JUDITH'S DISCOVERY
"I'll never again say that the literary instinct is a burden and a
reproach, Ju," said Patricia, with her eyes dancing and her head high.
"Your thirst for 'plots' has proved too serviceable for me ever to
point the finger of scorn in its direction."
It was a brisk, sunny day, and they were waiting for Elinor on the
steps of the Academy. Judith was looking very happy, and Patricia,
while she had a perturbed air, was no less triumphant in her manner.
"I wonder what keeps Elinor? She's awfully late," complained Judith,
shifting on one foot. "Let's go in and have lunch without her."
Patricia shook her head decisively.
"Not much. You'll wait here in solitude till she comes. I'm not going
to have you spout it out before any old person, and get us into hot
water, perhaps. Here's Elinor now. Come on, Norn, we're about dead,
standing on these flinty-hearted steps. Got the sandwiches you
promised?"
Elinor showed a neat parcel tucked under her muff-arm. "Chicken and
lettuce," she said delectably. "White grapes for dessert. Have you
seen Margaret Howes and Griffin?"
Patricia nodded as she held the door wide for Elinor. "Griffin said
she'd be ready for us, and Margaret Howes is coming straight down from
composition class."
Elinor glanced at them as she went in. "You two look remarkably
hilarious," she said casually. "Is it the spring in the air or the
prospect of a festive lunch that so illuminates you?"
"Both and more too," laughed Patricia. "We've got a surprise for you,
Norn, but we won't tell till we've had lunch; will we, Ju?"
"Not till the very last crumb is done for," declared Judith,
emphatically, putting down her parcels on the dressing-room couch.
"You may not like it very much, Elinor----"
"Nonsense! Don't put such ideas in her head," cried Patricia stabbing
her hat-pins into her hat to secure it on the hanger. "Of course,
she'll be sorry for part of it, but right is right, and justice ought
to be done. But there, I'll blab it all myself if I don't look out.
Hurry up, Judy, let's get the cocoa stewing while Elinor prinks."
They had the table arranged in gala array, and the cocoa steaming in
its receptacle, before Elinor and Margaret Howes joined them.
"Griffin says not to wait--she's got to finish stretching a canvas,"
Margaret Howes told them, but Patricia and Judith would not hear to
beginning the little feast without the staunch and genial Griffin.
"There's no hurry, anyway," insisted Patricia. "The cocoa will keep
hot on the corner of the stove and the rest of the things don't matter.
You girls haven't any classes this afternoon, so we have an eternity to
feed in."
They loitered about the room, chatting at various tables, and were
taken by surprise at last by the breathless arrival of their late
guest. She hailed them with an air of the bearer of important news,
and as soon as they were ensconced in their corner with the cocoa
safely bestowed on a stool at Patricia's right hand, she opened her
heart.
"Awful row in the Committee room," she announced gleefully. "Good old
Greenie marched right in to the grave and reverend seniors while they
were in session just now, and she gave them ballyhoo. _She_ called it
a remonstrance in the cause of justice, but, my word, it was ripping!"
"What was it all about?" asked Patricia, much diverted by the picture
of the mournful monitor facing the dreaded Board. "What did she say?"
Griffin chuckled. "You see, I was in the ante-room, cataloguing the
prints--you know I got that job last week. Well, the Board was droning
on in the big room in their usual uninteresting fashion and I was deep
in admiration of a Rembrandt etching--that one with the hat and the
open window behind him--when Green sails past me, head up and majesty
writ large on her bulging brow. She always does put on lugs when she
reports to the Committee, so I didn't sit up and take notice right
away. But in a minute or two I came to life, I can tell you! She was
rolling off the sentences about 'injustice to a high-minded student'
and 'unnecessary humiliation' and 'reparation to one who was an
ornament to any school,' and a lot of other junk like that. I tell
you, I could have hugged the old girl! The Board just sat still, like
school-boys caught stealing jam, and she went on, getting more flowery
all the time."
"But what--" began Patricia again.
