An Accusation
On the following Monday afternoon the Reverend T. W. Beasley arrived
in readiness to begin, on Tuesday morning, his task of examining the
school. There was great fluttering in the dove-cot, and much anxiety
on the part of the girls to catch the first glimpse of him. They had
decided that, as the brother of their good-looking Principal, he would
be tall, fair, and clean-shaven, with classical features, gentle blue
eyes, and a soft, persuasive manner--the ideal clergyman, in fact, of
the storybook, who lives in a picturesque country rectory and
cultivates roses. To their disappointment he was nothing of the sort,
but turned out to be a short, broad-set little man, with a grey beard
and moustache, and keen dark eyes under bushy eyebrows, and a
prominent nose that was the very reverse of romantic. He cleared his
throat frequently in a nervous fashion, and when he spoke he snapped
out his remarks abruptly, in a very deep voice that seemed to rise
almost out of his boots.
"He isn't half as nice as Professor Marshall!" decided the Fifth
unanimously.
"Looks as if he had a temper!" ventured Fauvette.
"Oh! it's cruelty to give us viva voces! I'll never dare to answer a
question!" wailed Aveline.
"I'm afraid he'll be strict," admitted Katherine.
"Perhaps he's nervous too, and scared of us!" suggested Morvyth.
"Don't you believe it!" laughed Raymonde scornfully. "I flatter myself
I'm pretty good at reading faces, and I can see at a glance he's a
martinet. That frown gives him away, and the kind of glare he has in
his eyes. I'm a believer in first impressions, and I knew in a second
I wasn't going to like him."
Aveline sighed dramatically.
"It's rough on a poor young girl in her early teens to be put through
an ordeal by a stern and elderly individual who'll have absolutely no
consideration for her feelings."
"Feelings! You'll have your head snapped off!" prophesied Raymonde.
"Why couldn't the Bumble have examined us herself, or at any rate let
the Professor do it?"
"Ask me a harder, child!"
"Well, I think it's very unnecessary to have this Mr. Beasley. Bumble
Bee, indeed! He's a regular hornet!"
Whatever the private opinion of the Fifth might be on the subject of
their examiner, they were obliged to hide their injured feelings under
a cloak of absolute propriety. The reverend visitor was a solid fact,
and all the grumbling in the world could not remove the incubus of his
presence. At nine o'clock on Tuesday morning he would begin his
inquisition, and the girls judged that there would be scant mercy for
any sinner who failed to reach the required standard. A terrible
atmosphere of gloomy convention pervaded the school. Miss Beasley was
anxious for her pupils to appear at their very best before her
scholarly brother, whose ideal of maidenly propriety was almost
mediaeval, and she kept a keen eye on their behaviour. Nobody dared to
speak at meal-times, except a whispered request for such necessary
articles as salt and butter; laughter was out of the question, and
even a smile was felt to be inappropriate. The girls sat subdued and
demure, outwardly the pink of propriety, but inwardly smouldering, and
listened obediently while the visitor, mindful of his educational
position in the establishment, held forth upon subjects calculated to
improve their minds.
"I don't believe Gibbie likes him either!" opined Katherine, after
Monday night's supper.
"Of course not! He beats her on her own ground. As for the Bumble,
she's quite distraught. She keeps glancing at us as if she expected
somebody all the time to spill her tea, or break a plate, or pull a
face, or do something dreadful. We're not usually an ill-behaved
set!"
"He's getting on my nerves!" complained Aveline.
"The place is more like a reformatory than a school!" growled
Morvyth.
When the post-bag arrived on Tuesday morning, it contained, among
other letters and parcels, a small narrow packet directed to Miss R.
Armitage. Miss Gibbs, whose business it was to overlook her pupils'
correspondence, was in a particular hurry, as it happened, and
inclined for once to scamp her duties.
"What's this, Raymonde?" she asked perfunctorily. "A fountain pen, did
you say? For the exams. I suppose your mother has sent it. There are
two letters for Aveline and one for Morvyth. You may take them to
them, and tell Daphne I want to speak to her."
Raymonde did not stop for further interrogation. She beat as speedy a
retreat as possible, delivered the message and the letters, and
finished unpacking her parcel. Her Form mates, more inquisitive than
Miss Gibbs, gathered round her and began to catechize.
"What have you got there?"
"Did it come by the post?"
"Why, it's a fountain pen, isn't it?"
"Who sent it to you?"
"Did you buy it, then?"
"It looks a jolly nice one!"
"Is it full, or empty?"
