there was a large household to cross-examine. Of the maids, however,
only one had any information to offer, and that was that she had seen
Tolly running round the house early before breakfast; but wasn't sure
if it might have been yesterday or the day before.
Impatient at such vagueness, the girl went up to Miss Castle's room,
but she was out; while Miss Rogers, when tracked to the
playing-fields, proffered no help beyond a little sympathy and the
belief that Tolly was such a sensible fellow he would be sure to take
care of himself.
"You don't think Miss Cheeseman has had him shot, do you?"
Miss Rogers began to laugh; then stopped, at the earnestness in the
girl's eyes.
"No, Sally, I'm sure she hasn't.... What makes you think that?"
"Well, she doesn't like him, and now Miss Cockran's away, and----"
"Oh Sally! Sally! Do you think she'd give such a stab in the back
as that--especially when she's very fond of Miss Cockran?"
Sally, with hands clenched to keep back her wretchedness, shook her
head. "No, I suppose not ... it was only an idea."
"Well, put it out of your head for a start. I've seen Miss Cheeseman
feeding him with biscuits when no one was looking.... Now I must
attend to the games, but I'll be sure and make inquiries, so don't
lose heart. He'll probably come barking back to-night."
Dejected, but a little relieved that Tolly was at any rate not the
victim of a plot, Sally wandered once more towards the school, and
crossing the quadrangle, ran into Frisky Harrison, who greeted her
with a shout:
"I say, do come and play squash--I've a new ball."
Sally shook her head. "I can't," she said, and was hurrying away
when the other caught her by the arm.
"What's the matter--another row?" she asked sympathetically. "Old
Cheeserings is the limit. Matron reported me to her to-day for
cheek, and here I am--'gated'--no chance of practising for the Form
match on Saturday, and----"
"I'm very sorry," said Sally, pulling at her arm to free herself,
"but I can't stop--Tolly's lost."
Frisky whistled--then ran after her. "Where? ... How? Can't I help?"
"I'm going to look in the grounds--it's where he generally played,
when he was allowed loose--out beyond the gardens, along the cliffs.
Why ... he may have ... fallen over, even----"
Horror dawned in her eyes at the thought, but Frisky smote her on the
back, "Not he, you ass. Don't go and get the jumps--he was much too
cute--but look here, I'll come and help you, and we'll regularly beat
the bounds."
"I ... I thought you were 'gated.'"
Frisky dropped an eyelid. "From the playing-fields and shore, my
child; but the garden was never mentioned. You run along, and I'll
join you there in a jiffy, as soon as I've collected a coat."
They beat the bounds between them until it was nearly tea-time, and
the evening shadows were beginning to roll up over the sky. Then at
last, Frisky, looking round with a shiver, declared it was no use to
hunt any more; but, even as she spoke, Sally, who was bending down by
a gorse-bush, cried out:
"Come here quick! I'm sure I heard him bark."
The other ran over, and they knelt side by side, listening.
"There!" said Sally. "There! It's very faint, but oh, can't you
hear it?"
"Sorry--but I can't."
Frisky gave another shiver. "Come on, old girl, do," she said
coaxingly. "It's rotten bad luck, but I expect he's only gone into
the town."
She stopped, for Sally was already running towards the house, and she
saw her pause and speak to Jakes, who, spade in hand, had been
watching them over the hedge.
Jakes shook his head several times. He was evidently not in an
obliging mood; but finally he shifted his spade on to his shoulder,
and came striding across.
"It's like this here, Miss," he was saying, as he approached. "It's
a regular laby-rinth of burrows--that's what it is--down under this
here field. If I was to dig at the mouth of every burrow that's
fallen in, you might pay me wages for a month for doing it, and
there'd be nothing to show for it at the end, I reckon, but
rheumatism in my back."
He laughed at his own wit, and Sally broke in impatiently:
"I'm not asking you to dig at every burrow, but only at the one by
the gorse-bush--I heard him bark just now."
"Did you, Miss?"
Jakes looked inquiringly at Frisky, and kneeling down, put his ear to
the ground.
"I reckon I don't hear nothing," he grumbled, rising at last.
"See here, Missie, what's the good of my digging?"
"Please dig--you said you would. You promised. I heard him."
Silently, and without enthusiasm, Jakes fell to his task--Sally
watching him intently--Frisky with backward glances at the school,
where lights were beginning to show in the class-room windows.
