CHAPTER XVTHE RED MASQUE
Thetwo chums working in Number Eighty, South Wing, Rivercliff School, closed their books before the retiring bell rang at nine-thirty, fully satisfied with what they had accomplished.
“No use climbing into bed, Bethesda,” said Molly, with a yawn. “Just get into something comfortable—of course, your kimono—and we’ll put out the lights at the proper time.”
“Why—will anybody look in?”
“Perhaps. You never can tell. It is according to who is on watch to-night. We never know whose duty it is. Miss Crouch is perfectly sneaking——”
“Oh, Molly!”
“Yes, she is. She wears sneaks when she is on guard, and she often opens our doors and looks in. And if you lock your door she is likely to rap on it and wake you up. Says she wants to be sure you are all right.”
“Are we supposed to leave our doors unlocked?” Beth asked.
“Why, you can do as you please. But if Miss Crouch feels like looking into your room in the middle of the night, she’ll get you up to open the door. She’s a suspicious creature.”
“For no reason, I suppose?” laughed Beth.
“Never mind!” Then Molly’s voice dropped to a whisper: “I’ll show you how to fool Miss Crouch.”
“What about?” asked Beth.
“If she should feel it necessary to look in while we are gone—see here!”
Molly rolled the extra blanket which lay upon the foot of Beth’s bed into the semblance of a human figure and put it under the bedclothes. There it looked like a person asleep, wrapped head and heels in the coverings. Then she made the same masquerade in her own bed.
They sat in the dark and told each other “giggly” stories in whispers until it was about half-past ten and the whole school seemed buried in sleep. But there is scarcely anything more uncertain than a boarding school between retiring hour and the first bell in the morning. That is an axiom known to all instructors of experience.
When the two chums ventured out with the red bags pulled down to their shoulders, there were other “red-heads” flitting about the corridors. They slipped in and out of the various doors likered-topped ghosts. It was evidently to be a large party in Mamie Dunn’s room.
“Sh! Who’s on watch?” one unknown asked Beth.
“Oh! I’m sure I don’t know,” returned the new girl, and at once the girl asking the question laughed, and said:
“So you’re the new one, aren’t you? I thought I’d know your voice. And now I’ll know your kimono.”
“That’s Stella—didn’t you hear?” said Molly. “She caught you.”
“Oh! aren’t you supposed to know each other?” asked Beth.
“Just as well if we’re not identified. I’ve got on a new kimono. I’m just going to keep it for these red-head parties. You get one, and then we’ll fool ’em.”
The question was repeated several times before the chums reached Sixty-two:
“Who’s on watch?”
“I wager it’s Miss Crouch,” jolly Molly said, but nobody would have recognized her voice.
“Is that you, Phoebe Mills?”
“No. It’s Phoebe’s sister,” said Molly, solemnly. “Don’t try to catch me, honey!”
“Well, if Miss Crouch is on watch or not, I dare you to look,” giggled the inquisitive girl.
“Not me,” declared Molly, shaking her head vigorously. “Get that crazy Molly Granger to run and look.”
“I’m looking for her,” admitted the other girl, going away from the chums.
Molly giggled. “What a chance! That was Izola Pratt, I believe. She’s a ‘Me too.’”
“You mean one of Maude’s friends?”
“Just so,” said Molly, nodding. “I wonder why they are all trying to identify us? Maybe Princess Fancyfoot has some scheme up her sleeve.”
“You don’t mean that she would report us to the teachers?” asked Beth, in some alarm.
“I’d like to see her! That would just about settle Maude Grimshaw in this school. If her father had as much money as King Midas, and Maude lived to be as old as Methuselah, she could never live down such a thing. No indeed! There! here’s Sixty-two.”
Beth knew Mamie Dunn, but she did not know who welcomed her into the room. Everybody in the apartment wore a red mask, and at first the new girl was not able to recognize any one.
It was a chafing-dish party. A tall girl in a striking red and black kimono (somehow Beth thought she must be the senior, Miss Teller)—the kimono itself well fitted to clothe one who did deeds of magic—presided over a cheese dish warranted,as Molly said, to give everybody “dreams of the rabbit fiend.”
There was bottled ginger ale and tea and coffee. Such a combination to go into one’s stomach at such a late hour would ruin the digestion of anybody but a boarding-school girl.
Beth, even at this party, could not but compare her own state with that of the other twenty-five or thirty girls present. There were all sorts and conditions of kimonos; but all were of very much richer material than her own pretty, but cheap, cotton crêpe.
She was really sure of the identity of nobody save Molly at first. But she began to enjoy herself, for she was not left alone. She tried to disguise her voice in answering questions, and so puzzle the others.
The laughter was subdued, although the walls were thick and the doors sound-proof. One girl frequently ventured into the corridor to peer about. There was a delicious feeling of uncertainty and peril that spiced this “red-head” party.
The guessing of each other’s identity was a popular pastime, and when they held a mock court, with the tall girl in the red and black kimono as judge, and appointed two guards to bring culprits before the bar for identification, the fun waxed boisterous.
Sometimes the girls guessed who the prisoner was very quickly; at other times they shot broad of the mark, as was attested by the gaiety of the one under examination.
