FACULTY MEETING AND BEDLAM.
"Have you proof of this, Miss Pugsley?"
"I am perfectly sure of it, Miss Russell!"
"Yes; I am sure you would be, before you spoke of it; but have you the
proof? Of course, before taking any such serious step as you propose, I
should, in justice to all, be obliged to ask for positive proof."
"Proof!" cried Miss Pugsley, in some excitement. "Proof enough! Look at
my bonnet, Miss Russell. Oblige me by smelling of it. I can never wear
it again, never! I tell you, brandy has been poured over it. Here are
the slippers!" She produced a pair of slippers which were certainly in a
sad condition. "They were nailed--nailed with tenpenny nails, to the
floor of my closet; they are totally ruined. Look--I ask you all,
ladies, to look at my hand-glass!" She held up the glass; and at the
sight Emily Cortlandt had one of those violent fits of coughing that
often troubled her; this one was so bad that she was obliged to leave
the room for a moment. The worst of it was that one or two of the other
teachers seemed to have caught the infection, for there was a regular
outbreak of coughing and choking, which only a severe glance from Miss
Russell checked.
Somebody had painted a face on the little mirror. It covered the whole
surface; the face of a monkey, with grinning mouth, and twinkling,
malicious eyes; it had an undoubted resemblance to Miss Pugsley. As she
held it up with a tragic gesture, the effect was so absurd that even
Miss Russell might have wished that she could--cough!
"It lay on my dressing-table, face downward," Miss Pugsley went on. "I
had just done my hair for tea,--I am scrupulous in such matters,--and
took up the glass to see that my pug was straight behind. I looked--and
saw this. Ladies, I could have fainted on the floor. My nerves being
what they are, it is a marvel that I did not."
"I am very, very sorry, Miss Pugsley," said Miss Russell, gravely. "If I
knew who had done this--"
"But I tell you I do know, Miss Russell!" cried Miss Pugsley,
vindictively. "I tell you that there is only one girl in the school who
is capable of all this, and that girl is Grace Wolfe!"
There was a moment's silence.
"Have you found Grace in your room at any time, Miss Pugsley?" demanded
Miss Russell.
No, Miss Pugsley had not, but that made no difference. Grace had done
the things, there was no shadow of a doubt of it.
"Have you been careful to lock your door when you left the room?"
"Miss Russell, you know that locks and bolts make no possible difference
to Grace Wolfe. The girl is cut out for a malefactor. I prophesy that
she will be in State's prison before she has been out of school a year."
"I must request you not to speak in this way of any of my young ladies,"
said the Principal, sternly. "You have been the victim of some very
malicious practical jokes, Miss Pugsley. I shall look into the matter
thoroughly, and shall do my best to discover the offender, and shall
punish her--or them--as I think best." She laid a slight emphasis on the
last words.
"Then you refuse to expel Grace Wolfe?" said Miss Pugsley, quivering
with anger.
"On such evidence as you have brought forward to-night? certainly," said
Miss Russell, with some severity. "I have no proof whatever that Miss
Wolfe played any of these pranks, though I admit it is probable that she
may have done so. You found the bandbox outside your door, where Bridget
admits she left it several days before. You left your door unlocked on a
rainy half-holiday, when sixty or more girls were constantly passing and
repassing; there are half a dozen girls, I am sorry to say, who might
have been tempted by the open door to play some prank of the kind which
seems so clever to children, and so silly to older people."
Why did Miss Russell look toward the window as she spoke? But now she
was looking at Miss Pugsley again.
"You and Grace are not friends, I know, Miss Pugsley," she went on. "I
am sorry for it, for I think all the rest of us feel how much that is
fine and noble might--may still be brought out of that untamed spirit.
She has never known a mother, remember. The name of the Scapegoat, which
she has given herself, may, I sometimes think, reflect blame on the rest
of us as well as on her. It is true that, whatever mischief is afoot, it
is sure to be laid at Grace's door. This is mainly her own fault, of
course--"
"I should think so!" snorted Miss Pugsley.
"But not entirely," the Principal went on. "There are other mischievous
girls in the school. I should like to know how Grace has been doing this
month in her various classes," she added, turning to the other teachers.
On this point the testimony was unanimous. Grace Wolfe led many of the
classes; she was well up in all, and had passed her examinations in a
way that did credit both to her intelligence and her industry. Thus
testified every teacher, except the small brown mouse who taught drawing
in Pentland School. This mouse, Miss Mink by name, had crept away
silently, and left the room, after one glance at the hand-glass; she
knew that but one hand in the school could have drawn that monkey, and
though her heart swelled with pride, she feared for her darling pupil.
There was a pause after the teachers had given their testimony; then
Miss Pugsley returned to the attack.
