ALMOST A TRAGEDY
An unusual amount of school work filled the day beyond possibility of
moods, broods or other tantrums. Gloria was not so temperamental as to
neglect her work for “blues,” whatever the cause or however deep the
shade. She was no baby, and was too proud to do otherwise than very
well in any school records.
There were, reasonably enough, many spots unfinished in her preparatory
work, for Barbend, like other country schools, embraced only such work
as seemed to afford the best opportunities for the largest number,
and few there were who prepared for high class boarding schools. Thus
Gloria now found herself filling in many recreational hours with
special tutors in sheltered corners of gloomy rooms. All of which added
to her growing uneasiness, for Gloria was the type that loves to soar,
like the butterfly, but a single prick in a delicate wing is sure to
bring down the joy bird.
Yet Jack’s rough rider adventure promised a thrill. Lessons would be
disposed of as quickly as their importance would allow, and then Gloria
would, first look for Pat and then, perhaps, they both might look for
the romantic rider of the mountain trail.
The prospect whipped up Gloria’s lagging spirits to the bubbling
point. She sensed mystery, she hoped for a real lark, somehow all
the restraint of Altmount seemed mere atmosphere in the secret
contemplation of that one, fearless girl, with that handsome young
man and the “Steppy,” possibly with all the fairy tale attributes of
horrid gray hair, a witch’s face, a crone’s raspy voice and everything!
How perfectly delicious! A story fit for any one, even the insatiable
Pat. So it was that all day, in spite of the extra drill preparing for
tests, Gloria involuntarily made pictures of Jacquinot Corday, the girl
bareback rider, champion circus performer, etc.
“Just imagine Jean and her crowd actually associating with a circus
rider,” she ruminated. “And wouldn’t Pat howl gleefully!”
She longed to talk it over with Trixy, but the difference in their
grades meant almost complete separation of the chums during the school
hours, and even Pat must have been critically busy, for not a glimpse
of her red head broke the sombre shadow of Gloria’s horizon all the
long day.
Nor did Jack herself appear on the scene. After lunch and before the
second afternoon period, Gloria deliberately sought out Pat. She was
discovered in a head-on collision with a large, green covered book,
whose make up indicated helps for the helpless, “trots” for the weary,
and suggestions for those struggling in the tangled ways of English Lit.
“Hello, yourself!” mumbled Pat, anticipating a greeting. “Yes, I’m
nearly dead, how do you feel yourself?”
Gloria laughed outright. “Poor old Pat!” she soothed. “What’s the worst
thing in life just now?”
“That old goggle-eyed dame that’s supposed to teach us Lit., but really
blasts our young dreams with her crazy ideas of original work.” Scorn
fairly sizzed through the ill chosen words. “The idea of giving us such
a theme as ‘Modern Cynicism! Its effect on Youth.’ Now, if you ask me
what is the effect of cynicism on youth, I would just answer ‘Mary
Mears.’ She’s the result of that effect.”
“Oh, Pat, cheer up!” quoth Gloria. “Have you seen Jack?”
“Seen Jack?” incredulously.
“Yes. She’s back, isn’t she?”
“She isn’t, is she?”
Gloria laughed. “I heard she was----”
“And I heard she wasn’t.”
“Honestly, Pat, joking aside, isn’t Jack back?”
“No joking to put aside. I hate to repeat, considering the English Lit.
and google-eyed Rachel Sander’s hopes for real stuff, but choose a new
style, Glo, and come right out frank and honest. Tell me what you mean
by your bag full of question marks. Who saw Jack and when?”
“Why----” The word was drawled to hide rather than to disclose any
meaning.
“Now you’re holding back,” declared the keen witted Pat, deliberately
folding over a half page of the big book. “What do you know about Jack?
I am almost dead since she left. Jack is a human blotter, wipes out
all the day’s blots with her dashing surprises. There, I almost went
literary that time, didn’t I? Although I could see Jack making more
blots than she obliterated. Another good word,” with ready pencil
noted, “and I’ll stick in some place if I have to obliterate Rachel
with it,” declared Pat. “Meanwhile, Glo, I’m waiting to hear the news.”
“That’s exactly what I came for,” flung back Gloria, “and you haven’t
even asked me to sit down.”
“Do.”
“Where?”
“Oh, I’m rather crowded,” with a supercilious glance at her untidy
room. “You see, every one comes in to help me and they eat my fudge,
look in my mirror, try my powder and Blanche Baldwin tried my comb.”
“May I try your trunk?”
“Certainly. Help yourself, although that’s a perfectly brand new trunk
and it almost got lost in the shuffle. Wait, I’ll fix the cover nice
and smooth. There,” and as she shook the Indian blanket to replace it
as a cover, Gloria saw a black enamelled trunk, exactly like the one
she had opened by mistake!
“Your trunk--is just like mine,” she said, as naturally as her surprise
permitted.
“Really? I thought I was very much ahead in trunks,” said Pat, easily.
“Although I believe the salesman did say the style was going merrily.
Glad my key is registered, if it did give me a lot of trouble when I
lost it by taking too good care of it.”