"Don't talk all at once, children!" commanded Raymonde loftily. "I'll
answer your questions in proper order, so just behave yourselves!
"1. It is a fountain pen, as anybody with half an eye could see!
"2. It came by the post.
"3. Nobody sent it to me.
"4. I bought it.
"5. It is a jolly nice one.
"6. I have reason to believe it is empty. I'm going to fill it out of
Fauvette's bottle."
"Cheek!" returned Fauvette, allowing her friend to help herself to the
Swan ink, however. "What puzzles me, is how you managed to buy it."
"Your little head, Baby, is easily puzzled," smiled Raymonde
serenely. "It's meant to wear fluffy curls, and not to engage itself
in abstruse problems. I don't advise you to worry yourself over this,
unless you can turn it to some account. If the Hornet should ask you
for an original example, you might begin: 'Let A represent a fountain
pen, and B my schoolmate, C standing for an unknown quantity----'"
Fauvette, at this point, placed her hand over her chum's mouth.
"Stop it!" she begged beseechingly. "If I get any of those wretched A
B and C questions I'll collapse, and disgrace the Form. I've many weak
points, but mathematics are absolutely my weakest of all. If you
frighten me any more, I shan't have the courage to walk into the exam.
room. Do I look presentable? Are my hands clean? And is my hair
decent?"
"You look so much more than presentable that anybody but a hardened
brute of an examiner would be bowled over by you utterly and
entirely."
"I'm sure he hasn't any feelings, so it's no use trying to work upon
them," said Fauvette plaintively.
"Joking apart, Ray, where did you get that fountain pen?" asked
Morvyth.
Raymonde's eyes twinkled.
"Little flower, could I tell you that,
I'd tell you my heart's secret with it!"
she misquoted.
"But do tell me! I think you might!"
"The more you tease, the less you'll find out!"
The school bell put an end to the conversation, and the girls, with
straightened faces, marched to their places in the big lecture hall.
The Reverend T. W. Beasley had taken full command of the examinations,
and had introduced several innovations. On former occasions each Form
had sat and written in its own room, but now desks had been placed for
the whole school together, and were so arranged that the Forms sat
alternately, a junior being sandwiched between each senior. The girls
were hugely insulted. "He suspects we'll copy each other's papers!"
thought Raymonde, and flashed her indignation along to Aveline. She
did not speak, but her expressive glance drew forth a reproof from the
examiner. He cleared his throat.
"Any girl communicating either by speech or otherwise will be
dismissed from the room!" he announced freezingly.
After that, the girls scarcely dared to look up from their papers.
They studied their questions and wrote away, some fast and furiously,
and others with the desponding leisure of those having very little to
put down. Mr. Beasley sat upon the platform, toying with his
watch-chain, and keeping his eye upon the movements of the candidates.
Fauvette, finishing long before the others, ventured to raise her eyes
as high as his boots, and let them rest there, marvelling at the size
and thickness of the footgear, and congratulating herself that she
could wear number three.
The morning wore itself slowly away. When the school compared notes at
12.30, the girls agreed that they had never in their lives before been
given such an atrocious and detestable set of examination papers. The
Sixth had fared as badly as the Fifth or the juniors, and even
monitresses were loud in their complaints. Certain viva voces taken in
the afternoon confirmed their ill opinion of their examiner.
"He glares at one till one's frightened out of one's wits!"
"And he hurries so--one hasn't time to answer!"
"And he takes things in quite a different way from what Gibbie does."
"He's no need to be sarcastic!"
"Sarcastic, did you say? I call him downright rude!"
"He evidently doesn't think much of our intellects!"
"Well, we don't think much of him, anyway!"
"I believe he uses pomatum on his hair," confided Fauvette in a
shocked whisper.
"My dear, I believe it's bear's grease!" corrected Morvyth
scornfully.
"This is the most painful week I've ever had to go through in all my
life," bleated Aveline. "Even if I live through it--and that's
doubtful--I shall be a nervous wreck. They'll have to send me for a
rest cure during the holidays. I'm not accustomed to be
cross-questioned as if I were a criminal in the dock!"
"It's a witness, child, you mean," amended Raymonde. "Criminals don't
generally give evidence against themselves. But we understand you, all
the same! For two pins I'd sham utter ignorance, and give him some
very surprising answers. Yes, I would, if Gibbie or the Bumble didn't
stick in the room the whole time! That's the worst of it. They'd know
in a second that I was only having him on."