"We've missed tea, and they're going to start preparation," she
whispered. "Do come, Sally--we'll get in an awful row if we're
late." But her companion did not even hear her.
After a minute's indecision, Frisky turned and ran back to the house:
but instead of joining her Form at work she threw her coat on to a
peg in the cloakroom, and knocked at Miss Castle's door.
Miss Castle was at work, obviously correcting preparation, for she
had a pile of note-books heaped before her, and a red pencil in her
hand.
"Well, Frisky," she said. "What is it?"
(Everyone except Miss Cheeseman called the girl by her nickname,
instead of "Felicia," as she had been christened.)
"Oh, Miss Castle, I'm so worried about Sally Brendan. She has lost
Tolly, and she thinks he's down a rabbit burrow, and is making Jakes
dig for him, and I know she'll be late for prep.: and there'll be an
awful row, and I can't get her away."
Miss Castle rose with a sigh. Since Miss Cockran went home she had
had to answer a great many appeals for help, and it was not always
easy.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"Out on the cliff ... and oh, you won't be angry with her, will you?
And it's not 'telling' my coming to you like this, is it? You see,
if Cheese--I mean Miss Cheeseman found her, I know there would be a
row."
"I understand," said the other briefly, picking up a small electric
torch off the mantelpiece--and then she added with a smile:
"But what about you--you are late for preparation, aren't you? And
have you had any tea?"
"No--you see while it was light we thought it best to go on looking,
and then, I didn't like to leave Sally and----"
"Quite so. Well, you can tell the prefect in charge you were doing
some work for me. Perhaps I'd better write a note."
"Yes, please. Most of them would think I was making it up. Thanks
awfully, Miss Castle, and what work shall I do?"
Miss Castle, as soon as she finished the note, went to the cupboard,
took out a plate with a cake on it, and cut some slices. "You'd
better eat those," she said, "as quickly as you can," and snatching
up her coat, disappeared.
By the time she reached the cliff there was a huge earth mound near
the gorse-bush, and Jakes had struck work.
"It ain't a bit of good, Miss, and I wasn't paid to excavate--not by
Miss Cockran I wasn't, even if it's her own dog."
"There's another way of getting him," said the girl, "and that's
through the Portholes."
"What do you mean, Sally?"
It was Miss Castle, and Sally turned to her joyfully. "Oh, Miss
Castle, I'm so glad you've come. It's Tolly--he's gone down a rabbit
burrow, and the earth must have fallen in, and--I know what's
happened--all these burrows lead to the cave where the Portholes are,
and he must be there...."
"I don't believe he's there, Miss, that I don't," said Jakes, and
spat on the ground to mark his certainty.
"How do you know, Sally? What makes you say it?"
"I heard him--not a regular bark--but faint, with a whine. He must
be starving and cold."
"Just himagination!" said Jakes; "that's what it is.... She's got a
notion he's there, and so she heard him, but I never heard him ...
nor the other young lady."
"Where was it you heard him, Sally?"
Miss Castle went down on her knees as Jakes had done, and listened,
while the girl watched her anxiously. At last she rose to her feet,
with a sigh and shake of her head.
"I don't hear him," she said. "Perhaps you made a mistake."
"It were one of them sea-gulls--that's what it were--I be sure."
Sally withered Jakes with a glance. "It was Tolly," she said
positively. "Do you think I wouldn't know? But we can easily
see--there are the Portholes."
"Sally, we can't climb in at the Portholes--there's no way."
"But, Miss Castle, there is--I saw yards and yards of rope in the
shed, the other day, and we can lower it over the cliff here...."
"And me climb down, I suppose, for that there dratted little dog,
what ain't there--and should never 'ave been at all, to judge by his
appearance."
Jakes was at last completely exasperated. "I'm not asking you to
climb down," said Sally coldly, "only to lower me--I'm not afraid."
The gardener was about to retort angrily when Miss Castle put up a
warning hand.
"We couldn't allow that, my dear," she said quietly, putting her arm
round the girl's shoulder. "It would be risking your life, and that
is more valuable than Tolly's."
"Riskin'? Throwin' it away, Miss! ... look here----"
Jakes went close to the edge of the cliff, and dug with his toe at a
projecting clump of grass and sea pinks. With a very slight effort
he dislodged it, and several inches fell away, tumbling down on to
the rocks below.
"That might be you, Miss," he said, and there was a pause.
Sally shivered and looked at Miss Castle. "I can't leave him there,"
she said; "I can't."
