A SUDDEN RESOLVE
The first three weeks of term slipped away with little to mark their
going. Rhoda was sweetly polite to Dorothy in public, but on the rare
occasions when the two met with no one else within sight or hearing,
then the ugly spirit that was in Rhoda came uppermost, and words of
spite slipped off her tongue. It was almost as if she was daring Dorothy
to speak of that incident which occurred in the showrooms of Messrs.
Sharman and Song. For the first two weeks Dorothy had been top, but the
third week Rhoda was above her—a fiercely triumphant Rhoda this time,
for it had been a heavy struggle, and by nature she was not fond of
work.
Dorothy had not been able to do her best at work that week; the term was
going so fast—the end was coming nearer and nearer. She felt she could
win the Bursary if only she could be free in her mind that she had a
right to it. It was the fear in her heart that she was in honour barred
from the right to strive for it which was doing her work so much harm
just now.
Her mental trouble had to be kept to herself—it would have done no good
to go about wearing a face as long as a fiddle. This would have excited
comment directly: it would probably have ended in the doctor being
called to see her, and he would have stopped her work. Oh no! She had
just to wear a smiling face and carry herself in a care-free manner,
taking her part in every bit of fun and frolic that came her way.
It was in the early mornings that the trouble hit her hardest. She would
wake very early, when the day was breaking and all the birds were
starting their day with a riot of bird music. Then she would lie
sleepless until the rising-bell rang, and she would search and grope in
her mind for a way out of the muddle.
She was lying in this fashion one morning while a cuckoo called outside
her window and a blackbird trilled from the top of an elm tree growing
just outside the lodge gate. What a cheerful sort of world it was, with
only herself so bothered, so fairly harassed with care!
Suddenly a wild idea flashed into her mind. She would tell the Head
about it, and then the responsibility would be lifted from her
shoulders. What a comfort it would be to cease from her blind groping to
find a way out!
With Dorothy to resolve was to do. But for that day at least she had to
wait, for the Head had gone to London on business and did not return
until the last train.
It was a little difficult even for one of the Sixth to get a private
interview with the Head. Try as she would, Dorothy could not screw her
courage to the point of standing up and asking for the privilege. In the
end she wrote a note begging that Miss Arden would permit her to come
for a private interview on a matter that was of great importance to
herself. Even when the letter was written there was the question of how
to get it into the hands of the Head. But finally she slipped it with
the other letters into the box in the hall, and then prepared to wait
with what patience she could for developments.
These were not long in coming. She was in the study with the others that
evening, and she was trying hard to write a paper on English
literature—a subject that would have been actually fascinating at any
other time—when Miss Groome, on her way to the staff sitting-room, put
her head in at the door, saying quietly,—
“Dorothy, the Head wants to see you in her room; you had better go down
at once.”
Dorothy rose up in her place; her heart was beating furiously and her
senses were in a whirl.
“Oh, Dorothy, what is the matter? Have you got into a row?” asked Hazel
kindly, while Margaret looked up with such a world of sympathy in her
eyes that Dorothy was comforted by it.
“No, I’m not in a fix of that sort,” she managed to say, and she smiled
as she went out of the room, though her face was very pale.
Her limbs shook and her teeth chattered as she went down the stairs and
along the corridor to the private room of the Head.
“Silly chump, pull yourself together!” she muttered, giving herself a
shake; then she knocked at the door, feeling a wild desire to run away,
now that the interview loomed so near.
“Come in,” said the Head, and Dorothy opened the door, to find Miss
Arden not at the writing table, which stood in the middle of the room,
but sitting in a low chair by the open window.
Dorothy halted just inside the open door; she was still oppressed by
that longing to run away, to escape from the consequences of her own
act. She looked so shrinking, so downright afraid, as she stood there,
that a grave fear of serious trouble came into the heart of the Head as
she pointed to another low chair on the other side of the window, and
bade Dorothy sit down.
“It is such a lovely evening,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Look
through that break in the trees, Dorothy; you can just see the sun
shining on the sea.”
“It is very pretty,” said Dorothy; then she sat down suddenly, and was
dumbly thankful for the relief of being able to sit.
“What is the trouble?” asked the Head.
Her manner was so understanding that Dorothy suddenly lost her desire to
run away, the furious beating of her heart subsided, and she was able to
look up and speak clearly, although her words came out in a rather
incoherent jumble because of her hurry to get her story told.
“I am not sure that I have any right to keep trying for the Lamb
Bursary—I mean I am by honour bound to tell you everything, and then
you will decide for me, and tell me what I have to do.”
“Do you mean that when you enrolled you kept something back?” asked the
Head gravely. She was thinking this might be a case of having been unfit
at the first, and refusing to own up to it.
“Oh no,” said Dorothy earnestly. “When I enrolled I had no idea there
was anything to prevent me from becoming a candidate.”
