A CRISIS
Fully as bewildered as the girls she had left behind her, Beverly went
quickly to Miss Woodhull's study. So far as she could recollect nothing
could be scored against her deportment unless, at this late date her wild
gallop to Kilton Hall had become known, or the presence of Athol and
Archie at the Hallowe'en frolic had been discovered. True, she had
recognized Athol and his companion as they were leaving the gymnasium
that afternoon, but she did not believe that any one else had. As to any
foreknowledge of that prank she had not had the slightest. So her
conscience was quite clear on that score anyway. She tapped at the door
and was bidden enter. Miss Woodhull's expression as she looked at Beverly
was most forbidding.
"Good-evening, Miss Woodhull. Miss Stetson said you wished to see me."
Utterly ignoring the greeting, Miss Woodhull thrust toward Beverly the
incriminating letter, at the same time demanding: "Who has had the
audacity to send such a thing as this to you while you are a pupil in my
school?"
Beverly started at sight of the lost love billet, Miss Woodhull noted the
start and a sneer curved her set lips.
"No one sent it to me, Miss Woodhull," she answered calmly.
"You will probably add that you have never seen it before."
Beverly did not reply.
"Answer me at once."
"Yes, I have seen it before."
"Where did you last see it?"
"In my English history book."
"How came it there, pray?"
"I put it there myself."
"And yet you have the temerity to tell me that it is not yours? Are you
in the habit of reading letters which are addressed to other people?"
"Was the letter addressed, Miss Woodhull? It was not even in an envelope
when it came into my possession."
"You have no doubt destroyed the envelope. Nevertheless, I must insist
upon knowing who wrote that letter."
"I cannot tell you, Miss Woodhull. I have never looked at the signature."
"How dare you resort to such fencing with me? You cannot evade a direct
answer, for I have resolved to learn the writer's name, and report him to
the principal of his school," asserted Miss Woodhull, jumping at
conclusions.
"I cannot tell you the writer's name."
"You mean that you _will_ not. But, I warn you, this obstinacy only adds
to the gravity of the situation."
"It is not obstinacy, Miss Woodhull; I do not know it."
"Yet you admit having had this open letter in your possession and insist
that it is not your own? A curious combination, to say the least," was
the sarcastic retort.
"I had the letter, but it is not mine. I never read it, and I do not know
the writer's name." This was entirely true, Beverly had never heard dear
"Reggie's" surname.
"Perhaps you are likewise ignorant of the identity of the two people who
masqueraded as Tweedle-dee and Jack o' Lantern?"
"They were my brother and his friend Archie," was the prompt reply.
"Ah! Then you will admit something of this intrigue."
"If it can be called by so portentious a name," answered Beverly smiling.
That smile acted like a match to gunpowder. Miss Woodhull's temper and
self-control vanished together, and for a few moments Beverly was the
object of a scathing volley of sarcastic invective. As it waxed hotter
and hotter Beverly grew colder and colder, though her eyes and cheeks
were blazing.
"It is useless to keep up this silly deception. You may as well try to
make me believe that you were not aware of the presence of your brother
and your silly sweetheart disguised as girls this afternoon, and that you
did not lay the whole disgraceful plan for them to escape at the rear of
the grounds." Miss Woodhull did not confide to Beverly that she had been
most beautifully hoodwinked by those same girls, who had actually gone
into the reception room, partaken of the "eats" with the other guests,
held charmingly lisping conversations with two or three of the faculty,
Miss Woodhull included, who had afterward commented upon the "charming
manners of the two young girls who had come from Luray," they having so
informed that lady.
"Sweetheart?" repeated Beverly in amazement. It was the one word which
burned itself into her brain. The tone in which she echoed it ought to
have enlightened Miss Woodhull. "Archie my sweetheart?"
"I dare say that is what you call him, since he so terms you in this
missive," sneered Miss Woodhull.
"Archie is like an older brother to me, Miss Woodhull. We were raised
together," said Beverly with a simple dignity which should have
prohibited further taunts of the kind.
"Raised?" queried the lady. "Do you class yourself with the vegetable or
the lower animal kingdom?"
"I think you must have heard that expression used before in Virginia,"
was the quiet reply, though her cheeks grew a deeper red, and had Mrs.
Ashby been present, and occupying the tribunal it is safe to assume that
she would have been prepared for something to happen right speedily.
Indeed it was a wonder something had not happened long ago.
"It is just such barbarisms of speech that I have spent a quarter of a
century in a vain endeavor to eliminate from the extraordinary vocabulary
of this section of the United States, but I recognize it to be a Sisyphus
task. That, however, is aside the question. The vital ones at this moment
are: By whom was this letter written? When did you receive it? What is
the meaning of its contents, and how you could have had the audacity to
hold clandestine meetings with this young man? Also, how many times he
has actually forced himself into my school disguised as a girl?"
In a slow even voice Beverly replied to each question:
"I do not know the name of the person who wrote that letter. I never
received it. I can not tell you the meaning of the contents because I do
not know them. I have never held any clandestine meetings with Athol or
Archie, and so far as I knew until after the game today they had been in
this school but once. At that time I knew they were coming and we did it
partly for a lark and partly because I wanted so terribly to see Athol."
