A blank silence followed Dreda's announcement. Dismay, disappointment,
and distress seemed printed on every face. Mr Rawdon and Miss Drake
gazed first at each other, then at the girl, then at the paper which she
had laid upon the table. Their foreheads were fretted with perplexity.
For the first few moments they seemed unable to speak; but presently,
bending towards Dreda, they appeared to question her in whispered tones,
to question anxiously, to cross-question,--to draw her attention to page
after page of the typed essay, as if searching for a refutation of her
statement. But Dreda shook her head, and could not be shaken. Then
Miss Drake turned aside and sat down, turning her chair so that her face
was hidden from the audience, and two little patches of red showed
themselves on Mr Rawdon's cheek bones.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "a mistake has arisen--a most
regrettable mistake. The numbers attached to two of the essays
submitted to me have apparently been misplaced. It is impossible to say
how this confusion has arisen. Neither Miss Drake nor I can think of
any satisfactory explanation. If by chance it should be due to any
carelessness of my own, I can only say that I am most deeply sorry, and
that I feel myself painfully punished. It appears that the writer of
the prize essay is not Etheldreda Saxon, as we believed. She herself
discovered the mistake when glancing at the paper which I had returned
to her while I was giving my address just now, and has taken the first
possible opportunity of making public her discovery. I regret more than
I can say that she should have had so painful an experience, and I am
sure that you will all share my sorrow. Miss Saxon's essay was one of
the four chosen from the rest, and I can only hope that the prophecies
which I have already made as to her future will in all truth be
fulfilled." (Great applause.) "I now call upon Miss Susan Webster, the
author of the selected essay, to come up to the platform and receive her
prize." (Faint clapping of hands.)
There is no doubt that it was a painful anticlimax. It is not often
that a literary genius looks the part so delightfully as Dreda had done
twenty minutes before--Dreda, in her new blue dress, with her flaxen
mane floating past her waist, her beautiful eyes darkened with
excitement, her complexion of clearest pink and white. As she had
mounted the steps to the platform the watching faces had shone with pure
artistic pleasure in the sight. So young, so strong, so lovely, and so
gifted--it was a privilege even to look upon so fortunate a creature.
And now! Guided by Miss Drake's thoughtful hand, the fairy princess had
slipped behind the screen which hid the back of the platform, and
creeping slowly across the floor came the mouselike figure of Susan in
her dun brown dress, her plain little face fretted with embarrassment
and distress, a victor with the air of a martyr, a conqueror who shrank
from her spoils.
Despite himself, Mr Rawdon's voice took a colder tone as, for the
second time, he presented the pile of books; despite herself, Miss
Drake's smile was mechanical and forced; while the visitors made only a
show of applause. "Hard luck for that fine, bright girl!" whispered the
fathers one to another; the mothers almost without exception had tears
in their eyes. "And she looks so sweet and pretty! It's a _shame_!"
cried the sisters rebelliously. Even the girls on the benches at the
back of the room--Susan's companions who loved her and appreciated her
worth--even they looked oppressed and discomfited. The romance of
Dreda's triumph had appealed to their young imaginations; they
understood even more keenly than their elders the suffering involved in
that humiliating confession. "Poor Dreda!" they whispered to each
other. "Oh! poor old Dreda!"
At tea in the drawing-room the tone of the teachers was distinctly
apologetic--the high spirits characteristic of the early hours had ebbed
away, and the visitors were glad to beat an early retreat. Mr and Mrs
Saxon received Miss Drake's apologies in the kindest and most
sympathetic manner, and would not allow her to take any blame to
herself.
"It was an accident--no one can be blamed. We are so sorry for you,
too!" Mrs Saxon said sweetly. "It is a disappointment, of course; it
was a very happy moment when we believed our dear girl had gained such a
prize. We were so proud of her!"
"We are proud of her now," interrupted Dreda's father quickly, and at
that both his hearers smiled and nodded their heads in sympathetic
understanding. "Yes, yes; we are proud of her _now_."
To Dreda herself her parents made no allusion to the tragic mistake.
The girl only made her appearance when the motor drove up to the door,
and her cool, somewhat haughty manner showed that sympathy was the last
thing which she desired at the moment.
"Good-bye, darling, till Thursday. Only two days more before we have
you back among us."
"Good-bye, my girl. I'll drive over for you on Thursday morning."
"Dreda, darling, I'm _so_ glad you are coming. I've such lots to tell
you!"
"You've got your belt fastened on the wrong hook. The point's crooked."
