A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE.
Molly and Nance had little to say to each other that night as they
undressed for bed. Nance was still filled with hot indignation over
Judy's "falling-off" as she called it, and Molly had no heart for
conversation. The door to Judy's bedroom at the other end of the sitting
room was closed and they were not surprised when she did not call "good
night" as was her custom. Nobody looked in on them. It was late and the
Quadrangle was soon perfectly still.
Under the sheets, her head buried in the pillows, Molly cried a long
time, softly and quietly, like a steady downpour of rain. It seemed
somehow that her beloved friend, Judy, had died, and that she was
grieving for her. At last, worn out, she fell asleep. It was a very
heavy sleep. She felt as if her arms were tied and she was sinking down
into space and, as is always the case with dreams of falling, she waked
with a nervous leap as if her body had hit the bed and rebounded. As she
fell she had dreamed that she heard a voice calling. Never mind what it
said; already the word, whatever it was, was a mere pin point in her
memory. It had flashed through her mind like a shooting star across the
sky. It was brilliantly illuminating for the instant. Molly was sure
that it meant a great deal. It was an important word, and it had an
urgent significance. For the tenth of a second her mind had been wide
awake, and now it was quite dark again.
Molly leaped out of bed and began pulling on her clothes.
"Why am I dressing?" she thought. "It is because I must--_hurry!_"
"Hurry," that was the word. It came back to her now, quietly and
significantly.
Nance wakened and sat up in bed.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I don't know. I must hurry. Don't stop me," answered Molly.
Nance looked at her curiously.
"You've had a nightmare, Molly," she said.
Molly glanced up vaguely as Nance switched on the light.
"Have I? I don't know, but I must make haste, or I'll be too late."
"Too late for what?"
"I don't know yet."
"Wake up, Molly. You're asleep. Nothing is going to happen. You are
here, in your own room."
"Yes, yes. I understand, but I must hurry. Don't stop me, Nance. You may
come if you like, but don't stop me."
Nance had often heard that it was dangerous to awaken sleepwalkers too
suddenly, and she believed now as she saw Molly slipping on her skirt
and sweater that she was certainly asleep.
"Dearest Molly," she insisted. "This is college. You are in your own
room. It's a quarter to twelve. Don't go out of the room."
Molly took no notice. Nance turned on another light and slipped across
to Judy's room. She must have help, and Judy was the nearest person.
"Judy's not in her room," she exclaimed suddenly, in a scared voice.
Molly gave a slight shudder.
"It's Judy who needs me," she said. "I was trying to remember. I
couldn't make it out at first. Put on your things, Nance. Don't delay.
Put out the light. We must hurry."
Nance got into a few clothes as fast as she could. She slipped on tennis
shoes and an ulster and presently the two girls were standing in the
corridor.
"Where are we going, Molly?" asked Nance, now under the spell of the
other's conviction.
"This way," answered Molly, looking indeed like a sleepwalker as she
glided down the hall to the main steps.
If the girls had glanced back they would have noticed a figure creep
softly after them.
"But the gate is locked," objected Nance.
"I know, but we'll find another way. Come on."
Down the steps they hastened noiselessly. At the bottom, instead of
going straight ahead, Molly turned to the left and led the way to a
sitting room for visitors on the ground floor of the tower. The windows
of the Tower Room, as it was known, looked out on the campus. They were
small, deep-silled, and closed with iron-bound wooden shutters like the
doors into the cloisters. Mounting a bench, Molly opened the inside
glass casement of one of the windows and drew back the bolt which
secured the shutter. Then she hoisted herself onto the sill, crawled
through the window, and holding by both hands dropped to the ground.
Nance, of a more practical temperament, wondered how they would ever get
back into the Tower Room; but blind, unquestioning faith is an
infinitely stronger staff to lean upon than uneasy speculation, as Nance
was one day to find out.
"When the night watchman makes his rounds, will he see the window open
in the tower?" she thought. "And if he does, what will he do? Give the
alarm at once or try to find out our names and report us? If he reports
us, what then? We may be expelled, or suspended or punished in some
awful way."
So Nance's thoughts busily shaped out these tragic events as she
followed Molly out of the window and dropped to the gravel walk below.