"We are not sure he is there," said Miss Castle gently. "He may be
in Parchester. I'll ring up the police, and have him put on the Town
Crier's list--but you must come indoors now."
Sally went quietly. It seemed as if her determination had suddenly
collapsed. When she reached Miss Castle's room, she ate a slice of
cake and drank some hot milk mechanically, and even smiled when her
companion read her a comic piece out of one of the Juniors' essays.
It was obvious, however, that her mind was far away.
"Thank you," she said at last, "thank you very much--I'll go and do
some prep, now; may I say I was excused for the first bit?"
"Certainly, I've sent one note already for Frisky, so I may as well
send another, I suppose, for you. But look here, child--I want you
to try and not worry."
Sally's face was quite blank of expression. "I won't go out and hunt
again to-night, if you're afraid of that," she said wearily. "But I
can't promise not to think of Tolly."
"No, of course not--but don't imagine he's dead ... he may run in at
any minute. I'll go out and call him again, the last thing."
"He's not dead at present," said Sally, "I know that--but I don't
think it's any use your calling him. Thanks awfully for thinking of
it."
She went out quietly, and shut the door.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD
PORTHOLES
The night that Autolycus was lost, Sally endured the uneasy sleep of
a sick-room nurse, with spells of utter weariness and oblivion,
broken by a return to real life, when visions of the puppy in various
stages of exhaustion floated before her eyes. "Just himagination,"
she muttered, in scornful imitation of Jakes, and was glad that the
school bell's noisy jangle at last allowed her to get up and dress.
She was not hungry, and the sight of the plates at breakfast, heaped
with large slabs of bread and butter, filled her with nausea, so that
she longed to slip away to her classroom and pretend to be busy with
her work.
It was an effort not to be rude in response to Frisky's well-meant
efforts at consolation.
"Please don't talk of Tolly," she said at last, with a break in her
voice, "I ... can't stand it."
Frisky said "Sorry," gruffly, and relapsed into silence.
It was at this minute Sally overheard a piece of conversation that
gripped her attention and held it fast. Decima Pillditch was talking
to Violet Tremson across the table, some places up towards the Senior
end.
"So, of course, I told her that Doris Forbes was leaving this term
... (it is all right, she hasn't come down yet, so she won't hear),
and that, as she was both head of the school and games captain, it
was simply up to us to do something handsome in the way of a present.
I must say Cheeserings seemed to take that in all right--clucked
approvingly, and all that; and then I rubbed it in that several of us
ought to go into Parchester in consequence, and choose the thing."
"I wonder she didn't offer to do it herself," interposed Cathy
Manners. "A dictionary, for instance, or some moral little tale, or
Dryden's works, or----"
"Shut up," said Decima. "It's too early in the day to be funny.
Anyhow, Cheeserings pursed up her lips, and blinked, and said: 'Which
of you?' And I said--you and I, Violet and Cathy perhaps, if we held
her by the hand, to be sure she behaves as becomes a Seascaper, and
Edith Seymour, and other prefects--most of our crowd who play games,
in fact."
"Well, and did she feel she could trust the prefects?"
"Not she, bless her! ... not alone, in a town like Parchester," said
Decima bitterly. "Why, we might run away, or go to the Pictures and
bring back scarlet fever."
"Then I suppose the whole thing is off. Rotten, I call it!"
"No, it isn't all off. Do give me time to finish. I said 'alone.'
She suddenly had a brain wave that Mademoiselle was taking Pat Dolby
to the dentist this afternoon, and said we might all go with her, and
while Pat writhes in the chair, we can be let off the chain to look
at shops."
There were a few seconds' silence.
"I call it humiliating," said one of the prefects; "it's like holding
Nanna's hand. I vote we refuse."
"Isn't that cutting off our noses to spite our faces?" asked Violet
Tremson quickly. "We do want the present and it is the only way of
choosing it."
"It's caving in to Cheeserings, though."
"Well, she can't help being like she is, or she would probably be
different," said Violet, "and, after all, Miss Cockran's mother's
better, so she may be back any day. Don't let's be idiots."
She had lowered her voice to be audible only at her end of the table,
but Sally had caught enough of the conversation for her purpose, and
her mind was already at work constructing a plan. By the time she
reached her Form, part of her cloud of depression had already lifted;
but she was careful to conceal this from Miss Castle when, hanging
about in the passage by her class-room door, at the middle of the
morning interval, she was able to speak to her for a few minutes.
