Light
Ulyth walked from the study feeling that she had told far more than she
wished.
"I've given Rona away," she said to herself. "Miss Bowes is thinking the
very worst of her, I know. Oh dear! I wish she'd explain, and not keep
up this dreadful silence. It's so unlike her. She's generally almost too
ready to talk. If I could see her even for a few minutes I believe she
would tell me. Perhaps Miss Teddington frightened her. Poor Rona! She
must be so utterly miserable. Could I possibly get a word with her, I
wonder?"
She talked the matter over with Lizzie.
"If I ask Miss Bowes, she'll probably say no," lamented Ulyth.
"Then I shouldn't ask," returned Lizzie. "We've not been definitely
forbidden to see Rona."
"The door's locked."
"You've only to climb out of the linen-room window on to the roof of the
veranda."
"Why, so I could. Oh, I must speak to her!"
"I think you are justified, if you can get anything out of her. She'd
tell you better than anybody else in the whole school."
"I'll try my luck then."
"I'll stand in the garden below and shout 'Cave!' if I hear anyone
coming."
To help her unfortunate room-mate seemed the first consideration to
Ulyth, and she thought the end certainly justified the means. She waited
until after the tea interval, when most of the girls would be playing
tennis or walking in the glade; then, making sure that Lizzie was
watching in the garden below, she stole upstairs to the linen-room. It
was quite easy to drop from the window on to the top of the veranda, and
not very difficult, in spite of the slope, to walk along to the end of
the roof. Here an angle of the old part of the house jutted out, and the
open window of Rona's prison faced her only a couple of yards away. She
could not reach across the gap, but conversation would be perfectly
possible.
"Rona!" she called cautiously. "Rona!"
There was a movement inside the room, and a face appeared at the window.
Rona's eyes were red and swollen with crying, and her hair hung in wild
disorder. At the sight of Ulyth she started, and stared rather
defiantly.
"Rona! Rona, dear! I've been longing to see you. I felt I must speak to
you."
No reply. Rona, in fact, turned her back.
"I'm so dreadfully sorry," continued Ulyth. "I've been thinking about
you all day. It's no use keeping this up. Do confess and have done with
it."
Rona twisted round suddenly and faced Ulyth.
"Rona! You'd be so much happier if you'd own up you'd taken it. Surely
you only meant it as a joke on Stephie? Miss Bowes will forgive you. For
the sake of the school, do!"
Then Rona spoke.
"You ask me to confess--you, of all people!" she exclaimed with
unconcealed bitterness.
"Yes, dear. I can't urge it too strongly."
"You want me to tell Miss Bowes that I took that pendant?"
"There's no sense in concealing it, Rona."
The Cuckoo's eyes blazed. Her hands gripped the window-sill.
"Oh, this is too much! It's the limit! I couldn't have believed it
possible! You, Ulyth! you to ask me this! How can you? How dare you?"
Ulyth gazed at her in perplexity. She could not understand such an
outburst.
"Surely I, your own chum, have the best right to speak to you for your
own good?"
"My own good!" repeated Rona witheringly. "Yours, you mean. Oh yes, it's
all very fine for you, no doubt! You're to get off scot free."
"I? What are you talking about?"
"Don't pretend you don't understand. You atrocious sneak and
hypocrite--you took the pendant yourself!"
If she had been accused of purloining the Crown jewels from the Tower of
London, Ulyth could not have been more astonished.
"I----!" she stammered. "I----!"
"Yes, you, and you know it. I saw you."
"You couldn't!"
"But I did, or as good as saw you. Who came into our room last night, I
should like to know, when Miss Lodge had sent me to bed, and slipped
something into one of the blouses hanging behind the door? I'd forgotten
by the morning, but I remembered when the pendant came jerking out of my
pocket."
"Certainly I didn't put it there!"
"But you did. You came into the room, took off your outdoor coat, and
threw it on your bed. I got up, afterwards, and hung it up in your
wardrobe for you. Irene told me how you'd joined the cake club. She said
you had the password quite pat."
Ulyth was too aghast to answer. Rona, once she had broken silence,
continued in a torrent of indignation.
"You a Torch-bearer! You might well ask me not to expose you! 'Remember
the Camp-fire,' you said. Yes, it's because of the Camp-fire, and for
the sake of the school, that I've kept your secret. Don't be afraid. I'm
not going to tell. It wouldn't be good for the League if a Torch-bearer
toppled down so low! It doesn't matter so much for only a Wood-gatherer.
I won't betray a chum--I've brought that much honour from the Bush; but
I'll let you know what I think about you, at any rate."
Then, her blaze of passion suddenly fading, she burst into tears.
"Ulyth, Ulyth, how could you?" she sobbed. "You who taught me everything
that was good. I believed in you so utterly, I'd never have thought it
of you. Oh, why----"
"Cave! cave!" shouted Lizzie excitedly below. "Cave! Teddie herself!"
