer to help her through her crisis; but Helena had made her plans and was determined to abide by them.
“I couldn’t stay on, Miss Wales,” she said,“and I certainly don’t want to. I’ve had a good time here, laughing in my sleeve at the people I’ve taken in with my clever stories, and pretty verses—why, the one to Agatha Dwight actually made a splash that rippled away down to New York. The funny thing about it is that the stories and all are like me. Mother attracts fascinating, out-of-the-way people, and we’ve always lived among them in an atmosphere of unusual, fascinating happenings. How in the world that little country girl gets hold of it is a mystery to me. She’s never seen such people, or been to their dinners or behind the scenes at their plays. I’ve never even told her much.”
“That’s the mystery of genius,” said Betty, who had thought a great deal about Esther Bond. “You never can explain it.”
“And if you haven’t got it,” said Helena hopelessly, “you can’t get it. I’m not unusual. I shall never shine except in mother’s reflected glory. I’m sorry for mother; she’s wasted so much time and money trying to make me seem clever. Now she’s got to get used to having a perfectly commonplace daughter. I shall do my bestto make her like the real me, but at any rate she’ll have to endure me as I am. I shan’t permit any more efforts at veneering me. They’re too demoralizing.”
So Helena departed at Easter, amid the laments of her class. She would have been editor-in-chief of the “Argus” and Ivy Orator if she had stayed, they told her.
“I’ve willed my honors to the undiscovered geniuses,” she retorted daringly. “I’m tired of being called the cleverest girl in the class. I’m going home to give the rest of you a chance. College never exactly suited my style.”
Heartless, mocking, careless of what she had stolen, even unconscious of what she was restoring to the girl in the tower room, Helena left Harding, and no more ghosts disturbed the peace of Morton Hall.
One day just before the winter term closed, Eugenia stopped in to see Betty on her way home from Miss Dick’s.
“Something’s the matter with Dorothy,” she said. “I came back early, so you would have time to run over and see her before she goes to bed. She seems to be dreadfully disturbedabout something and homesick and unhappy. She kept saying that nothing was the matter, but the tears would come creeping out. I don’t think she’s sick—just unhappy.”
“I’ll ask Miss Dick to let her come and stay with me to-night,” Betty suggested, slipping on an ulster.
Dorothy flew into her big sister’s arms, and fairly danced for joy when she was told that Betty had come to take her home.
“Have things been going criss-cross with you lately?” Betty asked her, as they ran back, hand in hand, to Morton Hall.
“Yes,” whispered Dorothy solemnly, “they have. Do you happen to feel like a reckless ritherum to-night, Betty dear?”
“Not especially to-night,” laughed Betty. “Do you?”
The Smallest Sister sighed profoundly. “Yes. I guess I shan’t ever stop feeling so as long as I live.”
“Not even if we should make hot chocolate in a chafing-dish?”
“That would be splendid,” Dorothy admitted eagerly, “but, Betty dear, it wouldn’tmake you feel the same about a person who’d pretended to be very fond of you and all the same she did a mean hateful thing, would it now?”
Betty admitted that hot chocolate might not be able to wipe out all the sting of false friendship. “But maybe the person didn’t mean to be mean,” she suggested hopefully.
Dorothy’s little face was very sober. “I’m sure she didn’t know how sad it would seem to me,” she explained. “Betty, let’s play I was mistaken, and enjoy our hot chocolate as much as ever we can.”
But when it came time to put out the light, Dorothy pleaded that it should be left burning “just a teeny, weeny speck, like a night-lamp.”
“What’s the matter, Dottie?” objected Betty. “Have you been seeing ghosts again?”
“Whatever made you think of that?” asked Dorothy anxiously. “I never said a single word about ghosts. Besides, I couldn’t see her again, because I didn’t see her before—I only heard her.”
“Well, you won’t see or hear any ghostshere,” Betty assured her, turning out the light. “When I’m around they all vanish, and real people come in their places. So you can go to sleep this minute, and sleep as sound as ever you can.”
An hour or two later Betty, who had given her bed to Dorothy, and was curled up on the box-couch, was awakened by the shrill sound of a little voice pleading piteously. It was Dorothy, fast asleep but sitting bolt upright in bed and talking in a strained, perfectly intelligible monotone.
“Oh, please don’t, Frisky, please don’t!” she moaned. “I want to scream so, and I know I mustn’t. You look terrible in that white dress. Take down your hands, please, Frisky, please! I know it’s you, so why do you go on pretending? I never meant to tell Betty about your having the candle-shade. You said you’d forgive me. But you said you forgave Shirley, and then you frightened her so that she’ll never get over it. Oh, I mustn’t scream or they’ll find you out! Please, please go away, Frisky, and don’t try to frighten me any more.”
The tears were streaming down the SmallestSister’s face, and she seemed to be in mortal terror. Betty went to her and shook her softly awake, soothing her with pet names and caresses. And then, between sobs, the whole story came out.
“Oh, Betty, you must never, never tell, but Frisky was the ghost! I made her mad at me because I said she oughtn’t to have taken a candle-shade from the Tally-ho the night you asked us two to dinner. I saw it in her drawer the other day, and I said she ought to give it right back. And then she told me I was a meddlesome little thing. But when I most cried she said she’d make up and forgive me. But last night when my two roommates were away, there was a knocking near the chimney and a moan, and a ghost came right out of the wall, just as Shirley said, with its hands up to its face, and it was Frisky in a white sheet.”
“Well, then you needn’t have been scared any more,” said Betty soothingly.
“A person in a white sheet is rather scaring,” declared Dorothy, “especially if you’re awfully scared to begin with. She glided around and around, and she wouldn’t speakto me when I whispered to her that I knew her. So then I shivered and shook till morning. She might have scared me just as she did Shirley—she couldn’t tell. Shirley will stutter and her eyes will twitch always, the doctor says. But Frisky called me her funny little chum to-day, and just laughed when I accused her of being the ghost. And I can’t quarrel without telling why, and if I tell, something perfectly dreadful will happen to Frisky.”
“She well deserves it for frightening and tyrannizing over you little girls,” said Betty severely.
“Oh, Betty, you mustn’t tell! You promised not to. Only always let me come and stay with you when my roommates are away.”
“You certainly shall,” Betty promised, “and do hurry and get ready for college, Dottie. Boarding-school girls are such complete sillies!”