The tower clock struck twelve while the two girls flitted across the
campus. It was a strange adventure, Nance pondered, and one she would
never have undertaken, or even considered, alone. But then her instincts
were not like Molly's. The inner voice which spoke to her sometimes was
usually the sharp, reproving voice of a Puritan conscience. It spoke to
her now, but she turned a deaf ear to it for once.
It told her how absurd she would appear to other people in this
dangerous midnight escapade; what risks she was running. Judy, of
course, had spent the night with one of the other girls, it said. It
troubled her mind with whispers of doubts and fears; it ridiculed and
abused her, but not once did it weaken her determination to follow
Molly wherever she intended to go. And presently, when Molly quickened
her footsteps into a run, Nance kept right at her elbow like a noonday
shadow, foreshortened and broadened.
Molly turned in the direction of the lake. Nance's heart gave a violent
thump. She had believed all along that they were taking a short cut
across to the gymnasium, instead of following the gravel walk.
"Molly, you don't think----" she began breathlessly.
"Don't talk now. Hurry," was Molly's brief reply.
Across a corner of the golf course they flew, and before Nance could
take breath for another dash through a fringe of pine trees she caught
sight of the waters, as black as ink. She clutched Molly's arm.
"Did you hear anything?" she asked, in a frightened whisper.
They waited a moment, straining their ears in the darkness.
From the middle of the lake came the sound of a canoe paddle dipping
into the water.
Molly breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's all right," she said, and they hastened down to the platform of
the boathouse.
In another moment they had launched a small rowboat and were out on the
lake.
"Will Judy Kean never learn sense?" Nance thought impatiently. "She's
just like a prairie fire. It only takes a spark to set her going and
then she burns up everything in sight."
Nance had never been able to understand why Judy could not hold her
passionate, excitable temperament more in control. She, herself, had
learned self-denial at an early age. But that was because she had a
selfish mother.
"How did you ever guess she would be here, Molly?" she asked, as the
prow of the boat cut softly through the waters of the lake with a
musical ripple.
Nance was rowing, and Molly, who had never learned to handle oars, was
sitting facing her.
"I don't know. I can't explain it. I dreamed that some one said
'hurry,' and the lake seemed to be the place to come to."
Some two hundred feet beyond they now made out the silhouette of a
canoe. Judy--of course it was Judy; already they recognized the outline
of her slender figure--kneeling in the bottom of the boat, had stopped
paddling. She held up her head like a startled animal when it scents
danger. It occurred to Nance, watching her over her shoulder as they
drew nearer, that there was really something wild and untamed in Judy's
nature. She remembered that, the first morning they had met her at
Queen's, Judy had laughingly announced that she had been born at sea on
a stormy night. But it was no joking matter, Nance was thinking, and she
fervently wished that Judy would learn to quell her troubled moods.
The next instant the two boats touched prows. The little canoe, the most
delicate and sensitive craft that there is, quivered violently with the
shock of the collision and sprang back. As it bounded forward again,
Molly held out her hand. Instinctively Judy grasped it, and the two
boats drew alongside each other.
"Crawl into our boat, Judy, dearest," said Molly. "It will be easier to
pull the canoe to shore if it's empty."
Judy prepared silently to obey. But a canoe is not a thing to be
reckoned with at critical moments. Just as Judy raised her foot to step
into the other boat, the treacherous little craft shot from under her,
and over she toppled, headforemost into the waters. Fortunately, she was
an excellent swimmer, and the star diver of the gymnasium pool. But the
lake was not deep, and when she came up, sputtering and puffing, she
found herself standing in water that was only shoulder high.
Nance often thought, in looking back on this painful episode, that
nothing they could have said to Judy would have brought her so
completely to her senses as this cold ducking. Certainly, if Judy had
actually planned to jump into the lake, her wishes were most ludicrously
carried out, and the struggle she now made to climb back into the boat
showed that she was not anxious to stay any longer than she could help
in the icy bath. It was a sight for laughter more than for tears,
sensible Nance pondered with a slight feeling of contempt--that of Judy,
struggling and kicking to draw herself into the boat. Indeed, she almost
managed to upset them, too; but she did tumble in somehow, shivering and
wet but extremely contrite.