Ulyth turned and fled with more regard for speed than safety along the
veranda roof, and scrambled through the window into the linen-room
again. She was trembling with agitation. Such an extraordinary
development of the situation was as appalling as it was unexpected. She
must have time to think it over. She could not bear to speak to anybody
about it at present, not even to Lizzie. No, she must be alone. She ran
quickly downstairs, and, before Lizzie had time to find her, dived under
the laurels of the shrubbery and made her way first down the garden and
then to the very bottom of the paddock that adjoined the high road.
There was a little copse here, of trees and low bushes, which sheltered
her from all observation. Nobody was likely to come and disturb her, for
the girls preferred the glade, and seldom troubled to enter the paddock.
She flung herself down on the grass and tried to face the matter calmly.
She had begged Rona to confess, and Rona in return had accused her of
taking the pendant. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. How
could her room-mate have become possessed of such a preposterous idea?
And in what a web of mystery the affair seemed involved! One certainty
came as an immense relief. Rona was not guilty. More than this, she was
behaving with an extraordinary amount of courage and loyalty.
"She believes I took it, and yet she is bearing all the blame, and
shielding me for the sake of the school," groaned Ulyth. "Oh, what must
she be thinking of me! We're all at cross-purposes. Did she really fancy
that when I said: 'Remember the Camp-fire', I was begging her to screen
me? Somebody took the pendant and put it in her pocket; that's the ugly
part of the business. It's throwing the blame from one to another. What
we've got to do is to find out the real guilty person, and that's not
going to be easy, I'm afraid."
Ulyth sighed and wiped her eyes. She had been deeply hurt at Rona's
sudden attack. It is humiliating to find that where you occupied a
pedestal you are now, even temporarily, a broken idol.
"She's right to scorn me if she imagines I'm such a sneak, but how could
she suppose I would? And yet I thought her guilty. Oh dear, it's a
horrible muddle! How shall we ever get it straight?"
Ulyth sat thinking, thinking, and was no nearer to a solution of her
problem when she suddenly heard the brisk ringing of a bicycle-bell on
the road below. Springing up eagerly, she rushed to the wall, and
shouted just in time to stop Mrs. Arnold, whose machine was whisking
past.
"Hallo, Ulyth! What are you doing there?"
"I'm coming over. Do please wait for me!"
And Ulyth, scrambling somehow across the wall, slid down a gravelly bank
on to the road.
"You're the one person in the world I want to see," she added, hugging
her friend impetuously. "Oh, Mrs. Arnold, the most dreadful things have
been happening at school! Somebody took Stephie's pendant, and it fell
out of Rona's pocket, and everybody thinks Rona took it, and Rona thinks
it's me. What are we to do?"
"Sit down here and tell me all about it. Yes, please, begin at the very
beginning, and don't leave anything out, however trivial. Sometimes the
little things are the most important. Cheer up, child! We'll get to the
bottom of it, never fear."
Sitting on the bank, with Mrs. Arnold's arm round her, Ulyth related the
whole of her story, mentioning every detail she could remember. It was
such a comfort to pour it out into sympathetic ears, and to one whose
judgment was more likely to be unbiased than that of anyone connected
with the school.
"You always understand," she said, with a sigh of relief, as she kissed
the hand that was holding hers.
"It certainly is a tangled skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I
really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona
told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably
hid the pendant in her blouse pocket?"
"Yes; and she was sure that somebody was myself."
"Then what we have to do is to produce the real culprit."
"If we can find her."
"Just now I was wheeling my bicycle up Tyn y Bryn Hill, and I met one
of the boys from Jones's farm. He stopped me and handed me a letter. 'A
girl gave it to me five minutes ago,' he said. 'She asked me if I was
going to the village, and if I'd post it for her; so I promised I would.
But it's addressed to you, so I may as well give it to you as post it,
and save the stamp.' I read the letter, and it puzzled me extremely. I
hardly knew what to make of it; but since you've told me about the
pendant I think I begin to understand its meaning. You shall see it for
yourself."
Mrs. Arnold spread out the letter on her knee, so that Ulyth might read
it. It was written on village note-paper, in a childish hand, with no
stops.
"DEAR MRS ARNOLD
"this comes hoping to find you as well as it leves me at present i
am in dredful trubble and i cannot stay here eny longer dear Mrs
Arnold after what cook said this afternoon i am sure she knows all
and i daresunt tell miss Bowes but you are the camp fire lady and i
feel i must say goodbye to ease your mind dear Mrs Arnold wen you
get this letter I shall be Far Away as it says in the song you tort
us by the stream and you will never see me agen but i shall think of
you alwus and the camp fire and i wish i hadn't dun it only I was
skared to deth for she said she wuld half kill me and she alwus
keeps her wurd your obedient servant Susannah Maude Hawley."