But when Beth was seized and forced before the girl in the red and black kimono, there fell a little hush of expectation. It seemed to the new girl as though many of these present had been waiting for just this event.
“Here is a stranger in our midst,” said the red and black kimono, in a sepulchral voice. “Who can she be?”
“It’s plain to be seen she’s a person of note,” said one, demurely.
“And a person of quality,” added a sharp voice. “Note the gown she has on. It must have cost ‘trippence’ a yard, as Miss Small would say,” and there was a rising giggle from a group of masks in one corner.
Beth flashed a glance that way. She felt the enmity of these masked girls in the very air. Had she known how to escape she would have done so before the mock examination went any further.
In that particular group of girls Beth suddenly recognized Maude Grimshaw’s blue and silver kimono. And it was from the wearer of this beautiful garment that the next unkind observation fell:
“We are advertised by this young person. Oh! she is an acquisition to Rivercliff, undoubtedly.”
“You’re not!” snapped Molly Granger’s voice from behind Beth.
But Maude had her speech ready, and was not to be sidetracked.
“I suppose this girl began by being photographed as a patent-food baby. Then she advertised a brand of soap as she grew older, until now she has arrived at the dignity of being flaunted in seven colors on the cover of a cheap magazine.”
There was a murmur of objection from some of the hooded girls; but there was laughter, too.
“She will doubtless become famous,” went on Maude, scornfully, “and make Rivercliff famous, by winding up as the exponent of a toothwash, or illustrating the use of a pair of shoulder braces.”
The whole company was now in ungovernable laughter. Beth knew that she should have laughed herself had the victim been some other girl. Indeed, she could have laughed with them at the fun poked at her, had it not been so venomously done.
“Beth Baldwin!” somebody shouted. “Discovered! She must pay a forfeit.”
Beth heard Molly sputtering angrily behind her; but she realized that if she took offence, or if Molly was allowed to do so, it would only makeher the more ridiculous. One decision Beth made, however, right then and there. It was a decision bound to change the tenor of her whole career at Rivercliff School.
“Unmask! You’re caught,” ordered the “judge.”
Beth did so and managed to show a smiling, if flushed, countenance to the assembly.
“Well, I think it’s mighty clever of her,” drawled one girl, “if she can earn money posing for her picture.”
The others were, however, clamoring for Beth to pay a forfeit. The judge was supposed to accept suggestions for that. Maude’s sharp voice was ready:
“Oh, it doesn’t really matter what she does, I fancy. As long as there’s anything to be earned by it, Miss Baldwin is prepared to do it. Like our politicians, she is ‘out for the dough.’”
“How very vulgar, Maude!” said the “judge,” tartly. “Suppose Miss Carroll should hear that?”
“It’s the truth!” snapped the angry girl. “We, who are well-to-do, are exploited for the benefit of these—these paupers that Miss Hammersly allows to come here to Rivercliff. At least, she should have the decency to put them in a department by themselves, and have their sleeping quarters with the servants.”
“Shame! Shame!” cried a dozen voices.
“You go too far, Maude,” declared the “judge.”
“That’s what is the matter with Maude Grimshaw,” ejaculated Molly, boiling over in her wrath, finally. “She wanted Miss Baldwin’s room for one of her ‘Me toos’—and Miss Baldwin wouldn’t makethatexchange for money. Nasty thing!”
“Girls! stop this!” ordered the girl in red and black, rising from her seat.
Suddenly Mamie Dunn herself took a hand in the discussion. She stood up and plucked off her red bag. She was a plain, rather unattractive girl who seldom asserted herself; but now she was quite indignant.
“Stop, Maude Grimshaw. You are the meanest girl in Rivercliff School—I don’t care if you are the richest. This is my room and I declare I’ll never invite you into it again.”
She turned swiftly to Beth and put a protecting arm about her. “You are a girl I am proud to have for a friend, Miss Baldwin—I don’t care what others may say. I know I wouldn’t have the pluck to try to work my way through school, providing I could get an education in no other way. I—I hope you’ll forgive me for inviting you here to-night where you have been so insulted andabused by my other guests. I assure you, it was not with my connivance.”
“Oh, I am confident of that, Miss Dunn,” faltered Beth, for Mamie’s kindness touched her more deeply than Maude Grimshaw’s unkind speech. “I thank you, Miss Dunn. I—I can’t stay. I see very clearly now that I should not have come in the first place.”
“Don’t say that!” cried somebody whom Beth thought was Brownie, and who was sobbing, frankly.
“Yes,” Beth said, more calmly now, “I see that I was wrong in accepting the invitation. I am different from you other girls. I want to get an education, and I must get it in my own way. My way is not yours. I hope that hereafter I shall not be led into accepting invitations that lead to friction and make everybody concerned unhappy.”
“You’re all right, Baldwin!” said the girl behind the judge’s mask, huskily.
“I am going to ask you, Miss Dunn, to excuse me,” Beth proceeded. “I quite appreciate your kindness, and all you meant to do for me in inviting me to your party. But—you see yourself—it is not wise.”
She stammered this—halted at last in her speech, chokingly—and then made swiftly for the door.