"How did you know I was out here?" was the first question she put, when,
having seized the rope on the prow of the canoe, they headed for shore.
"I didn't know. I only guessed," answered Molly.
"She was up and dressed before she even knew you were not in your room,"
announced Nance.
"I was a fool," exclaimed Judy, "and I know now what good friends you
are to have come for me. I don't know exactly what I intended to do out
here," she went on brokenly. "I felt ashamed to face any one, even mamma
and papa. I might----" she broke off, shivering. Rivulets of water were
pouring from her wet clothing into the bottom of the boat. She still
wore the costume she had worn in the last scene of the play.
"I'll give you my ulster as soon as we land, Judy," said Nance, rowing
with long rapid strokes which sent the boat skimming over the water.
"I'm just a low-down worthless dog," went on Judy, taking no notice of
Nance's interruption. "There's no good trying to apologize, Molly. Words
don't mean anything. But when the chance comes--and the chance always
does come if you want it--I'll be able to show you how sorry I am for
what I did, and how much I really love you."
"You showed me what a real friend you were last winter, Judy," broke in
Molly, "when you gave up your room at Queen's for my sake. I wasn't
angry about what happened at the gym. I was hurt of course because I'm a
sensitive plant, but I knew it would be all right in the end because we
are too close to each other now to let a few hasty words come between
us. But here we are at the boat landing."
Having tied the two boats in the boat house, which was never kept
locked, they hurried back to college. Nance insisted upon Judy's putting
on her ulster.
"You know I'm never cold," she said.
"You girls will just kill me with kindness," exclaimed Judy humbly.
But Nance did not even hear this abject speech. The question of how they
were to get back into the Quadrangle was occupying her mind.
"We're taking an awful risk," she observed to Molly, in a low voice.
"There is no other way but the window, I suppose."
"I can't think of any other way," answered Molly, "unless we ring the
bell over the gate and alarm the entire dormitory."
"Suppose the night watchman has closed the window? What then?" demanded
Nance.
"Why, we'll just have to find some other way, then," answered her
optimistic friend.
But the window in the Tower Room was wide open, just as they had left
it.
The doubting Nance still had another theory.
"Suppose the night watchman has left it open on purpose to catch us when
we come back?" she suggested.
"I do wish you would stop hunting up troubles, Nance," ejaculated Molly
irritably. "I never found supposing did any good, anyhow."
Nance, thus rebuked, said nothing more.
Molly, boosted by the other girls, pulled herself onto the window sill
and climbed into the room. She looked about her cautiously. But Nance's
fears were groundless so far. The room was perfectly empty.
"Let down a chair," whispered Judy.
There were no small chairs about, however, and she was obliged to choose
a bench.
"How are we to get it back again?" she asked, after Nance had clambered
in, and Judy, halfway through, paused to consider this question.
"Hurry, the watchman," hissed Nance, on the lookout at the door. "He's
coming down the side corridor."
The next instant Judy had leaped into the room, and the three girls were
tearing along the hall and up the steps, Judy leaving a trail of water
behind her. The watchman had seen them. They could hear the beat of his
steps on the cement floor as he ran. The fugitives reached the upper
corridor just as he arrived at the first landing on the stairs.
"Kick off your pumps, Judy, and pick up your skirts. He'll trace us by
the wet trail if you don't."
Another dash and they were in their sitting room, the door locked behind
them. Oh, blessed relief!
Judy, in her stocking feet, was holding up her skirts with both hands.
Nance had seized one of the slippers and she thought that Molly had the
other.
But the final excitement of that eventful night was veiled in mystery.
As they had burst into their sitting room, some one ran swiftly across
the room, through the passage into Judy's room and into the corridor.
They dared not follow and run the risk of meeting the night watchman,
probably standing at that moment at the end of the corridor trying to
trace that path of water, which, thanks be to Nance's prudence, ended
there and was lost on the green strip of carpet.
Below in the Tower Room the windows of the casement flapped back and
forth in the wind which was rising steadily, and on the path below stood
that telltale bench.
"Anyhow," said Molly, "there's only one person who knows we were out
to-night and, whoever she is, she can't tell without giving herself
away."