"I certainly hope justice will be done, Miss Russell," she said, with a
smile of sweetened vinegar. "It would be a great pity, wouldn't it, if
the school got the reputation--he! he!--of injustice and favouritism?"
"It would," said the Principal, gravely.
"But there is another matter that I feel bound to speak of before we
separate," Miss Pugsley went on. "Are you aware that room No. 18, in
corridor A, the room formerly occupied by Miss Lightwood, is again being
used as a place of exit for parties of students going on lawless
expeditions?"
The Principal looked at her steadily.
"I fear that is true," said one of the other teachers. "I had meant to
speak to you before about it, Miss Russell, but waited till to-night."
"Of course it makes no possible difference to me!" cried Miss Pugsley.
"It is not my corridor, and I have no authority there; but as long as
one is in the school, of course one must consider the honour of it, you
know, and I am glad some one else is here to bear me out in _this_
complaint."
The Principal still looked at Miss Pugsley; teachers who had been long
in the school were glad that she was not looking at them in that way.
"I have heard of this matter before," Miss Russell said, at last. "I am
going to devote my own time to investigating it, and think I shall need
no help; though I thank you," it was to Miss Ivors that she spoke, "for
bringing it to my notice, as it was right for you to do. I think I need
not detain you longer, ladies."
When the teachers were gone, Miss Russell stepped to the window and
said, softly, "Grace!"
There was no reply. An owl hooted in the distance; a bird chirped
somewhere near by. That was all.
"Grace!" said the Principal again. "If you are there, I wish you would
come in and let me speak to you."
Still no reply. After waiting a moment, the Principal closed the window
with a sigh. On leaving the room she paused a moment to look at the
photograph of a lovely young woman, in the dress of twenty years ago,
which stood on her desk.
"Dear Edith!" said Miss Russell. "My first pupil! I'll keep your girl
for you, Edith, if I can!"
* * * * *
Was Grace Wolfe outside the window when the Principal called her? Who
can tell? It is certain that ten minutes after she was at the supper in
Bedlam.
The tenant of Bedlam, Miss Cornelia Hatch (familiarly known as Colney
Hatch, in remembrance of the famous English Insane Asylum), was not
actually mad, though many of the scholars thought her so. She was a
special student of natural history, botany, and zoology; she was
absent-minded and forgetful to the last degree. When she came into
class, she often had to be brought there, some good-natured classmate
dragging her away by main force from her private experiments. If she did
remember to come of her own accord, she was apt to have a half-completed
articulation hanging around her neck, or a dried frog skin stuck behind
her ear for safe-keeping. Her hair was generally untidy, owing to this
habit of sticking things in it while she worked; you never could tell
what it would be, vertebrae, or seaweed, or pine-cones, but you could
safely reckon on finding something extraneous in Colney's ruffled black
hair. As for her clothes, she was usually enveloped in a huge brown
gingham apron, with many pockets, which held snakes, or eggs, or roots,
or anything else that would not go comfortably in her hair. When the
apron became too dirty (she had had two at the beginning of the term,
but one had been destroyed in an explosion), Miss Carey took it away
and washed it, while Colney went around looking scared and miserable in
a queer flannel gown of a pinkish shade. Report said it had once been
brown, but that the colour had been changed by the fumes of something or
other, no one knew what. Sometimes she had buttons on frock and apron,
more often not. Periodically, Miss Carey or the Owls descended upon her,
and sewed on her buttons and mended her up generally; and she was very
grateful, and said how nice it was to have buttons. But she soon pulled
them off again, because she never had time to do anything but tear her
clothes off when she went to bed, and drag them on again when she got
up. When a button flew off, she pinned the place over, if a pin was in
sight; if not, she went without; it made no difference to her, and she
was not conscious of it in five minutes. Miss Russell, and most of the
teachers, were very tender with Colney. She was poor, and meant to work
her way through college; even now she paid part of her schooling by
stuffing birds and setting up skeletons for one of the college
professors. If she did not kill herself or somebody else before she
graduated, Miss Russell looked forward to a distinguished career for the
tenant of Bedlam; so, as I have said, she was tender and patient with
her; and good Miss Carey mended her when she could, and saw that she
remembered to eat her dinner, and Miss Boyle and Miss Mink rejoiced over
her, and Miss Cortlandt led her gently through English literature,
giving her Walton and Bacon and all the scientific men of letters that
she could find. Only one teacher failed to do her best to smooth poor
Colney's path through school; that was Miss Pugsley. Rhetoric was simply
an empty noise to the girl. She never by any chance knew a lesson, and
Miss Pugsley lashed her with so cruel a tongue that Peggy used to ache
and smart for her as well as for herself, and would get hold of Colney's
hand and hold it and squeeze it, growing red the while with pity and
anger. But Colney never noticed it half as much as Peggy did; she used
to look at the angry teacher for a few minutes in an abstracted kind of
way, and then retire within herself and make imaginary experiments.
