THE RED MASQUE
The two chums working in Number Eighty, South Wing, Rivercliff School,
closed their books before the retiring bell rang at nine-thirty, fully
satisfied with what they had accomplished.
“No use climbing into bed, Bethesda,” said Molly, with a yawn. “Just
get into something comfortable--of course, your kimono--and we’ll put
out the lights at the proper time.”
“Why--will anybody look in?”
“Perhaps. You never can tell. It is according to who is on watch
to-night. We never know whose duty it is. Miss Crouch is perfectly
sneaking----”
“Oh, Molly!”
“Yes, she is. She wears sneaks when she is on guard, and she often
opens our doors and looks in. And if you lock your door she is likely
to rap on it and wake you up. Says she wants to be sure you are all
right.”
“Are we supposed to leave our doors unlocked?” Beth asked.
“Why, you can do as you please. But if Miss Crouch feels like looking
into your room in the middle of the night, she’ll get you up to open
the door. She’s a suspicious creature.”
“For no reason, I suppose?” laughed Beth.
“Never mind!” Then Molly’s voice dropped to a whisper: “I’ll show you
how to fool Miss Crouch.”
“What about?” asked Beth.
“If she should feel it necessary to look in while we are gone--see
here!”
Molly rolled the extra blanket which lay upon the foot of Beth’s bed
into the semblance of a human figure and put it under the bedclothes.
There it looked like a person asleep, wrapped head and heels in the
coverings. Then she made the same masquerade in her own bed.
They sat in the dark and told each other “giggly” stories in whispers
until it was about half-past ten and the whole school seemed buried in
sleep. But there is scarcely anything more uncertain than a boarding
school between retiring hour and the first bell in the morning. That is
an axiom known to all instructors of experience.
When the two chums ventured out with the red bags pulled down to their
shoulders, there were other “red-heads” flitting about the corridors.
They slipped in and out of the various doors like red-topped ghosts.
It was evidently to be a large party in Mamie Dunn’s room.
“Sh! Who’s on watch?” one unknown asked Beth.
“Oh! I’m sure I don’t know,” returned the new girl, and at once the
girl asking the question laughed, and said:
“So you’re the new one, aren’t you? I thought I’d know your voice. And
now I’ll know your kimono.”
“That’s Stella--didn’t you hear?” said Molly. “She caught you.”
“Oh! aren’t you supposed to know each other?” asked Beth.
“Just as well if we’re not identified. I’ve got on a new kimono. I’m
just going to keep it for these red-head parties. You get one, and then
we’ll fool ’em.”
The question was repeated several times before the chums reached
Sixty-two:
“Who’s on watch?”
“I wager it’s Miss Crouch,” jolly Molly said, but nobody would have
recognized her voice.
“Is that you, Phoebe Mills?”
“No. It’s Phoebe’s sister,” said Molly, solemnly. “Don’t try to catch
me, honey!”
“Well, if Miss Crouch is on watch or not, I dare you to look,” giggled
the inquisitive girl.
“Not me,” declared Molly, shaking her head vigorously. “Get that crazy
Molly Granger to run and look.”
“I’m looking for her,” admitted the other girl, going away from the
chums.
Molly giggled. “What a chance! That was Izola Pratt, I believe. She’s a
‘Me too.’”
“You mean one of Maude’s friends?”
“Just so,” said Molly, nodding. “I wonder why they are all trying to
identify us? Maybe Princess Fancyfoot has some scheme up her sleeve.”
“You don’t mean that she would report us to the teachers?” asked Beth,
in some alarm.
“I’d like to see her! That would just about settle Maude Grimshaw in
this school. If her father had as much money as King Midas, and Maude
lived to be as old as Methuselah, she could never live down such a
thing. No indeed! There! here’s Sixty-two.”
Beth knew Mamie Dunn, but she did not know who welcomed her into the
room. Everybody in the apartment wore a red mask, and at first the new
girl was not able to recognize any one.
It was a chafing-dish party. A tall girl in a striking red and
black kimono (somehow Beth thought she must be the senior, Miss
Teller)--the kimono itself well fitted to clothe one who did deeds of
magic--presided over a cheese dish warranted, as Molly said, to give
everybody “dreams of the rabbit fiend.”
There was bottled ginger ale and tea and coffee. Such a combination to
go into one’s stomach at such a late hour would ruin the digestion of
anybody but a boarding-school girl.
Beth, even at this party, could not but compare her own state with that
of the other twenty-five or thirty girls present. There were all sorts
and conditions of kimonos; but all were of very much richer material
than her own pretty, but cheap, cotton crêpe.
She was really sure of the identity of nobody save Molly at first. But
she began to enjoy herself, for she was not left alone. She tried to
disguise her voice in answering questions, and so puzzle the others.
The laughter was subdued, although the walls were thick and the doors
sound-proof. One girl frequently ventured into the corridor to peer
about. There was a delicious feeling of uncertainty and peril that
spiced this “red-head” party.
The guessing of each other’s identity was a popular pastime, and when
they held a mock court, with the tall girl in the red and black kimono
as judge, and appointed two guards to bring culprits before the bar for
identification, the fun waxed boisterous.
Sometimes the girls guessed who the prisoner was very quickly; at other
times they shot broad of the mark, as was attested by the gaiety of the
one under examination.
