THE TRUTH OF IT ALL
The Principal received a telephone message in the morning from
Frattenton, to the effect that the missing ones had arrived safely in
the early hours, having spent the night in a shepherd's hut on the
downs. Miss St. Leger, with a heart considerably lightened, recalled
her search parties and sent back instructions for the girls to be
brought to Easthampton by train, after they had been fed and cared
for by the kindly owners of the George Inn at Frattenton. The school
went in to afternoon lessons with the excitement of the morning
calmed down, and a little later the three girls arrived.
Nurse insisted on sending Erica to bed at once, with hot blankets and
bottles, but the two seniors protested that they felt none the worse
for their adventure, for they had been given hot baths and had their
clothes thoroughly dried at Frattenton. Indeed, they looked none the
worse. Nurse gave in, on the condition that they went to bed early
in the evening and had a "proper night's rest."
The two received a summons from the Principal to tea in her room.
"We're honoured," said Duane to Kitty with a laugh. "It's only on
very special occasions that girls have tea with Prinny."
A few minutes later found them comfortably ensconced in easy chairs
before a bright fire, in the Principal's charming little
sitting-room, with cups of tea in their hands and plates of the same
delicate and fragile china on their knees. The Principal talked to
them pleasantly while they had tea, and Kitty thought what a charming
woman she was; though, to be sure, nothing out of the ordinary to
look at!
Then, after the maid had cleared the tea-things away, she drew a
chair up next to Duane's and said with a sudden change to gravity:
"And now, Duane, for a very serious little talk. I want to know
exactly what happened in this distressing affair of the Richoter
examination. I know, of course, that there has been a good deal of
trouble in the school over it and that you have been very much
concerned in it. I want to hear your version of the affair--all you
know about it."
Duane hesitated, looking perplexed. Miss St. Leger, who was watching
her closely, went on quietly:
"Need I say that I already know almost all there is to know? The
cycling expedition and its sequel have at last brought things to a
head, I am thankful to say. I insisted on an explanation from
Bertha, and under the circumstances she could do nothing but give me
it: I have seen the note for her which Erica left behind. But I want
your version of the story as well--all of it."
Duane drew a deep breath.
"I was hoping that it would never come out," she said with a faint
smile, "and yet of course, now it has--well, I do feel relieved."
"Yes, I can quite realize that," said Miss St. Leger, somewhat dryly.
"You know who did it, then?" queried Duane.
Kitty was sitting forward in her chair, tense with eagerness. The
mystery that had puzzled her and the rest of the school for so long,
was to be revealed at last.
"Yes, little Erica Salter was the culprit."
Kitty uttered a cry of surprise.
"Erica Salter--that child!"
Duane nodded. "Yes."
"But surely--" stammered Kitty, "she could not think of such a thing
herself. Why, what does a child like her know of chemistry
experiments?"
"That is one of the little points I want Duane to make clear," put in
Miss St. Leger. "Yes, Kitty can stay and hear, since I believe she
also narrowly escaped serious trouble over the affair."
"Through my incorrigible laziness," added Duane, with a drawl in her
voice. "How I blessed Miss Vacher at that moment for disturbing me!"
"Begin at the beginning," advised Miss St. Leger.
So the head prefect told her story, quite simply and with some
embarrassment, her two listeners hanging intently upon every word.
It seemed that Erica, in her blind, childish adoration of the
redoubtable Peggy O'Nell, regarded that rebel's natural enemy, the
head prefect, in the light of a hateful tyrant. Her highly-coloured
imagination, in fact, exaggerated and magnified the attempts of the
prefect to put down the junior leader, and after the ordering-off of
Peggy from the sports field, her seething indignation crystallized
into a fierce determination to avenge the insult offered to that
much-wronged damsel.
How this was to be accomplished she had no idea; probably her
feelings would have calmed down before long without any harm whatever
being done, but a few chance words from Bertha--words not said in a
very kindly spirit--put the whole idea into her head, an idea which
would otherwise have never entered it.
The Richoter candidates had been giving an account of their morning's
experiences in the laboratory, when they left it for the dinner hour.
Bertha, with Erica, had been among the listeners. Strolling off
afterwards, the older girl, speaking her thoughts aloud, had said
with a laugh:
"Now, a very simple way of upsetting any of their apple-carts would
be to meddle with the balances just now. A little weight stuck
underneath the pan with a piece of putty would do the trick. Simple
but effective, eh?"