For once Maud's literal mind was a blessed relief. Her parting words
made everyone laugh, and the car drove off with the cheery sound of that
laughter ringing in the air, and the remembrance of merry faces to cheer
Dreda's aching heart. She turned and crept upstairs to the study. She
had shed her own gala dress, thrusting it away in the cupboard as if she
never wished to behold it again. The study was filled with odd pieces
of furniture which had been taken out of the big classrooms, and the
fire was dying out upon the grate.
"Here sit I, and my broken heart!" sighed Dreda dramatically, as she
subsided into a chair and drew her shoulders together in an involuntary
shiver. It had been cold work standing at the door watching the
departure of the car, and the atmosphere of the deserted room was not
calculated to cheer her spirits. "When you've had a great shock your
constitution is enfeebled; when you're enfeebled, you are sensitive to
chills; a chill on an enfeebled constitution is generally fatal.
Perhaps I've received my death blow this afternoon in more ways than
one." Dreda sniffed and shivered miserably once more. The stream of
visitors was still departing, saying good-bye to Miss Bretherton and the
teachers in the drawing-room and making their way to the door. Dreda
would not risk leaving the study and encountering strange faces on the
staircase; besides which, it did not seem her place to seek her
companions at this moment. It was her companions who should seek _her_.
"In the hour of my triumph they all crowded round me; now I am a pelican
on the housetop, and no one cares if I am dead or alive. I must get
accustomed to it, I suppose. Shame and humiliation must henceforth be
my portion. Only fifteen and a half--in _years_. In suffering I'm an
old, old woman! Mr Rawdon was sorry; I saw it in his face; but he
liked Susan's best. Susan has won the prize. Where is Susan now? Has
she forgotten all about me?"
As if in answer to this question the handle of the door turned, and a
head was thrust round the corner. A voice exclaimed: "Here she is!" and
Nancy entered the room, followed closely by Susan herself. They stood
and looked at Dreda, and Dreda looked at them, but none of the three
uttered a word. Then suddenly Susan whispered something in Nancy's ear,
and while that young person hurried from the room with a most unusual
celerity, Susan dropped quietly on her knees beside the dying fire and
began coaxing it into a blaze.
Dreda sat back in her chair and watched the process with a dull,
detached curiosity. Susan's back looked so narrow and small; the brown
dress fastened at the back with a row of ugly bone buttons; as she knelt
the soles of her new slippers seemed to fill up the entire foreground.
They were startlingly, shockingly white! As she bent from side to side
blowing skilfully upon the struggling flames, one could catch a glimpse
of her profile, white and wan, with red circles round the eyes. Such a
poor, weary little conqueror, on her knees striving to serve her fallen
rival. Something stirred in Dreda's heart; the ice melted, she cleared
her throat, and addressed her friend by name.
"Susan!"
Susan sat back on her heels, lifting scared, pitiful eyes.
"Susan," said Dreda regally, "I don't hate you. You needn't be
frightened. I don't hate you a bit--I'm _sorry_ for you. This should
have been your triumph, and I have spoiled it. It's very hard on you
too, Susan!"
"Oh, Dreda!" gasped Susan breathlessly. "Dreda, you're _magnificent_!"
She was wan and white no longer; her eyes blazed. No one seeing Susan
at that moment could possibly have called her plain; the lovely soul of
her shone through the flesh, working its transformation, even as the
leaping flames were now turning the dull hearth into a thing of beauty
and life.
Still on her knees, Susan crawled across the few intervening yards of
floor, and rested her head against Dreda's knee.
"I'd have given it up a hundred times--a thousand over, Dreda, rather
than let you have this experience!" she said brokenly. And Dreda knew
that she spoke the truth.
It was in this attitude that Nancy discovered the two girls when she
entered the room a few minutes later, bearing in her hands a temptingly
spread tea-tray. One glance of the red-brown eyes testified to her
satisfaction at such eloquent signs of peace, but manner and speech
disdained sentiment.
"Corn in Egypt!" she cried cheerfully. "The Duck fairly showered
dainties upon me--scones, sandwiches, cakes, _and_ a fresh pot of tea.
Let's fall to at once. I am fainting with hunger."
She placed three chairs round the table, seated herself in front of the
tray, and, pouring out three cups of tea, handed them round with
hospitable zeal. Dreda ate and drank and felt comforted, in spite of
herself. It was wonderful how the mere creature comforts of warmth and
food seemed to soothe the pain at her heart. She even began to feel a
faint enjoyment in the dramatic element of her position, to realise that
if she had failed she had failed in a noticeable, even in a tragic,
fashion. To Susan belonged the glory, yet she, the beaten one, remained
unquestionably the heroine of the day!
