CHAPTER XIX
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
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 wasit, 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
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
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.