But when Beth was seized and forced before the girl in the red and
black kimono, there fell a little hush of expectation. It seemed to the
new girl as though many of these present had been waiting for just this
event.
“Here is a stranger in our midst,” said the red and black kimono, in a
sepulchral voice. “Who can she be?”
“It’s plain to be seen she’s a person of note,” said one, demurely.
“And a person of quality,” added a sharp voice. “Note the gown she has
on. It must have cost ‘trippence’ a yard, as Miss Small would say,” and
there was a rising giggle from a group of masks in one corner.
Beth flashed a glance that way. She felt the enmity of these masked
girls in the very air. Had she known how to escape she would have done
so before the mock examination went any further.
In that particular group of girls Beth suddenly recognized Maude
Grimshaw’s blue and silver kimono. And it was from the wearer of this
beautiful garment that the next unkind observation fell:
“We are advertised by this young person. Oh! she is an acquisition to
Rivercliff, undoubtedly.”
“You’re not!” snapped Molly Granger’s voice from behind Beth.
But Maude had her speech ready, and was not to be sidetracked.
“I suppose this girl began by being photographed as a patent-food baby.
Then she advertised a brand of soap as she grew older, until now she
has arrived at the dignity of being flaunted in seven colors on the
cover of a cheap magazine.”
There was a murmur of objection from some of the hooded girls; but
there was laughter, too.
“She will doubtless become famous,” went on Maude, scornfully, “and
make Rivercliff famous, by winding up as the exponent of a toothwash,
or illustrating the use of a pair of shoulder braces.”
The whole company was now in ungovernable laughter. Beth knew that
she should have laughed herself had the victim been some other girl.
Indeed, she could have laughed with them at the fun poked at her, had
it not been so venomously done.
“Beth Baldwin!” somebody shouted. “Discovered! She must pay a forfeit.”
Beth heard Molly sputtering angrily behind her; but she realized that
if she took offence, or if Molly was allowed to do so, it would only
make her the more ridiculous. One decision Beth made, however, right
then and there. It was a decision bound to change the tenor of her
whole career at Rivercliff School.
“Unmask! You’re caught,” ordered the “judge.”
Beth did so and managed to show a smiling, if flushed, countenance to
the assembly.
“Well, I think it’s mighty clever of her,” drawled one girl, “if she
can earn money posing for her picture.”
The others were, however, clamoring for Beth to pay a forfeit. The
judge was supposed to accept suggestions for that. Maude’s sharp voice
was ready:
“Oh, it doesn’t really matter what she does, I fancy. As long as
there’s anything to be earned by it, Miss Baldwin is prepared to do it.
Like our politicians, she is ‘out for the dough.’”
“How very vulgar, Maude!” said the “judge,” tartly. “Suppose Miss
Carroll should hear that?”
“It’s the truth!” snapped the angry girl. “We, who are well-to-do, are
exploited for the benefit of these--these paupers that Miss Hammersly
allows to come here to Rivercliff. At least, she should have the
decency to put them in a department by themselves, and have their
sleeping quarters with the servants.”
“Shame! Shame!” cried a dozen voices.
“You go too far, Maude,” declared the “judge.”
“That’s what is the matter with Maude Grimshaw,” ejaculated Molly,
boiling over in her wrath, finally. “She wanted Miss Baldwin’s room for
one of her ‘Me toos’--and Miss Baldwin wouldn’t make _that_ exchange
for money. Nasty thing!”
“Girls! stop this!” ordered the girl in red and black, rising from her
seat.
Suddenly Mamie Dunn herself took a hand in the discussion. She stood up
and plucked off her red bag. She was a plain, rather unattractive girl
who seldom asserted herself; but now she was quite indignant.
“Stop, Maude Grimshaw. You are the meanest girl in Rivercliff School--I
don’t care if you are the richest. This is my room and I declare I’ll
never invite you into it again.”
She turned swiftly to Beth and put a protecting arm about her. “You are
a girl I am proud to have for a friend, Miss Baldwin--I don’t care what
others may say. I know I wouldn’t have the pluck to try to work my way
through school, providing I could get an education in no other way.
I--I hope you’ll forgive me for inviting you here to-night where you
have been so insulted and abused by my other guests. I assure you, it
was not with my connivance.”
“Oh, I am confident of that, Miss Dunn,” faltered Beth, for Mamie’s
kindness touched her more deeply than Maude Grimshaw’s unkind speech.
“I thank you, Miss Dunn. I--I can’t stay. I see very clearly now that I
should not have come in the first place.”
“Don’t say that!” cried somebody whom Beth thought was Brownie, and who
was sobbing, frankly.
“Yes,” Beth said, more calmly now, “I see that I was wrong in accepting
the invitation. I am different from you other girls. I want to get an
education, and I must get it in my own way. My way is not yours. I hope
that hereafter I shall not be led into accepting invitations that lead
to friction and make everybody concerned unhappy.”
“You’re all right, Baldwin!” said the girl behind the judge’s mask,
huskily.
“I am going to ask you, Miss Dunn, to excuse me,” Beth proceeded. “I
quite appreciate your kindness, and all you meant to do for me in
inviting me to your party. But--you see yourself--it is not wise.”
She stammered this--halted at last in her speech, chokingly--and then
made swiftly for the door.