“Then it is nothing to do with yourself personally?” There was a throb
of actual relief in the heart of the Head. She was bound up in her
girls; the disgrace of one of them would be her own disgrace.
“No.” Dorothy hesitated a minute; it was fearfully hard to drag out that
story about her father. She had a vision of his dear careworn face just
then, and it seemed to her a desecration—even an unfilial thing—to say
a thing of his past which might lower him in the esteem of the Head.
“If it is not yourself, then at least you could not help it.” The Head
spoke kindly, with a desire to make Dorothy’s task easier.
“Do you remember the day of the very high tide, when an accident
happened on the front, and I met a lady, Mrs. Wilson, of Sevenoaks, who
asked me to take tea with her at the Grand, Ilkestone, next day?”
Dorothy spoke in a sort of desperate burst, anxious to get the story out
as quickly as possible.
“Yes, I remember.” The Head smiled in a reassuring fashion. “Mrs. Wilson
was an old friend of your father’s, I think?”
“Yes; she used to know him when he was a medical student. She said that
he and his cousin, Arthur Sedgewick, with two others named Bagnall, were
a very wild lot; they did all sorts of harum-scarum things. They were
coming home from a dance one night, and father was driving a cab that
was racing another cab. Father’s cab collided with a police wagonette,
which was badly smashed up, and an old woman was hurt. For that father
had to go to prison for a fortnight.” It was out now—out with a
vengeance. Dorothy fairly gasped at her own daring in telling the story.
The Head looked blank. “This was not pleasant hearing for you, of
course. Still, I do not see how it affects your standing.”
“Oh! don’t you remember the rules that were read out at the enrolment
ceremony?” cried Dorothy, with a bright spot of pink showing in both her
white cheeks. “It was read out that no girl was eligible whose parents
had at any time been in prison.”
“Of course; but I had forgotten.” There was a shocked note in the tone
of the Head, her eyes grew very troubled, and she sat for a moment in
silence.
A moment was it? To Dorothy it seemed more like a year—a whole twelve
months—of strained suffering.
“Dorothy, are you quite sure—quite absolutely sure—that this is a
fact?” Miss Arden asked, breaking the silence.
Choking back a sob, Dorothy bowed her head. Speech was almost impossible
just then. But the Head was waiting for a detailed answer, and she had
to speak. “Mrs. Wilson was there—she was in the cab—so she must
certainly have known all about it. She told the story to me as if it
were a good joke.”
“You have been home since then—did you speak of this to your father and
mother?” The Head was looking so worried, so actually careworn, that
Dorothy suddenly found it easier to speak.
“I tried to ask my mother about it, but she would not discuss it with
me.” Dorothy’s tone became suddenly frigid, as if it had taken on her
mother’s attitude.
“Did you speak to your father about it?” The Head was questioning
closely now in order that she might get at the very bottom of the
mystery.
“Oh, I could not!” There was sharp pain in Dorothy’s tone; her father
was her hero—the very best and bravest, the very dearest of men.
Something of this she had to make clear to the Head if she could, and
she went on, her voice breaking a little in spite of her efforts at
self-control. “Daddy is such a dear; he is so hard-working; he is always
sacrificing himself for some one or doing something to help some one—I
just could not tell him of that awful old story. He would have felt so
bad, too, because he kept urging me to win the Lamb Bursary if I could.”
“Did you tell him of that rule—that stupid, foolish rule—about no one
being eligible whose parents had been in prison?” asked the Head.
Dorothy put out her hands as if to ward off a blow. “Oh, I could not!
Why, it would have broken his heart to think that any action of his in
the past was to bar my way in the future. I did tell mother about it.”
“What did she say?” The insistent questioning of the Head was beginning
to get on Dorothy’s nerves; then, too, it was so unpleasant to be
obliged to own up to the stark truth.
“Mother said nothing,” she answered dully. And then the interview became
suddenly a long-drawn-out torture: she was racked and beaten until she
could bear no more, while all the time she could hear the cynical words
of Tom about woman having no sense of honour.
Perhaps the Head understood something of what Dorothy was feeling, for
her tone was so very kind and sympathetic when she spoke.
“I think we will do nothing in the matter for a week. I will take that
time to think things round. But, Dorothy, I am very specially anxious
that this talk shall make no difference to your work or your striving.
Go on doing your very utmost to win the Bursary. I cannot tell you what
a large amount of good this hard work of the candidates is doing for the
whole school. You are not working merely to maintain your own
position—you are setting the pace for the others. Don’t worry about
this either. Just put the thought of it away from your mind. It may be I
can find a way out for you—at least I will try.”
Dorothy rose to her feet. The strain was over, and, marvel of marvels,
she was still where she had been—at least for another week.