This was what happened on the dreadful day when Miss Pugsley said:
"The subject of this sentence is _I_. How do we go to work to form the
predicate, Miss Hatch?"
Cornelia started, but replied, instantly:
"By mixing one part hydrogen with three parts--"
"Indeed!" said Miss Pugsley, with ominous calm. "And what happens next,
pray?"
"It turns green, and explodes with a loud report."
And this was exactly what did happen. Poor Colney!
Peggy Montfort did not form one of the party in Bedlam that night. The
room lay at the extreme end of the corridor, round a corner, so that it
was in a manner shut off from the rest of the wing. It was an
extraordinary place. Stretched on the walls, dried or drying, were
specimens of every possible variety,--bats, frogs, snake skins, bird
skins. Along the mantelpiece were jars and bottles, all containing other
specimens preserved in spirits. In one corner stood part of a human
skeleton. It stood on one leg, with a jaunty air, having indeed but one
leg to stand on; both arms were wanting, but the skull, which was a very
fine one, made up for much. On account of this fragmentary skeleton, few
of the younger girls ever dared to enter Bedlam, and some of them would
run past the door with face averted, and beating heart, fearing lest the
door should be open and they should catch a glimpse of the gruesome
thing. But this object was the pride of Colney's heart. She could not,
of course, afford to buy a whole skeleton, so she was collecting one,
bit by bit; even Peggy had been quite uncomfortable one day, when Colney
had told her, hanging over each bone with delight, where and how she had
come by each one. It was always honestly, one could be sure of that.
Everywhere in the room, underfoot and overhead, were setting-boards and
pill-boxes, blowpipes and crucibles. One could not move without
upsetting something; and yet it was here that the Gang came to have its
annual supper.
Colney Hatch was dissecting a mouse. She was perfectly happy, and
oblivious of the world, when the door opened, and in came fluttering the
wild spirits of the junior and sophomore classes. Last year the
sophomores had been freshmen, and must not know anything about the Gang,
save in wondering envious whispers and surmises. Next year the juniors
would be seniors, and they too must forget that such a thing as the Gang
had been, and think only of dramatics, examinations, and graduation.
Such had been the unwritten law at Miss Russell's, since time was.
Here were Vanity and Vexation of Spirit, one smiling and dimpling, the
other with her usual air of blase superiority. Here was Blanche Haight,
the leader among the sophomores; here were six or eight girls, in fact,
chosen from the two classes for the same characteristics, lawlessness
and love of fun; last but not least, here was Grace Wolfe, the
acknowledged leader and queen of the Gang, when she deigned to be so.
Grace was in her wildest mood to-night. She danced solemnly around poor
Colney, who looked up in dismay from her mouse as the silent crowd came
pouring in, and assured her that her last hour was come.
"We are the Secret Tribunal!" she cried. "We have come to make a pile of
all your rubbish, Colney, and burn it, with you on top, like the
Phoenix. I am sure you would come up out of the ashes, if we left the
mouse out for you to finish."
"Oh, do be careful, please, Goat!" cried Colney Hatch. "Don't sit down
on that frog, he isn't dry! Dear me! do you--do want anything, girls?"
"We want your room, my love; and your company!" replied Grace. "Yet we
are merciful. Here!"
She twirled Cornelia's chair around, and set her with her face to the
wall; then moved the lamp so that its light fell on the board in her
lap.
"There!" she said. "Finish him, poor old dear, and we'll wake you up
when supper's ready. Now then! who's brought what?"
Then, from pockets, from surplice folds, from shawls and cloaks hung
carelessly over the arm, came forth a strange array of articles. One
had brought a chicken, one a cake. Here was a Dutch cheese, a tin of
crackers, a bottle of coffee, a bottle of olives, and a box of sardines.
Grace herself told in high glee how she had met one of the teachers in
the corridor, and had stood for five minutes talking about the next
day's lesson. "And with this under me cloak the while!" and with a
dramatic gesture she produced and held out a dish of lobster salad.
"If it had been potato," she declared, "I had been lost; the onion had
betrayed me. Blessings on the bland, the seductive mayonnaise, which
veiled the ardent lobster and his smell. She did smell it, however, and
said, so cheerfully, poor dear, that Miss Carey was evidently going to
give us a surprise to-morrow, for she smelt lobster. It was Miss
Cortlandt, too; I did want to say, 'Oh, come along, and have some!' She
is a rectangular fragment of baked clay, used for building purposes,
Miss Cortlandt is."
"What do you mean, Goat?" asked some one.
"I never use slang, as you know!" replied Grace, gravely. "It argues a
poverty of intellect, as well as a small vocabulary. I suppose you would
have said she was a brick, my child."
"Oh, Goat, how funny you are!" giggled the girls.