Griffin waved her to silence. "All of a sudden she seemed to realize
that she was giving them a drubbing instead of a gentle rebuke. She
hauled in her sails and stood winking at them behind her huge
spectacles, while they all sat staring at her. It was a picture, I can
tell you. Then dear old Farrer cleared his throat in that nervous way
he has, and he bowed to Bottle Green as though she were the finest
ever. 'We have heard with surprise and I am sure with regret,' he
says, 'Miss Green's account of this matter. I think we will all agree
that an investigation should be undertaken, and if there has been
injustice done, such reparation as is possible shall be made.' Then
they came and closed the door and I lit out for here. You've got a
fine champion, Kendall Major, and we'll all see you through if it comes
to a public demonstration, you can gamble on that!"
Elinor's face was perplexed. "But I don't see what can be done," she
said gently. "I'd hate to have the thing dragged up before the school
again. Of course, if it had been denied right then and there, I'd have
been very glad, but now, after all these days----"
"It's only a week," protested Margaret Howes, firmly. "We had to wait
till the Board met, you know."
"They can make an announcement, just as the prize announcement was
made," explained Griffin, drumming impatiently on the table. "You may
be too modest to be there, but it can be put through without you, and
you will be cleared, don't you see?"
"Is Miss Green still in the Committee room?" asked Patricia suddenly.
"Of course," returned Griffin, shortly. "She had other reports to
make. She usually stays about half an hour, she'll be longer today.
Why?"
"I thought I'd like to have her here," she said, with a sidelong glance
at Judith. "We've found out something about----"
She stopped, trying to arrange her speech so as to present the intended
disclosure in the clearest form possible, but Judith, whose cheeks had
been burning at Griffin's account of the interview in the Committee
room, took the words out of her mouth.
"We've found out all about it!" she cried triumphantly. "Doris
Leighton copied Elinor's design, and put it in ahead of Elinor! I know
all about it, and I'll tell Miss Green and the whole committee, too, if
I have to!"
Griffin was the first of the three to recover. She leaned forward, a
thin, eager hand on Judith's arm.
"Say that again, young one," she demanded imperatively. "Make it good
and plain this time."
Judith repeated her startling statement, adding that she had proof for
everything she said. Her manner was so genuine and convincing that
Griffin started up with a quick gesture of command.
"Don't say another word till I get back," she said, authoritatively,
and was gone before any questions could be formed.
They sat in absolute silence, absently watching the occupants of the
now nearly deserted tables straggle out in twos and threes, until the
room was quite empty, and Patricia could bear it no longer.
"We don't have to petrify, do we?" she said, with a nervous ripple.
"Griffin may keep us sitting here for hours----"
Judith's dramatic sense asserted itself, and she frowned at Patricia's
frivolous interruption of the portentous silence.
"Do be still, Miss Pat," she said sedately. "We've waited two whole
days already--five minutes more won't hurt us."
Margaret Howes glanced at Elinor, as she sat quietly with chin in one
pink palm, her brows drawn level and her dark eyes steady and
thoughtful.
"You're a wonder, Kendall Major," she broke out. "Here am I all
fluffed up and on positive pins and needles over this affair, while you
are as calm as a picture. Don't you feel excited? Aren't you wild to
hear what it is?"
Elinor laid her hands on the table and Patricia could see that the
fingers were twisted together until the knuckles showed white.
"Of course, I am anxious," she said evenly. "But I've had a different
sort of life from most girls, and it's taught me that there's always a
lot more to any surprise than we're looking for. I've been wondering
just how much pain there's going to be, back of the pleasure of being
set right in the eyes of the school."
"There oughtn't to be any for _you_," said Margaret Howes, impulsively
laying her hand on Elinor's. "There isn't anything coming to you but
plain every-day satisfaction in getting your rights."
"Ah, but how about Doris?" questioned Elinor sadly. "Isn't she to be
remembered?"
"Why should she be?" returned the other warmly. "Did she have any
thought for anything but her own parade when she pretended to be sorry
for you? There's such a thing as carrying virtue too far, my dear
girl, and I think you're straining your charity with too fine a sieve."
Elinor smiled a wistful little puckered smile. "Perhaps I am rather
lop-sided in my feelings," she confessed. "I always feel so dreadfully
sorry for the wrong-doers, and the less they care the sorrier I am."