It had been carelessly spoken and Bertha did not dream that anyone
had taken notice of her words, or in fact heard them, save her little
sister; and Erica, fired by impulse, resolved in that way to avenge
the wrongs done to Peggy and her confreres by the tyrannous head
prefect, who was so mean and horrid to them.
It never occurred to Erica that the laboratory door might be
carefully locked to ensure against any tampering with the unfinished
experiments. A weight? A little piece of stone would do. Putty? A
bit of plasticine out of one of the tins in her classroom, which was
quite near the laboratory! The school-rooms would be deserted now;
no one would see her. What could be simpler? And if Duane didn't
get her experiment correct, it would serve her right. Oh yes, she
deserved it all!
Had Erica paused to think, it would never have been done. But the
blind impulse aroused by her passionate adoration of Peggy, drove her
straight into the school and up the stairs towards the laboratory.
It was the most extraordinary coincidence that she should be
following close on the heels of Kitty, intent on Miss Vacher's
errand, though Erica was just too far behind to see her; and also a
coincidence that Erica, slipping in noiselessly in her drill shoes
(it had been drill last lesson that morning), should neither be seen
nor heard by Kitty, who at that moment was at the other end of the
room beyond the high-backed benches, pausing in the act of hunting
for a clean pipette in order to gaze out of the window to see the
reason for the loud noise of a motor engine misfiring on the country
road outside. Neither knew of the other's presence. Erica had done
her work in a few seconds and was gone before Kitty recrossed the
room with the pipette, and left, locking the door again behind her.
But the point of the whole affair lay in the fact that Erica, who had
not stopped to think, and was in such a state of agitation as hardly
to know what she was doing, made a mistake over the balances and
weighted Salome's instead of Duane's. She had heard Eileen describe
herself as in the middle of the first bench near the door, with
Salome on her right and Duane on her left, but she did not stop to
consider which would be Eileen's right and which her left; there was
the end of the bench conveniently just inside the door, and in her
agitation it did not dawn upon her that Duane might be at the other
end. "Which shows," Duane put in somewhat quaintly, "that she was
not cut out for a conspirator, at any rate."
Then had come the inquiry in the hall and with it so complete a
realization of the enormity of the thing which she had done, that the
highly-strung, sensitive child, with visions of awful punishments
floating before her eyes, could no more come forward and confess her
guilt in front of them all than she could have taken wings and flown.
"Up to then," went on Duane, "I knew no more about the affair than
any of you. All I knew was that the keys had never left my
possession during the dinner interval save once. I had not done it
myself; I could only think Kitty was the culprit. I am afraid,"
looking across at Kitty, "I did you an injustice there."
"And I," responded Kitty with a smile, "knew _I_ hadn't done it, and
I could only think _you_ had. We were both mistaken. Of course,
what put us all on the wrong track was the fact that it was Salome's
balances that had been meddled with. She's so popular with all the
girls. We could only put it down to motives of house jealousy."
"Well, up till the evening, as I said, I was as much in the dark as
anyone," continued Duane, and went on to narrate how she had received
a visit from Bertha and a white, trembling Erica, who had confessed
to her older sister what she had done, knowing that Bertha would
somehow help her. Bertha, startled and horrified, had sternly
enjoined the younger child that on no account must she breathe a word
of it to anyone else until she, Bertha, gave her permission. Bertha
meant that it should never have been found out, if _she_ could help
it, no matter what happened.
But she had to do something to calm the frightened,
conscience-stricken child. They could tell Duane, she said, and ask
her advice. She was the one Erica had meant to injure.
So Bertha, in the interview that passed between the three girls, had
paved the way by explaining that Erica was in trouble and wanted
Duane's advice, but she must first promise not to say a word to
anyone else. Duane, never dreaming what the trouble really was and
thinking it was just some childish scrape Erica had been inveigled
into, gave her word. Even she could not conceal her amazement and
dismay when she heard the "confession." She was troubled and
perplexed, more so than she had ever been in her life before, and did
not know what she ought to do for the best. She tried to persuade
the child to go to the Principal and confess, pointing out that Miss
St. Leger could be trusted to understand and would not be harsh on
her. Erica, however, in her over-wrought state, could not credit
this.
On the other hand, Bertha, too, was fiercely determined that, if
possible, it should never be known, pointing out that Erica was but a
child and had not realized what she was doing, and that in time the
whole affair would die down and be forgotten.