A little catch came into her voice just there. Miss Woodhull wholly
misinterpreted the reason for it and murmured sarcastically:
_"Athol."_
"Yes, my twin brother, Miss Woodhull. I do not expect _you_ to understand
what we have always been to each other. As to their presence here this
afternoon, I knew absolutely nothing of it until Athol pitched his muff
into the air and gave our old yell of victory at the end of the game,"
and Beverly nearly laughed at the recollection of her start when the old
familiar sound fell upon her ears, and the memory of the way in which
that muff had hurtled into the air.
"Your mirth is most ill-timed, Miss Ashby. This is by no means a
facetious occasion, please understand. I do not lightly tolerate the
infringement of my rules, as you will learn to your cost. If, as you
state, you are ignorant of the contents of this letter you may now read
it aloud in my presence. Perhaps that may refresh your memory and enable
you to answer _truthfully_ the other questions."
Miss Woodhull held the letter toward Beverly. The girl did not stir.
"Did you understand my command?"
"I did, Miss Woodhull. I have already told you the entire truth, but I
must decline to read that letter because it is not mine."
"Decline! Decline!" almost shrieked the infuriated principal. "Do you
dare defy my commands?"
"I do not wish to defy your orders, Miss Woodhull, but I can not read
someone else's letter."
Beverly's voice was trembling partly from nervousness, partly from
outraged pride.
"You shall read that letter to me whether it is yours or not though I
have not the slightest doubt that it is yours, and that you are trying to
shield yourself behind some purely fictitious person. You seem to possess
a lively imagination."
Beverly stood rigid. Miss Woodhull waited.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to give a name to your fictitious
being?"
"I do know to whom that letter was sent, for I saw her drop it. I picked
it up to return it to her, but before I could do so it disappeared from
my history. I could not help reading the first line because it stood out
so plainly before me when I picked the letter from the floor. I know
nothing further of its contents, and I do not wish to. That line was
silly enough. The girl did not know what had become of it until I went to
her later and told her about finding it and also about its loss
afterward. From that moment to this I have never laid eyes upon it, and I
wish I never had seen it at all. You may believe me or not as you choose,
but until I came into this school such things had never entered my head,
and mother and Uncle Athol would be perfectly disgusted with the whole
showdown. And so am I." Beverly paused for want of breath.
_"Who dropped that letter?"_ The words were in italics, notwithstanding
the fact that some vague doubts were beginning to form in the back of the
principal's brain.
"Do you for one second think that I will tell you?" blazed Beverly.
"I am very positive that you will tell me without a moment's delay, or
you will be suspended from this school within twenty-four hours, if not
expelled. Her name! At once!"
"I shall never tell you no matter what you do to me. What do you take me
for? How _dare_ you think me capable of such a low-down, mucker trick?"
Unconsciously she had lapsed into Athol's vernacular. It was the last
touch to Miss Woodhull's wrath. She actually flew up out of her chair and
catching Beverly by her shoulders shook her soundly. Then it all happened
in a flash. Miss Woodhull was a tall woman and a large woman as well. She
weighed at least one-hundred-seventy pounds. But from lack of proper
exercise (she loathed walking) and the enjoyment of the many luxuries
which the past successful years had made possible, she was exactly like a
well-modeled India rubber figure.
Beverly was tall for a girl not yet sixteen, and as the result of having
grown up with two active healthy boys, and having done every earthly
thing which they had done, she was a living, vital bunch of energy and
well-developed muscles, and fully as strong as Athol.
Never since tiny childhood when Mammy Riah had smacked her for some
misdeed, or her mother had spanked her for some real transgression, had
hand been laid upon her excepting in a caress. That any human being could
so lose her self-control as to resort to such methods of correction she
would not have believed possible.
Then in a flash all the fighting blood of the Ashbys and Seldons boiled,
and with a cry of outraged feelings Beverly Ashby laid hold of Miss
Woodhull's flabby arms with a pair of slender muscular hands, backed her
by main force against the chair which she had so hastily vacated, and
plumped that dumbfounded lady down upon it with a force which made her
teeth crack together, as she cried indignantly:
"How dare you touch me! How dare you!"
Then with a whirl she was across the room, out of the door and up the
stairs to Study 10, which she entered like a cyclone and rushed across
into her bedroom, slamming and locking the door.
What mental processes took place behind that locked door her astonished
room-mates, who had been eagerly awaiting her return, could not even
guess, and dared not venture to inquire. Not a sound came from the room.
"What do you suppose has happened?" asked Sally breathlessly.
"Something a good deal more serious than we have any idea of. Beverly
Ashby is not the kind of girl to look or act like that without a mighty
good cause. Did you notice her face? It frightened me," was Aileen's awed
reply.
"What can we do?" asked Sally in deep distress.
"Not one single, solitary thing, and that's the very worst of it. We
don't even know what has happened," and the two girls began to prepare
for bed in a bewildered sort of way.
Meanwhile down in that perfectly appointed study a very dazed woman sat
rigid and silent. For the very first time in all her life she had
encountered a will stronger than her own, had met in the person of an
individual only a quarter of her own age a force which had literally and
figuratively swept her off her feet and set at naught a resolution which
she believed to be indomitable. And worst of all, it had all come to pass
because she had lost her self-control. Up to her own outbreak Miss
Woodhull was forced to admit that Beverly had been absolutely courteous.
It was purely her own act which had precipitated that climax. For fully
half an hour she sat as one stunned, then she said, and the words almost
hissed from her colorless lips:
"I shall make an example of her! She shall be expelled in disgrace!"
though then and there she resolved that none should ever learn of that
final scene, and--well--somehow, though she could not explain her
conviction, she knew that the outside world would never learn of it
through Beverly.