"Miss Castle ... I ... I suppose you heard nothing last night?"
"No, Sally, I'm afraid not--but I have telephoned to the police, and
they have promised to look out for him."
Sally sighed, and looked very woebegone. "It's ... it's the waiting
about and doing nothing," she said.
"I know--but you must be brave, my dear--you have plenty of pluck.
Do something to occupy your mind."
This was just the advice Sally had expected Miss Castle to give, and
though she had angled for it, her expression remained half-sulky,
half-weary.
"I can't play games this term ... and ... I just couldn't go for an
ordinary walk leading nowhere, when I've always had Tolly before...."
Her voice broke, and the tears came into her eyes. They were real
tears, for she had suddenly remembered how Tolly would stand in the
stable doorway, and look up at her, and bark--wagging his
ridiculously long tail.
Miss Castle put her hand on her shoulder. "You mustn't give up hope
like that," she said, and then Sally broke in:
"Miss Castle, some of the Seniors are going to Parchester this
afternoon, shopping, and Mademoiselle will be with them, and Pat
Dolby--going to the dentist--do you think I could go?"
"Why, Sally ... I've 'phoned to the police, and even sent a notice to
put up, and..."
"I know ... and, of course, it doesn't matter ... but I just thought
it would be something to do with an object, and I wouldn't have to
keep on thinking ... thinking. Of course, if I'd better not----"
She had begun to turn away, when Miss Castle stopped her.
"It's quite a sensible idea," she said slowly. "I'll ask for leave
if you like, and will you promise me, in return, that you will try
and not worry?"
"Yes, Miss Castle."
Sally did not look at her very straight, but suddenly she caught hold
of her hand, and wrung it hard.
"You have been a brick to me," she said, and fled.
It was hardly respectful, or after the custom of Seascape School in
its behaviour towards those in authority, but Miss Castle seemed not
to mind.
That afternoon, Sally, warned by a message to be ready at 2.15, was
waiting on the front doorstep soon after the hour. She had her thick
coat on, and a bag in her hand, and kept as much out of the prefects'
sight as possible, for she guessed that her addition to the party
would not be popular. As it happened, however, though Violet Tremson
glanced at her keenly, no one else took any notice of her except Pat
Dolby, who, from the folds of the muffler protecting her bad tooth
from the air, mumbled suddenly:
"Sorry about the dog!"
Pat had always been one of her special persecutors, and Sally stared
at her at first in surprise. Then she said gratefully, "Thanks
awfully," and they were silent.
One on either side of Mademoiselle, they walked briskly into
Parchester, while the prefects, in groups of two or three, strolled
on ahead, obviously disdaining their company.
Sally, as they passed the various plantations of firs, thought of her
moonlit expedition alone; and as they drew near to the spot where
Tolly had first discovered himself to her by licking her hand, her
breath came in a choke. He had trusted her then, and she would not
desert him now. It was horrid to deceive Miss Castle, but it
couldn't be helped.
While she was still trying to justify herself to her conscience, the
beginning of the tram-lines on the far side of the heath came in
sight, and she could see that there was a tram just about to start.
The Seniors had seen it also, and were running. Sally started to run
too. She could hear Mademoiselle call to her to stop, but it was too
good an opportunity for the escape she had planned, and, apparently
deaf, she continued to race along as hard as she could.
When she was nearly alongside the step, the last prefect had already
mounted to the top and disappeared; the conductor had rung his bell.
"Stop! ... take me," called Sally, and putting on a spurt, made a
jump. The conductor caught her and grinned. He was young and
admired pluck.
"My! but you're some sprinter," he said. "Going on top with the
rest?"
Sally shook her head; she had no breath left, and thankfully subsided
into a far corner, undiscovered. When the tram arrived in the High
Street, and stopped to let her companions dismount, she waited
anxiously to see if they would remember or notice her; but to her joy
they evidently believed that she had been left behind with
Mademoiselle. Laughing and talking, they vanished into a big
stationer's, and the tram shot on its way.
"'Ullo!" said the conductor, "not with the rest?" when at last, at
the old City Cross, at the bottom of the town, Sally moved to the
door. She shook her head, and was glad he did not seem to worry
further about her; but it was with relief she heard the bell ring and
saw him pass out of sight. There was only one more thing to be done
now to avoid unwanted attention, and that was to dispose of her hat,
with the Seascape band on it. In this she succeeded by thrusting it
down to the bottom of a basket of remnants, at the entrance to a
drapery stores. Turning away, she took her old cap out of her
pocket, and dragged it on over her eyes.