"Susannah Maude!" exclaimed Ulyth. "I never even thought of her. Is it
possible that she could have taken the pendant?"
"From the letter it looks rather like it. It is very mysterious, and I
cannot understand it all; but the girl appears to have done something
she shouldn't, and to have run away."
"Where has she run to?"
"She can't have gone very far. She evidently did not mean me to receive
this letter until to-morrow morning, as she asked Idwal Jones to post
it. He forestalled her intention by giving it to me now. It's a most
fortunate thing, as we may be able to overtake her. She is probably
walking to Llangarmon, and cannot have gone more than a few miles by
this time. I shall follow her at once on my machine, and shall most
likely come up with her before she even reaches Coed Glas."
"Oh, let me go with you!" pleaded Ulyth, starting to her feet and
seizing the bicycle. "I could ride on the carrier. I've often done it
before. Oh, please, please!"
"What about school rules?"
"Miss Bowes wouldn't mind if you took me. Just this once!"
"Well, I suppose my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame if we
get into trouble about it."
"Oh, we shan't! We must find Susannah Maude. Miss Bowes would want us to
stop her running away."
"Come along then, and mind you balance yourself, so that you don't upset
us."
"Trust me!" chuckled Ulyth delightedly.
Back along the road by which she had come sped Mrs. Arnold, past the
lane that led to her own house, and away in the direction of Llangarmon.
Ulyth managed to stick on without impeding her progress, and felt a
delirious joy in the stolen expedition. To be out with her dear Mrs.
Arnold on such an exciting adventure was an hour worth remembering. She
could not often get the Guardian of the Fire all to herself in this
glorious fashion. She would be the envy of the school when she returned.
Susannah Maude was apparently a quick walker. They passed through the
hamlet of Coed Glas, and were half a mile beyond before they caught
sight of the odd little figure trudging on ahead. They overtook her
exactly on the bridge that crossed the Llyn Mawr stream.
As Mrs. Arnold dismounted and called her by name, Susannah Maude
started, uttered a shriek, and apparently for a moment contemplated
casting herself into the stream below. The Guardian of the Fire,
however, seized her firmly by the arm, and, drawing her to the low
parapet, made her sit down.
"Now tell me all about it," said Mrs. Arnold encouragingly, seating
herself by her side. For answer Susannah Maude wept unrestrainedly, the
hot tears dripping down her hard little cheeks into her rough little
hands.
Mrs. Arnold waited with patience till the storm had subsided, then she
began to put questions.
"Did you take the young lady's locket, Susan?"
"Yes, I did; but I didn't want to. I wouldn't if I hadn't been so
scared. I'm scared to death now as she'll find me."
"You needn't be afraid of Miss Bowes."
"I ain't. Leastways not so bad. It's her I'm feared of."
"Whom do you mean, child?"
"Her--my mother."
"I didn't know you had a mother. I thought you were an orphan," burst
out Ulyth.
"I wish I was. No, my father and mother wasn't dead--they was both
serving time when I was sent to the Home. When Mother come out she got
to know where I was, and she kept an eye on me; then when I comes here
to a situation she turns up one day at the back door and says she wants
my wages. I give her all I got; but that didn't satisfy her--not much!
She was always hanging about the place. She used to come and sell sweets
and cakes, unbeknown-like, to the young ladies."
"Was that your mother? The gipsy woman with the basket?" exclaimed
Ulyth.
"That was her, sure enough. She pestered me all the time for money, and
then when she found I'd got none left she said I must bring her
something instead. 'The young ladies must have heaps of brooches and
lockets, and things they don't want, so just you fetch me one,' sez she;
'and if you don't I'll catch you and half kill you.' Oh, I can tell you
I was scared to death! I don't want not to be honest; but she'd half
killed me once or twice before, when I was a kid, and I know what her
hand's like when she uses it."
"So you took something?"
"Yes. I waited till the young ladies was all at supper; then I got down
one of their coats from the pegs in the corridor and slipped it over my
black dress and apron, and I put on one of their hats. I thought if I
was seen upstairs they'd take me for one of themselves. I went into the
studio, and there, right opposite on a little table, was that kind of
locket thing. I slipped it in my pocket, and looked round the room. If
there wasn't another just like it on the bench! I took that, and put it
on the table. It wasn't likely, perhaps, it would be missed as quick as
the other. Then I thought I'd better be going. I was just walking down
the landing when I hears a step, and darts into one of the bedrooms.
'Suppose they catches me,' thinks I, 'with one of the young ladies'
coats and hats on and the locket in my hand!' There was a blouse hanging
behind the door, with a little pocket just handy, so I stuffed the
locket down into that; then I pulled off the coat and threw it on the
bed, and flung the hat out of the window. I thought if anyone came in
and found me I'd say I'd been sent to refill the water-jug. But the
steps went on, and I rushed out and downstairs, and left the locket
where it was. I was so scared I didn't know what I was doing."