“Registered?” Gloria repeated, recalling her experience with the same
key fitting the two trunks.
“Yes. That’s a feature of this trunk, and if yours is like it don’t
lose your key. There is only one of a kind made, a little difference in
each lock, I presume, so the owner is supposed to be key proof. But why
this digression? Do you think I am interested in mechanics rather than
in Jack?”
“No,” said Gloria, recovering her composure. That trunk mystery seemed
to be burying itself deeper daily. Of course she never dreamed of
little Pat being a “pirate’s daughter,” but the sudden view of a trunk
apparently just like the one in question, had startled her. Now, she
must appease Pat’s curiosity without divulging even a hint of Trixy’s
early morning adventure, and this would be no simple matter, Gloria
knew from experience.
“I’m scared to death of the exams,” she admitted, by way of
introduction. “It seems to me, I have done nothing for weeks but try to
patch up holes in my prep. work. I wonder if I shall ever be able to
stand the college entrance exams?”
“Don’t try. Isn’t this hard enough?” The “trot” book came in for a
demonstrative slam.
“But I want to go in for science,” explained Gloria. “You see my early
training----”
“Oh, ye-ah, so early you’ll forget it before the educational day is
half over,” prophesied Pat. “But about Jack. Let’s go hunt her up. I’ll
bet she’s got a wild story to relate, and a wild story would just about
save my life this very minute.”
“Don’t tempt Fate,” cautioned Gloria.
“Tempt Fate! I’d bribe the dear old thing if I knew what she liked
best. Come along, Snooksy. Let’s hope for the best, or worst, if you
feel as I do about it.”
“But your English? Didn’t I interrupt----”
“A real mercy. When Patricia Halliday goes in for cramming, I tell you,
chile, she sure does cram. Oh boy!” The chuckle that verified this also
repudiated it, as Pat said, according to one’s viewpoint.
The search for Jack began with a little twittering whistle along the
corridor, leading up to “fourteen” the number on a partly opened door.
“You’re right. The prodigal has returned,” whispered Pat, dodging
past Jean’s door and actually bending double as she sprinted past Edna
Hobb’s. “Plugging away” for the quarterly exams meant that rooms might
hide the anxious students in their safest corners.
But the open door proved a false alarm. Jack was not found within.
“She has been here,” reasoned Gloria. “Here’s her bag and there’s her
hat.”
“Surest thing. She may be down telling it all to Alty. Let’s peek,”
suggested Pat.
Gloria’s critical eye swept the room. No sign of rough-rider outfit was
in sight. Instead, there were the tweed top coat, the smart rainbow
sport hat, and a very much beaded one piece, brown silk jersey dress.
Jack was noted for showy clothes, and they were always of a very good
and costly quality.
Beads suggested the trunk secret to Gloria’s mind, and even the brown,
slinking, silky gown, that should have been put away in a box, and
wasn’t, hinted the iridescent grandeur that lay so helplessly in the
top of the strange trunk. That, and the big gem labelled “Precious” in
the envelope, and the consequent necklace all were now recalled.
“Yes,” she was deciding, “it surely must have been Jack’s trunk. But
what could the materials have been used for? And if the stone in the
envelope really were precious why should it have been left to the
uncertain travel of ordinary baggage?”
In line with that secret reasoning Pat uncannily remarked:
“You know, I have always thought Jack is just hiding something with all
her show off. I wouldn’t wonder but she’s as deep as a well underneath
the surface.”
“Why should she hide anything?” Gloria asked. They were on the second
landing and now safe from possible interruptions.
“The Steppy, you know. She surely is a queer one. You just ought to
hear her pass remarks, about one o’clock A. M. in the lower hall with
the mezzanine floor lined with listening ladies! What the girls don’t
guess isn’t worth considering. Guessing is their one strong line. But
I like Jack, you know, Gloria, and I’m not catty enough to join in the
slaughter.”
“I can’t see why girls are so--so snobbish,” returned Gloria.
“Born that way, like hare lips,” said Pat, now ready to “peek” in the
office door, which, like others, stood ajar.
“Oh!”
Both girls exclaimed, for instead of peeking in the door they almost
collided with demure little Miss Taylor.
“Looking for Miss Alton?” she asked agreeably.
“Oh, no,” replied Pat. “The fact is, we are trying to (whisper) dodge
her. But have you seen Jack Corday?”
“Why, no. She is away, is she not?”
“Was, but isn’t,” answered Pat. Gloria was not yet so familiar even
with the amiable Miss Taylor as to join in the repartee.
“Oh, is she back?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Gloria did say that. She felt
obliged to say something, and she smiled audibly to heighten the effect.
“When you ought to be poring over your books. Well, I haven’t seen Jack
and I’m in charge of the office,” announced Miss Taylor.
“Oh, is Alty away?” squealed Pat.
“Tem-por-air-i-ly!” Miss Taylor was not much more than a school girl
herself.
“The berries!” cheered Pat. “Come along, Glo, and continue the
hunt. If Jack is in Altmount we’ll find her! Let exams take care of
themselves for a while,” and she dragged the willing Gloria along, out
through the heavy doors, down the deserted path making straight for the
gym.