Patricia had opened her lips to sustain Margaret Howes' point of view,
when Griffin, followed by Miss Green, came breathlessly in to the room.
"Now we're all ready," she said eagerly when they had made room for the
generous figure of the monitor. "Fire away with your tale, young one,
and don't spare the details. We're game for any length of story, so
long as you can prove it."
Judith, with her cheeks flushing and paling and her composed tones
carrying conviction, laid the story of her discoveries before them,
telling them how she had thought of it first "for fun, like a plot for
a story," and then how she had remembered that Doris Leighton had
Elinor's keys with access to the locker where the two studies for the
prize designs were left that night that Elinor was taken ill; how she
had discovered through Doris' younger sister that Doris had made her
study for the Roberts prize from a little rough color sketch "just like
Elinor had."
"I'd heard her say the Saturday that Miss Jinny came to see us that she
never made sketches beforehand," said Judith, earnestly. "And she told
Patricia the very day Elinor fainted that she hadn't begun her study.
So I pretended to myself that we were all in a story, and I thought and
thought what I should make of it if I were reading about it all instead
of living in it. Then I saw that the thing to do was to find out if
Doris Leighton had the little color sketch that she used for her study,
and compare it with Elinor's."
Here Elinor gave a start, and then composed herself as Judith went on.
"I hunted and hunted for Elinor's, which I knew very well, for it was
made on the back of one of my old tablets, but I couldn't find it.
Geraldine couldn't find the one Doris used either, and then I got
awfully interested. I told Geraldine that I was making up a story and
I wanted to act it all out in life, and she was glad to help. She was
mad at Doris anyway, and so she hunted everywhere for her sketch, but
she couldn't find it. I was pretty near giving up then, for I thought
I was mistaken; but the men were just making ready to take out
Leighton's ashes when I thought, like a flash, 'There's where it would
be, if anywhere,' and I told Geraldine. So we got sticks and we
rummaged. My gracious, but it was dusty!"
Patricia gave a gasp of comprehension. "That's what made you so grimy
that day Mrs. Halden came in for tea!" she exclaimed.
Judith nodded. "We found it!" she went on, growing more excited as the
end approached. "We found it, all in little bits, along with other
stuff from Doris' waste basket!"
The girls looked at one another in shamed silence. The actual
discovery of the deception was so much more disconcerting than they had
foreseen. They seemed to visualize Doris Leighton as she tore those
guilty fragments and hid them in the rubbish, and the sight sickened
them.
Griffin held out a hand for Judith's envelope. "You'll verify these,
Kendall?" she said brusquely, pushing the bulky oblong across the table
to Elinor.
Spread out on the cloth, the scraps pieced perfectly into the study
that Elinor had made for the Roberts prize. The back showed the stamp
of the Keystone tablet, with Judith's name partly erased and Doris'
scribbled over it.
"It's my sketch," admitted Elinor in a low tone. "I missed it the next
day, but I thought Miss Pat had dropped it when she brought my things
home to me. My study was almost done, and I forgot all about it after
that."
There was a disconcerting silence, while Judith breathed hard and kept
her eyes glued on Miss Green.
Suddenly Patricia spoke. "It's a horrid mess, and I'm sorry that it
had to come out, but there's no use shirking, is there? If someone, no
matter who, stole your hat, you'd feel they should be brought to
justice. Isn't stealing an idea a lot worse? I don't really think you
ought to feel so badly, Elinor. If Doris Leighton could do such a
thing, and then be friends with you afterward, she isn't worth breaking
your heart over. I felt badly enough when Ju told me, but I've kept
getting madder and madder, as I've seen how she goes on acting her part
of kind friend to you."
Miss Green rose majestically and Griffin sprang up at the same time.
"I shall ask to be allowed to have the evidence," said the impressive
representative of justice. "There is no time to be lost. Come, Miss
Griffin, I shall need you and Miss Howes too."
At the door she turned, with expansive kindliness.
"Do not distress yourself, my dear Miss Kendall," she said,
benignantly. "There is no cause for apprehension. Absolute secrecy
and perfect amenity will prevail. You will be sent for later perhaps,
but nothing unpleasant will occur. Depend upon it, the Board will
welcome this revelation of the true state of affairs, and will do its
duty gently."