"Gracie found her hat in the garden this morning," gasped Ulyth. "She
wondered how it got there."
"But what made you run away?" asked Mrs. Arnold, returning to the main
question. "Did you think you were suspected?"
"Not till this afternoon. Then the servants were all talking in the
kitchen about how one of the young ladies was supposed to have taken
what they called a 'pendon' or something, and Cook looked straight at me
and says: 'If anything's missing, it's not one of the young ladies
that's got it, I'll be bound.' And I turned red and run out of the
kitchen. My mother'd said she'd be coming round this evening, and how
was I going to meet her with no locket? So I says, there's nothing else
for it, I'd best go back to the Home. Miss Bankes, she was good to me,
and Mother daresn't show her face there. So I wrote a letter, and asked
Jones's boy to post it. I didn't think you'd get it till to-morrow."
"Very fortunately I received it at once. You must come back with us now
to The Woodlands, Susan. We shall all have to walk, for the bicycle
won't take three."
"I'll wheel it," cried Ulyth joyfully.
"She'll half kill me to-night," quavered poor Susannah Maude. "Do let me
go to the Home!"
"Your mother shall not have a chance of coming near you. You must tell
all this to Miss Bowes; then to-morrow, if you wish, you may be sent
back to the Orphanage."
No successful scouts could have returned to camp with more triumph than
Mrs. Arnold and Ulyth, as, very late and decidedly tired, they arrived
at The Woodlands to relate their surprising story. Miss Bowes sent at
once for Rona, and in the presence of the Principals the whole matter
was carefully explained to the satisfaction of all parties, even poor
weeping Susannah Maude.
"I am very glad to find the motive for which Rona kept silence was so
good a one," commented Miss Teddington. "She has shown her loyalty both
to her friend and to the school."
Dismissed with honour from the study, Ulyth and Rona were hugging each
other in the privacy of the boot cupboard.
"Can you ever forgive all the horrible things I said?" implored Rona. "I
think I was off my head. I might have known it wasn't--couldn't be
possible; you are you--the one girl I've been trying to copy ever since
I came here."
"You've quite as much to forgive me, dear, and I beg your pardon. I'm so
glad it's all straight and square now."
"You darling! I don't mind telling you it was Tootie who gave me those
chocolates."
"Didn't you buy them from the cake-woman?"
"I never bought anything from her. I didn't join the cake club."
"Then how did she get hold of your New Zealand brooch? She showed it to
me."
"Why, I'd swopped that brooch with Tootie for a penknife ages ago. We're
always swopping our things in IV B."
"The whole business seems to have been a comedy of errors," said Ulyth.
"Some mischievous Puck threw dust in our eyes and blinded us to the
truth."
After all, it was the juniors that suffered most, for Miss Teddington,
who had been very angry at the whole affair, turned the vials of her
wrath upon them, and took them to task for their illicit traffic in
cakes. This, at any rate, she was determined to punish, and not a
solitary sinner was allowed to escape. Tootie, the original leader in
rebellion, issued from her interview in the study such a crushed worm as
to stifle any lingering seeds of mutiny among her crestfallen followers.
"What's to become of Susannah Maude?" asked everybody; and Miss Bowes
answered the question.
"I am taking the poor child back to the Orphanage. I have told the
police to warn her disreputable mother from this neighbourhood; but, as
one can never be certain when she might turn up again, we must remove
Susan altogether out of reach of her evil influence. A party of girls
will be sent from the Home very soon to Canada, and we shall arrange for
her to join them and emigrate to a new country, where she will be placed
in a good situation on a farm and well looked after. She is not really a
dishonest girl, and has a very grateful and affectionate disposition. I
am confident that she will do us credit in the New World, and turn out a
useful and happy citizen. Why yes, girls, if you like to make her a
little good-bye present before she sails, you may do so. It is a kind
thought, and I am sure she will appreciate it greatly."
"There's only one item not yet wiped out on the slate," said Ulyth to
Lizzie. "Perhaps I ought to report myself for walking along the veranda
roof. I'd feel more comfortable!"
"Go ahead, then! Teddie's at the confessional now."
"It's never been exactly forbidden," said Ulyth, with a twinkle in her
eye, after she had stated the extent of her enormity to Miss Teddington.
"I would as soon have thought of forbidding you to climb the chimneys!
It was a dangerous experiment, and certainly must not be repeated. I'm
surprised at a senior! No, as you have told me yourself, I will not
enter it in your conduct-book. Please don't parade the roofs in future.
Now you may go."
"Got off even easier than I expected," rejoiced Ulyth to the waiting
Lizzie. "Teddie's bark's always worse than her bite."
"We've found that out long ago," agreed Lizzie.