By the time that second cups of tea had been handed round, and an attack
made upon the iced cake, Dreda was ready and eager to discuss her
trouble.
"How _could_ those numbers have been altered, Susan? Mine was five and
yours was ten. They aren't in the least alike!"
"Dreda, I don't know--I can't _think_! If they had come loose and Mr
Rawdon had clipped them on again, he would have remembered doing it. At
least, an ordinary person would; but he is a genius. Perhaps geniuses
are different."
"_You_ are a genius, Susan. You ought to know!" said Dreda, whereat the
poor little genius flushed miserably, and Nancy, rattling the tea-tray,
rushed hastily into the breach.
"Accidents _will_ happen! It's no earthly use worrying your head about
the how and the why. There it is, and you've got to make the best of
it, and forget it as soon as possible."
Dreda rolled tragic eyes to the ceiling.
"I shall never forget. You can't reach the height of your ambition and
then see your treasure crumble to pieces in your hands in less than ten
minutes, and fall down into a very pit of humiliation without wearing a
mark for life."
"Don't say humiliation, Dreda," cried Susan tremulously. "Don't, dear;
I can't bear it. It was dreadful for you; but there was no humiliation.
There was nothing--nothing of which you could be ashamed. Your essay
was very good, too; it has been mentioned as one of the best."
But Dreda was not in the mood to accept comfort. She was miserable, and
she intended to be miserable in a thorough, systematic fashion, so that
for the moment alleviations seemed rather to irritate than to cheer--
"My essay was only one of the best four. That's nothing. Except our
three selves and Barbara Morton, there's not another girl in the school
who can write a decent essay to save her life. The others were all as
dull and stupid as could be. You have seen them, and know that that's
true. If mine was only the fourth best, that's no praise at all. Mr
Rawdon made no special mention of any but yours, except when he--_Oh-
h_!" Dreda's voice shrilled with sudden panic; she dropped her cake on
to her plate and clasped her hands together, staring before her with
wide, startled eyes. "Oh-h! Do you remember? He said that he had been
_amused_ by one of the four essays. His lips twitched, and he tried not
to laugh. Amused at the `high-flown eloquence.' That was the
expression--wasn't it? High-flown eloquence! That means rubbish, of
course--bombastic, stupid, exaggerated rubbish! Girls, _that was mine_!
I feel it--I know it! Susan, you know it, too. You wouldn't say that
it was good, even when I asked you straight out. You were too honest to
say `Yes.' Oh! I am not angry. You needn't look so miserable. It was
true, and down at the very, very bottom of my heart I knew it myself.
When I thought I had won the prize I was only really happy for a few
minutes; after that I grew frightened, for I knew it was a mistake, and
that I was not really a genius at all, only a rather sharp-witted girl,
a ready girl,"--she gave a dreary little laugh--"who could pick up other
people's ideas, and string them together as if they were her own. The
girls weren't clever enough to know the real from the sham, but Mr
Rawdon knew it at once. He saw how--how--" (she paused, groping in her
extensive vocabulary for a word to express her meaning) "how
_meretricious_ it was! He was--_amused_!"
The last word came with an involuntary quiver of pain, and there was
silence round the impromptu tea-table. Dreda saw without surprise that
the tears were rolling down Susan's cheeks--it seemed natural that Susan
should cry. What did give her a real shock of surprise was to hear a
sound of subdued snuffling on her right, and on turning her head to
behold the imperturbable Nancy suspiciously red about the eyes and nose.
"Nancy!" she cried involuntarily. "You are crying! I never believed
that it was possible that you _could_ cry! Why are you crying, Nancy?
Is it about--_me_?"
But Nancy only jerked the tea-tray, tossing her head the while in her
most nonchalant fashion.
"Can't I cry if I like? Can't I cry for myself? If I don't, no one
else will. No one thinks about Me! _I_ tried for the prize as well as
you, and I've far more right to be disappointed. No one ever said I
might be great!"
She tossed her head and frowned and pouted, but Dreda was not deceived
by the pretence. At her heart lay a warm feeling of comfort and
gratitude. In recalling the incidents of this tragic day, it would
always bring a throb of consolation to remember that Nancy, the
imperturbable, had shed tears on her behalf!