“If she’s around she’ll surely be walking a ceiling or resting up
on double flips. She’s the queerest girl. Hard work is her idea of
loafing.”
All this increased Gloria’s suspicion. It sounded too much like circus
ability to be anything else.
But no Jack was found in the gym, either walking ceilings, or doing
double flips.
“Well, perhaps she is in some corner of the Wigwam, safe in the arms of
the babes,” suggested Pat, rather disconsolately. “Let’s give up the
hunt and go along the lake drive for a change. I really must work hard
to make up some points, and perhaps a real lively walk will tune me up.”
“I need one myself,” agreed Gloria. “How is this pace?”
“Suits me. You do take lovely long steps for such a little girl.”
“I’m not little. I expect to be tall and imposing like Trix, some day,”
announced Gloria.
“Isn’t the air wonderful?” Patricia Halliday was getting a better
complexion with every stride.
“This is one fine feature of Altmount,” declared Gloria. “Even Barbend
of my fairy childhood dreams, was not better supplied with beautiful
walks.”
At a rapid pace the two students confronted the brisk November air. It
was exhilarating, delightful.
Then suddenly both halted! Neither spoke but gasped.
Upon the bank of the lake, in the narrow strip of green that folded the
path from the water were--garments!
“Jack’s sweater!” gasped Pat.
“And her--tam!” added Gloria.
Startled they stooped over the glaring green coat and hat.
“How could they come here?” breathed Gloria.
“She must have brought them. But where can she be?”
Somehow a coat and hat by the side of a lashing lake seemed ominous. No
more joking about Jack’s uncanny athletic ability. Neither suggested
she might be up a tree, or----
“Oh!” screamed Gloria. “I see a canoe paddle. Pat, look!”
“Away out in the torrent!” gasped Pat. “Oh, Gloria, if----”
“And see! There’s--the--canoe----!”
“Empty!” brave little Pat seemed suddenly helpless and leaned, for a
moment, on the terrified Gloria. A rush of horror seized them. What if
Jack----
“Pat! What shall we do! Can you swim?” cried Gloria.
“Swim! In that ice water?”
“But if we could reach the canoe! She might be near it!”
“Gloria Doane! Don’t you dare think of such a thing.”
“I’ve got to, Pat. I’m a safe swimmer, and the canoe is not so far out.
Here, help me out of my things, I’ll bring the canoe back, at least.”
“Gloria!”
But the next moment there was a splash, then the waving up and down of
lithe, white arms, as stroke after stroke took Gloria further from land
and nearer the drifting canoe.
The impetuous act had been prompted by an irresistible impulse. Gloria
Doane of Barbend, the seaside town, knew well the price of a moment’s
delay against the water’s cruelty, and neither the current nor the icy
lake could restrain her.
Pat watched the flashing arms and the small dark head, fascinated. Then
she screamed, wildly, shrilly, until the terror in her voice penetrated
the hills and reached the very walls of Altmount.
Distracted she screamed again and called for help, until presently
answering voices bore down, and girl after girl came racing to the
lakeside.
All eyes focussed upon the speck in the water, but now Gloria was
beside the canoe and the girls waited breathlessly.
To get into a canoe from the water is an expert’s task, but Gloria was
that. She placed herself in direct line with the crescent bow, put both
hands up, one on either side, and slid in like some humanized fish.
What she then saw appalled her.
A mute figure lay on the bottom of the boat!
And the white face of Jacquinot Corday seemed frozen there in deathlike
immobility.
“Oh,” choked Gloria. “Jack! Dear Jack!”
But the drifting little bark still clipped the waves playfully,
innocent of the danger now so fearful to Gloria.
“Oh!” she gasped, “what shall I do? No paddle!” But water like fire
must be met with heroic measures, and with a strength surprising to
herself she managed to rip loose two slats from the side of the canoe,
then quickly she slipped from Jack’s inert form a thin white skirt.
Jabbing each slat through this she constructed a sail, and holding them
in place above her, she felt the wind take hold and drive them forward.
Not until she had veered the boat on its direct course toward shore,
did she have opportunity to look critically upon Jack.
“Jack?” she called anxiously. Then she saw one limp hand raised feebly.
She peered down closer but there was no further movement.
Jack was not dead but unconscious!
She must be revived, quickly. The girls upon the bank were shouting,
calling, but Gloria edged up carefully. Then she cupped a handful of
water and splashed it upon the deathlike features.
Just a fluttering of the eyelids rewarded this test. Then Gloria took
her sail in both hands, held it bravely to the breeze and drove back
to the shore, where frantic companions awaited, helpless.
“Oh!” yelled Pat, “didn’t--you--see--”
“I have her! She’s here!” called back Gloria, sailing in like some
heroic war maiden, clad only in her thin underslip, but unmindful of
the dripping water and the cutting frosty air.
“Gloria!” came a blend of voices.
“Be careful,” she answered. “I guess--she has--fainted!”
[Illustration: GLORIA HELD HER “SAIL” WITH BOTH HANDS
_Gloria at Boarding School._ _Page 95_
]