Now, unless she met anyone from the school, she was safe, and could
start unhampered on her expedition--an adventure if ever she had had
one--but different from all her other escapades in that no love of
notoriety or excitement had led her to plan it.
"I must save Tolly."
That was her one idea, the slogan that inspired her to face the
Borley Caves in the damp and dusk of a late November afternoon.
She did not waste more time in Parchester than she could help, merely
pausing to make certain purchases that included a lantern, some
candles and matches, a piece of raw meat, wrapped in a newspaper, a
bottle of milk, and a small loaf of bread. As many of these things
as she could fit in she thrust into the bag she had brought, and with
the rest under her arm made her way back to the old City Cross, and
took the tram labelled "Borley Chine."
It was still fairly light when she reached her destination and
hastened away from the rows of lodging-houses, now half empty, down
the zig-zag path, towards the pebbly beach. Beyond, lay the ridge of
rocks and golden sands which had made the fortunes of Parchester and
its neighbourhood during the last half-century.
Sally passed very few people, and they were all coming from the
shore; going back, as she recognised, to family tea-parties, round
comfortable fires. The thought made her shiver. It had been easy to
boast, on a summer afternoon, that she was not afraid to make her way
to the Portholes, but now it was all quite different. If it hadn't
been for Autolycus, and the look of entreaty in his brown eyes that
continually haunted her imagination, she would have turned straight
back.
As it was, she climbed steadily over the pebbles, and up the broad
slope of rock and shingle that led to the opening of the largest
cave. In the narrow entrance it was almost dark, and she paused, to
take a last look at the misty landscape--with its deserted shore--and
beyond that again at the grey-green sea, empty of any sail, tossing
and turning in forlorn monotony.
"How horrible!" she said, though she usually loved the sea; and with
hands that trembled lit her candle. Holding the lantern aloft, she
surveyed the cave, into which a slit In the cliff admitted her.
It was a circular space, with long shafts of grey rock projecting
here and there from the walls, like buttresses on the outside of a
church. Water was trickling down them, and forming little pools,
while tufts of fern and dank seaweed growths clung to the crevices
and dripped.
"Like a vault," said Sally aloud, and jumped at the echo of her own
voice, and again, as some bird flapped past her head, scurrying
towards the open in terror at the unexpected sounds.
"I wonder which of us was most frightened," she said, and smiled
without any amusement as, lowering the lantern, she crossed the cave
and passed through the narrow doorway on the other side.
Here a passage began; almost overpoweringly damp and smelly, at times
high like the vaulting of a church, at others so low that its dusty
roof brushed and crumbled against her cap. Occasionally it widened
out into a room, or else it turned, first at one sharp angle and then
at another, until all sense of direction became lost.
Once the passage proved so stuffy that the candle, which had been
burning low and dim, went out, and Sally had to grope her way until
she came once more to a slit in the outer rock, letting in some
light, and fresh puffs of air.
"I can't go on," she told herself, as she relit the lantern, "I
can't"; but she knew that still less could she turn back, since she
was even more afraid of the corners she had passed than of those that
lay before her.
All the time she kept wondering where she was--near the coast, she
imagined, because she could often hear the monotonous thud of the sea
on the rocks, though the gathering dusk hid it from her sight.
"I must be almost under the school," she muttered at last--"I've been
stumbling along here for hours and hours. I think I'll begin calling
Tolly."
But instead she screamed and then screamed again.
Almost on a level with her face, the lantern had shown her bright
eyes staring at her from behind a ledge of rock: and in the same
flash, her imagination had pictured the ghost boy she had invented in
Miss Castle's room and then forgotten. Had she invented him? Mabel
Gosson had given her the idea, that summer afternoon on the beach,
and perhaps he was true after all.
Perhaps ... but as Sally leaned against the wall, wiping her forehead
and trying to keep herself from screaming once more, relief came.
The eyes no longer stared, while the small grey body to which they
evidently belonged scuttled down the ledge of rock and ran off,
showing a patch of white to the lantern.
"A rabbit!" said the girl, and almost laughed, for here was her
theory that the burrows were connected with the caves confirmed: and
with that realisation came new courage and hope.
"Tolly!" she shouted. "Tolly! Tolly!" and went on calling as she
moved forward.