"It was Bertha's influence against mine," Duane explained, "and of
course, Bertha's was the stronger."
Duane, moved by the pitifulness of the child's shrinking fear and
whole-souled repentance to a tenderness which, in spite of all her
faults, she was evidently capable of feeling, tried to comfort her,
resolving that if Erica could not summon sufficient moral courage to
confess, and if she felt happier in the knowledge that her
wrong-doing would never become public, she, Duane, would help keep
the secret.
The next day had been passed in the visit to the vicar's house, and
Duane had heard nothing of the scene in the sports field, and the
feeling against Kitty that had arisen.
On her return she had hurried straight from an interview with Miss
Carslake to Paddy's mock trial, entering late and just in time to
hear the charge against Kitty.
"I thought, of course," she explained, "that it was a deadly earnest
affair, and I was so horror-struck that for once I lost my head
completely. I don't know what I blurted out--something to the effect
that I knew for certain Kitty had not done it----"
"In such a manner as to convince everyone that you were the
conscience-stricken culprit yourself," finished off Miss St. Leger.
"That was it, was it not?"
"Yes," admitted Duane. "Afterwards I knew I had made an ass of
myself. Still, in a way I was glad, for if the girls had gone on
believing Kitty guilty, it would have put me in an awful hole,
knowing all the time that she wasn't. So I consoled myself with the
reflection that it was all for the best."
"And were content to shield someone else at your own expense," said
Miss St. Leger bluntly.
"Easiest way," returned Duane with a shrug. "I'm in the habit of
choosing it."
"Sometimes, perhaps," said Miss St. Leger cautiously.
"Then what did you mean by saying you were sorry you had wronged me?"
asked Kitty eagerly.
"Oh, I was merely referring to my wrongly believing that you were the
culprit, the day before."
"And, of course, everybody took it in rather a different way."
"There isn't much more to be told," Duane continued. "I must admit
it bothered me sometimes last term when I saw that Erica still
worried over the affair, but I thought she'd get over it in time.
But she didn't, and what happened yesterday was the result."
Miss St. Leger nodded gravely.
"I gather from this note that it was the hockey match that decided
her." She glanced again at the note in her hand, and read it out:
"DEAR BERTHA,
"I can't stand it any longer, having people think Duane did it and
knowing all the time it was me. But I'm not brave enough to confess
to everyone, and so I'm going to run away home this afternoon. I'm
going to try and slip away from the others and get a train at
Frattenton. Gracie Morris whose home is at Frattenton told me the
way. I am sorry. I hate myself for being such a coward. But after
yesterday afternoon I felt I just couldn't go on being such a little
pig, though Duane says it's all right and I mustn't worry my head
about her. Please will you tell them all about everything after I
have gone.
"Your loving sister,
"ERICA."
There was a short silence. Then Duane said slowly:
"I'm glad she tried to own up at last. You know, I think she would
have done so long ago if it hadn't been for Bertha. She's got heaps
of physical courage."
There was a very kind look in the Principal's eyes as she turned
towards Duane, and laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, said
gently:
"So am I. But I don't think it was altogether by herself that she
decided to own up. I think someone helped her, if unconsciously."
Duane looked puzzled.
"How do you mean, Miss St. Leger?"
"Why, I think in the end it was your influence and not Bertha's, that
proved the stronger."
"I should jolly well think so," added Kitty emphatically.
Duane flushed and looked uncomfortable. She had told her story with
brief simplicity, plainly and unvarnishedly--not as it has been
related here. But her two listeners, knowing the dramatis personæ so
well, had imagined clearly and vividly all the details and side
issues that Duane had mentioned so baldly. The girl had, to a great
extent, dropped her flippant, blasé manner to tell the story. Now,
for a moment she succeeded in throwing off the reserve in which she
had been trained to hide her emotions, as she had done before Kitty
in the hut last night.
"I--Miss St. Leger, perhaps I made an awful mess of things," she said
in a low voice. "When you talked to me that day you asked me to--to
take on the head prefectship, and I promised you I would do my best
for the house. I honestly meant it. I--it made me feel a bit sore
sometimes, when I could see quite plainly I wasn't succeeding, and
how the girls disliked me----"
"Yes, I know," interrupted Miss St. Leger. "But you remember that I
told you, knowing well enough your task was a difficult one, that if
the juniors were insulting or refused to acknowledge your authority
in any way, or if you found yourself in difficulties, you were to
come to me and I would settle things for you. As you never came,
perhaps I hardly realized how badly things were going sometimes."