As the week progressed, the school considered itself more and more
ill-used. The fact was that the Reverend T. W. Beasley was accustomed
to university students, and could not focus his mind to the
intellectual range of girls of thirteen to seventeen. Moreover, he was
by nature a reformer. He liked to give others the benefit of his
advice, and he had much to say in private to his sister upon the
subject of her pupils' lessons and general management. Perhaps poor
Miss Beasley had not expected quite so much criticism. She was
accustomed, nevertheless, to defer to her brother's opinions, and she
listened with due humility, though with much inward perturbation,
while he laid down the law upon the education of women. Miss Gibbs,
who was a born fighter, was inclined to argue--a disastrous policy,
which so nearly ended in what are generally termed "words," that her
Principal was obliged to ask her (privately) to allow the visitor to
state his views uninterrupted.
The school was so taken up with the stern business on hand, that such
delights as coon concerts and theatricals were quite in the
background. On Thursday afternoon, however, Veronica sought out
Raymonde.
"I want your money for the Blinded Soldiers' Fund," she said. "I've
given in ours, and so have the juniors. Miss Beasley says when she has
it all she'll write a cheque for the amount, and send it to the
secretary."
"But Miss Beasley has our money already," objected Raymonde. "Don't
you remember? She said she wanted some change, and you came and asked
me for it."
"So I did, and brought you back notes instead."
Raymonde shook her head.
"You certainly didn't."
"What nonsense, Ray! You know I brought them," protested Veronica
indignantly. "You were practising, and I said: 'Don't stop, I'll put
them inside your drawer.' Hermie was with me at the time."
A conscious look spread over Raymonde's face. She blushed hotly.
"Was it last Friday?" she asked quickly.
"Of course it was Friday. The notes must be in your drawer. Have you
the key? Then come along, and we'll go and find them."
Raymonde unwillingly followed Veronica upstairs. Her manner was
embarrassed in the extreme. She unlocked her drawer in the bureau, and
turned out the possessions she had there, but no notes were among
them.
"What's become of them?" demanded Veronica sharply.
"I--I really don't know!" faltered Raymonde.
"Then you must find out. As treasurer for your Form, you are
responsible."
"You're sure you put them in my drawer, and not in anybody else's?"
"Certain. It was the bottom one on the right-hand side, and it was
open just as you left it when you gave me the silver. I couldn't be
mistaken."
Raymonde flung herself down on a chair, and buried her face in her
hands.
"I want to think," she murmured.
Veronica gazed at her with growing suspicion.
"I'm sorry, but it's my duty to report this to Miss Beasley," she
remarked freezingly.
"Oh, no, please!" pleaded Raymonde, starting up in great agitation.
"Can't you give me just a few days, and then--well perhaps it will be
all right. Leave it over till Saturday."
"It will be all wrong!" said the monitress sternly. "I can't
understand you, Raymonde, for either you have the money or you
haven't. If you have, you must hand it over; and if you haven't, we've
got to find out where it's gone. That's flat! So come along with me at
once to the study."
The Principal, on being told the facts of the case, was astonished and
distressed.
"There may possibly be some misunderstanding," she urged. "Before
anybody is accused we will make sure that the notes were not placed in
a wrong drawer. Tell every member of the Fifth to come at once to the
practising-room, and bring her keys. You will go upstairs with me,
Raymonde."
Veronica's message spread consternation through the Form. The girls
trooped to the sanctum with scared faces. They found Miss Beasley
there, looking very grave, and Raymonde, her eyes downcast and her
mouth set in its most obstinate mould, standing by the bureau.
"I wish you each to unlock your drawer in my presence," said the
Principal. "The money collected at your concert is missing, and
perhaps it may have been misplaced."
In dead silence the girls complied, every one in turn showing her
possessions. There were certainly no notes among them. Miss Beasley
turned to Veronica.
"What time was it when you took up the money?"
"About five minutes to six, Miss Beasley. It was just before I went
into preparation. Hermie was with me."
"Did you leave the drawer open or shut?"
"I shut it, but did not lock it. Raymonde's keys were dangling in it.
I thought she would lock it for herself when she had finished
practising."
"Who came into the room next? Maudie Heywood? Then, Maudie, did you
notice the keys hanging in the drawer when you arrived at 6.15?"
"No, Miss Beasley, they were certainly not there."
"Thank you, girls, you may go now. Veronica, tell Hermie to go to my
study and wait for me. Raymonde, you will stay here. I wish to speak
to you alone."
The Principal waited until the door had closed on her other pupils,
then turned to the white-faced little figure near the bureau.
"Raymonde, this is a sad business," she said solemnly. "You had better
confess at once that you have taken this money."