"Not at all, I assure you," said Grace, unmoved. "But I pray you fall
to! Have some salad, Vanity? yes, I'll take a wing, thank you."
"Isn't this perf'ly fine?" cried Viola Vincent. They were all seated by
this time, some on the floor, others wherever they could find a few
inches of spare room, and were dispensing the viands with reckless
liberality. "I say! I wish we had these every week, instead of only once
a year. Why, it's just as easy! Oh, what an elegant cream pie! Give me
some!"
"No!" said Grace Wolfe, with emphasis.
"Why not? What's the matter, Goat?"
"I will _not_ have pies called elegant while I am leader of this Gang,"
said Grace. "Take my life, if you will, but spare my feelings!"
"All right," said Viola, cheerily. "Your own way, Goat. I'd just as lief
call it dandy, and it _is_ dandy, you can't deny that."
"Perhaps the Goat is thinking of succeeding her Puggy in the rhetoric
chair!" said Blanche Haight, with a sneer.
"Perhaps I am thinking of stopping your--" began Grace; but she checked
herself, and turned away abruptly.
"Look at Colney!" said Vivia Varnham. "Isn't she too perfectly killing?
She doesn't know we are here, I believe. Look at her hair, girls! It
gets more ratty, not to say woozzy, every day. I wonder when she brushed
it last."
"Possibly when you brushed your manners," said the Scapegoat. "Colney is
our hostess, I beg to remind you. And nobody giving her a bite of
supper!"
She rose from the floor, piled a plate with good things, and went over
to the corner where Colney Hatch was bending over her mouse, conscious
of nothing else.
"Here, Colney; here's your supper."
"Oh, thank you, Grace," said Colney, looking up for a moment. "But I
can't, you know. Both my hands are full, you see."
"Then open your mouth," commanded the Scapegoat, in tones of authority.
Colney obeyed meekly, and Grace stood over her, feeding her like a baby
with the choicest morsels, and now and then casting a glance over her
shoulder at the others. Grace's gaiety was fitful to-night, certainly.
When she first came in she had been the life of the party; now, as she
stood there in the corner, her brow was overcast, her eyes gloomy. What
ailed the Lone Wolf?
What were they saying over there? They, at least, were at the very
height of glee, breaking into gusts of giggling, into whisperings ending
in squeaks and smothered screams.
"To-morrow night? Hurrah! Through Broadway, of course."
"Freshy? Oh, Freshy won't say anything. She wouldn't dare to, in the
first place."
"She'd dare fast enough," said Viola. "She isn't afraid of anything,
Freshy isn't. But she's safe, she won't say anything."
"What's all this?" demanded the Scapegoat, coming back with the empty
plate. "Plans? Does one hear them?"
"The apples are all gone," said Kitty Green. "We're going for some
to-morrow night, Goat. You'll go, too, of course?"
"Going out through Broadway," said Viola. "We haven't been out for more
than a week, and the moon will be nearly full to-morrow. It'll be
perf'ly fine, Goat, won't it?"
"Veto!" said Grace, calmly.
"Veto? Why, what do you mean?"
"What's wrong?"
"What has happened?"
"Nothing has happened. Boots are no longer free, that's all."
"Do speak English, Grace Wolfe! What do you mean?"
"There--are--to--be--no more--free-booting expeditions--through
Broadway. Is that sufficiently plain, or shall I spell the words?"
Blanche Haight rose to her feet, several of the other girls following
her. "What is the matter with you to-night, Goat?" she said. "We don't
seem to succeed in satisfying you. Aren't we good enough company for
you, perhaps?" And Blanche sneered in her own particular manner, of
which she was proud.
"I make no remarks," said the Scapegoat, in her quietest tones. "I have
not been personal. I merely say, while I lead this Gang, there will be
no more expeditions through Broadway."
"And how long do you suppose you will lead this Gang, if you play the
part of Pope and emperor?" demanded Blanche.
The other girls began to murmur and protest at this. "Listen to the
Goat!" said one and another. "She must have some reason, or she wouldn't
act so."
But Grace seized her opportunity.
"How long?" she repeated. "Not an hour! not a second! I resign. My last
act is to break up this meeting. To your tents, O Israel!"
Then arose such a confusion of whispering, exclaiming, disclaiming,
entreating, protesting, that no one voice could be heard. The owner of
the room, fairly roused for a moment (but indeed she had finished the
mouse), turned round to see what was wrong. For a moment she saw the
two leaders, Grace and Blanche, facing each other, the one pale and
quiet, the other red with anger, her eyes darting spiteful flames. Next
moment, Grace made a single quick movement, and the room was in
darkness. She had blown out the lamp.
"To your tents!" she repeated, sternly. And, hurrying, whispering,
stumbling over the remains of their feast scattered on the floor, the
frightened girls obeyed.