Kitty broke in, with a chuckle, "Duane wouldn't ask for help from a
soul. I know her and her pig-headed pride by now. If she were dying
she'd never admit herself beaten."
"But I did," said Duane, smiling. "The Richoter complicated things a
bit, and, frankly, I didn't want to come to you about it, Miss St.
Leger----"
"No," interrupted the Principal. "As I said before, you were so busy
shielding that child at your own expense that you didn't want me to
smell a rat. For I shouldn't and didn't believe it of you, you know.
You have been long enough in the school for me to know you, and what
you are and are not capable of doing, pretty well by now. However, I
believe you had a partiality for the child and that prejudiced you."
"But one couldn't help being sorry for her, Miss St. Leger. It
seemed so absurd to hold her responsible. She's such a
tender-hearted, timid little thing really. She wouldn't hurt a fly
if she could help it."
"But I could be trusted to see that too," remarked the Principal,
somewhat dryly.
"Oh yes, Miss St. Leger," replied Duane quickly and with an eagerness
that was almost passionate. "Of course, I knew that. If it had only
rested with you! But it was the publicity that would have followed
that the child couldn't have faced, the realization that everyone in
the school knew and somehow despised her. She thought all the girls
would be simply disgusted with her. I couldn't make her believe
anything else."
"The truth is," said Miss St. Leger, "that you are much too
soft-hearted for your job."
"I soft-hearted!" Duane exclaimed indignantly. "Whatever next! But
anyway," with a mischievous gleam in her grey eyes, "I did realize my
limitations, Miss St. Leger. I was reduced to sending in my
resignation at one time, and you know you refused to accept it."
"We were a lot of idiots," Kitty interposed with much vigour. "I was
a new girl, it is true, but the others ought to have known you were
far and away above doing a petty, spiteful thing like that."
Needless to say, Kitty was referring to the Richoter trouble.
Miss St. Leger rose.
"Well, I'm not going to keep you here any longer. The girls will be
dying to see you again and hear about your adventures. Besides,
Nurse is going to pack you off to bed early. Duane, I think Miss
Carslake is anxious to see you for a few minutes, so you had better
go there first and then come along to the hall."
As Duane disappeared the Principal turned to Kitty.
"You can come along with me, Kitty. I gave orders for the girls to
assemble in hall after tea. We shall find them there now."
Kitty understood without being told that she meant to make a public
announcement concerning the Richoter examination.
When they arrived they found the girls waiting. The Principal
motioned Kitty to follow her upon the dais, turned to the sea of
expectant, upturned faces, and addressed them briefly.
"I want a misunderstanding cleared up this evening, girls, a
misunderstanding that has been amongst us too long. You have for a
long time been treating one amongst you with grave injustice. I am,
of course, referring to Duane. May I state most emphatically that
the two girls upon whom suspicion appeared to rest for attempting to
spoil Constance's chances in the Richoter examination are both quite
innocent. We have just discovered the whole truth of the matter."
There was a stir among the crowd of girls, a quick intake of breath.
They had naturally guessed that there was something more than met the
eye in this last mysterious affair in which, it was whispered,
Bertha's little sister Erica had tried to run away from school, and
Duane and Kitty had gone after her. Now, at last, they were going to
know everything.
The Principal's face had been softened by a smile. "You'll be rather
surprised to hear that I'm not going into any long explanations
myself. I'm going to leave Kitty, here, to do that. She's an
authority on the subject, having had first hand information, and I
fancy she'll plead Duane's cause better than I could. I'll give you
till prep time, girls, and when prep bell rings the prefects will see
you all go quietly to your classrooms as usual. Is that understood?"
There was a prompt and eager chorus of "Yes, Miss St. Leger," and the
Principal took her departure, still with that half-smile about her
lips.
Kitty found her task strangely congenial, and though according to her
own statements she believed in deeds and not words, on this occasion
she found it surprisingly easy to be fluent. Perhaps the breathless
interest with which she was listened to, broken only by eager
questions from one or other of the girls, spurred her on. Not until
every smallest detail was described to them were her hearers
satisfied.
"I tell you what," announced Paddy loudly, when Kitty had finally
come to a full stop. "There's no getting away from the fact, you
girls, that we've treated Cato pretty shabbily."
Paddy's remark was unnecessarily obvious. The girls, big and little,
looked at each other rather shamefacedly, and were all of the same
opinion. Peggy was expressing herself forcibly to her followers:
"Come to think of it, we are rather a lot of chumps, you kids. As if
a girl who played the game like Duane did in that match against the
school, could do a mean trick like that!"
Then Salome had sprung upon the dais and was speaking:
"There's just another thing, girls. As it happens, far more fuss has
been made over the affair that it--it deserves. We must remember
that Erica Salter is little more than a child, and did not realize
fully what she was doing. I am sure, by Kitty's account, she has
suffered enough, and we mustn't be hard on her. The best thing to do
is to put the whole affair away and forget it as quickly as we can."
She paused a moment, then had one of the "nice" ideas that were part
of the secret of Salome's well-deserved popularity, and concluded
with a smile, "We won't be nasty to little Erica, if it's only out of
regard for all the trouble Duane's taken to try and keep her from
being unhappy and miserable."
Everybody signified their assent by stamping on the floor, and Vanda,
as a head prefect, also thought it the proper thing to add her
opinion:
"We shall have to make it up a bit to Duane for treating her so
shabbily, shan't we?"
"Rather!" came an enthusiastic chorus from everybody.
Then Kitty had an inspiration.
"I say, girls, I've got a brain-wave. Duane'll be coming along in a
minute, you know, when Miss Carslake's finished with her. Isn't
there a match against St. Magdalene's to-morrow?" and Kitty proceeded
to impart her "brain-wave" to her interested audience.
When Duane, a little later, strolled into the hall with leisurely
step and tranquil mien, and found the whole school assembled there
and regarding her with ludicrously solemn, immovable faces, a little
of her coolness deserted her. She eyed them uneasily for a moment.
Why this remarkable silence? Why did they all stare at her so hard?
Then Salome called from the dais at the top end of the room:
"Oh, is it you, Duane? Just the person we want. Come along up here.
We have a little business transaction to carry out."
Duane recovered her customary calm, and, mounting the dais, bowed
exaggeratedly to Salome.
"Well met by gaslight, proud Titania."
Somebody giggled, then subsided with a little squeak.
Salome looked at Duane. "The school sports club have great pleasure
in presenting you with this," she said gravely and very distinctly.
"They have also put your name down in the eleven for the match
against St. Mary Magdalene's to-morrow, and hope you will play. They
also wish me to say," and there was a slight tremor in her voice,
"that they are quite convinced that you have always worn it with
honour in the past, and they know you will continue to do so in the
future."
The tension relaxed with a tumultuous burst of applause. Duane, her
old hockey colour tightly clutched in the hand that hung at her side,
bit her lip hard to control its trembling. But only for the moment.
With the loud, delighted yells of "Speech, Speech!" from everybody
sounding on all sides, she turned and faced them, speaking in the old
familiar drawl as soon as the noise had died down.
"I see by your anxiety to hear me that you are well aware I speak
with authority and not as the scribes"--loud cheers--"or perhaps I
should say, the juniors--but on this occasion I'm not going to say
much. I will convince the hockey club of my earnestness by the
number of goals I shall score on its behalf to-morrow. When they see
shots falling about the St. Mary's goalkeeper like--like leaves in
autumn----"
Everybody, amid laughter, realized that it was apparently the same
old Cato talking and not some unfamiliar heroine of fiction. The
rest of the speech was never heard, for someone struck up "For she's
a jolly good fellow," and they continued it till prep bell put an end
to the din.
Smiles and kindly words were seen everywhere in Carslake's that
evening. Kitty and Duane were actually going in to supper
arm-in-arm; France and Margaret beamed with delight at everybody.
The girls in Dormitory A were squabbling as to who should fetch their
head prefect's hot water, but Duane settled the matter by asking
Erica if she wouldn't mind doing it, and as Erica took the jug, a
happier look on her face than there had been for many a week, no one
said an ungenerous word or gave her an unkind look.
When Miss Carslake came round to switch off the lights there was a
very hearty "Good night" in response to hers, and the house mistress
went on her way happily conscious that one could say of her house at
last, "All's well."
_Made and Printed in Great Britain by
The Greycaine Book Manufacturing Company Limited, Watford_
100.537