A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl (25 page)

Some time in the middle of the night Diana woke with a start, just in time to see Loveday in a blue dressing-gown, with their bedroom candle in her hand, disappearing through the door. Where could Loveday be going? Had she heard burglars? Was she ill? Why had she not roused her room-mate? Could she by any chance be walking in her sleep?

All these questions raced through Diana's brain, and, as the quickest way to solve them, she jumped up, fumbled in the dark for her bedroom slippers and dressing-gown, and hurried after Loveday. She could see by the glimmer of light that the candle was going downstairs. She followed, flopping along in her woollen slippers, for she had not had time to draw them on properly. She nearly lost one on the landing, and had to stop. When she reached the hall the light had gone into the seniors' room. Diana walked softly, and peeped cautiously in. She had rather an idea of saying "Boo!" suddenly, and giving Loveday a scare, but she wanted to reconnoitre first. Her friend's back was turned towards her; she was bending over a desk, not her own desk, but Hilary's. She quickly drew out a roll of manuscript, tore it across and across, carried it to the fire-place, put it inside the grate, and applied the candle. Diana, standing in the dark outside the doorway, watched her in utter amazement. So many questions began to rush into her mind that the hall did not seem the best place to answer them. She fled upstairs again, jumped into bed, and lay thinking. In a minute or two Loveday came quietly back, blew out the candle at the door, and, treading softly, also went to bed. Diana did not speak, or betray by any movement that she was awake. It was an hour, however, before sleep came to her. She was on the early practising list, so she went downstairs next morning before her room-mate was stirring.

Breakfast passed over as usual; the post-bag came in; Miss Todd sorted and distributed the contents, and the girls retired to read their letters. At ten minutes to nine something happened. Hilary, with wide open eyes and flushed cheeks, came running along the hall.

"Somebody's gone and taken my essay out of my desk!" she declared excitedly.

Her fellow-seniors wrenched their thoughts from home news.

"Impossible!" said Geraldine.

"You've misplaced it!" said Stuart.

"No, I haven't! I know just where I put it yesterday."

"Go and look again!"

"I've turned the whole desk out, I tell you, and it simply isn't there!"

"Where is it, then?"

"That's what I want to know!"

"Has anyone taken it for a joke?"

"I expect so, but I'll reckon with whoever has!"

"It's probably one of those intermediates," suggested Stuart.

"Anybody who's got it must just turn it up at once!" said Geraldine grimly. "We can't allow this sort of thing to happen. I'll ask who's taken it."

The head prefect made an instant tour of the school, proclaiming the loss, and demanding instant restoration. The school, as one girl, utterly denied the accusation.

"But look here!" persisted Geraldine. "
Some
body
must have taken it. It couldn't walk out of Hilary's desk by itself! She
knows
she left it there yesterday. If anybody's hiding it for a joke, please give it back at once. If it's not brought back by nine o'clock I shall tell Miss Todd. Yes, I'm in earnest! Dead earnest!"

Seniors, intermediates, and juniors, very much astonished, retired to their form rooms and talked the matter over; but nobody produced the missing manuscript. During the course of the morning Miss Todd entered the intermediate room.

"A disagreeable thing has happened, girls," she said. "Somebody has taken Hilary's essay from her desk. If it was done as a joke, I consider it a very sorry joke! Does anyone in this room know anything about the matter? If so, she must speak out at once and tell me."

Miss Todd looked searchingly at the faces before her, and waited for an answer; but nobody spoke. There was a flush of annoyance on her cheeks, and that firm set about the mouth which generally indicated a danger signal.

"I intend to get to the bottom of it. It can't possibly be overlooked," she remarked, as she left the room to go and catechize the juniors.

For the rest of the morning lessons went on as usual. Immediately after dinner, however, Diana received a message to report herself in the study. She went slowly. She was still thinking; she had been doing nothing else but think since that midnight excursion down the stairs. It was rather a white-faced, anxious-eyed little Diana who entered the study. Miss Todd was sitting at her desk, and Hilary and Geraldine stood near her. They looked half resentful and half nervous.

"Diana," began Miss Todd, "I've sent for you because I believe you're the only girl who can throw any light on this most distressing business. I'm going to ask you a straight question. Have you taken Hilary's manuscript? I expect a straight answer."

"No," breathed Diana, looking down on the floor.

"Look me in the face, Diana. Do you know where it is? Or anything at all about it?"

Diana's eyes raised themselves to the level of the Principal's knee, and then fell to the floor. She did not answer.

"Geraldine tells me that she saw you at Hilary's desk yesterday evening."

No answer.

"You are known to have threatened to play a trick on Hilary!"

Still no answer.

"Very well, Diana. Until you condescend to explain, I can't allow you to mix with the rest of the school. We have rules here, and I intend they shall be obeyed. I make no exception for any pupil. You're inclined to think you have licence to do as you like, and play any pranks you choose here. I'm going to teach you a lesson for once. You'll stay in the attic until you choose to answer my question. I've dealt with obstinate girls before. Come along with me!"

Miss Todd rose, and, taking a key from her desk, led the way to the attic at the top of the little narrow staircase. The room was very simply furnished, and was always kept in readiness as a hospital in case any girl should be suddenly taken ill. It was not a particularly cheerful apartment; it had a skylight window, there were no pictures on the walls, and the floor was of scrubbed boards. It looked, as it was intended to be, arranged with the main object of being easily disinfected if necessary. Miss Todd ushered in Diana, and pointed to a chair.

"You may sit there and think it over," she remarked. Then she shut the door, and locked it on the outside.

Left alone, Diana took a seat on one of the small iron bedsteads. Her face was a mixture of bewilderment and consternation.

"Diana Hewlitt, it seems to me you've got yourself into
some
fix," she said to herself. "What's puzzling me is that I can't believe the evidence of my own eyes. Did I
dream
I saw Loveday go downstairs and take a roll of papers out of Hilary's desk? Goodness, I was only too horribly awake! The queerness of the thing bothers me. It doesn't fit in, somehow. Loveday! Loveday's the last person in the world, as I should have thought, to do a trick like that. I can't understand it. It's the sort of stupid thing that girls do in books. I never believed they did it in real life. Well, one thing's certain. I'm not going to tell about her--not if Miss Todd keeps me shut up here till I'm a hundred. Loveday shielded me when I ran away to say good-bye to Lenox, and I vowed I'd do the same for her if ever I got the chance. Well, I've got it now, and no mistake. Only--Loveday! Loveday! I don't understand! You've toppled down somehow off a pedestal. I feel as if something I liked had got broken."

It was anything but a cheerful afternoon for Diana. The only literature in the room was a catalogue of the Stores and some reports of charitable institutions. She read the cost of tins of sardines, pots of jam, table linen, household china and hardware, and tried to take some faint interest in the annual statements of the "District Nursing Association" and "The Society for Providing Surgical Appliances for the Sick Poor". To amuse herself she was reduced to choosing a word at random and seeing how many other words she could make out of it, but as she had no pencil in her pocket to write them down, it was rather difficult to keep count, and the occupation soon palled. Shortly after four o'clock she heard a scrimmage on the little landing outside the door. A deep-toned voice, that sounded like Miss Beverley's, said, "Come away this minute!" and a high-pitched, excited voice--undoubtedly Loveday's--protested, "If you'd
only
let me speak to her, I'm certain----"

Then a sound followed like somebody sliding down three steps at once, and Loveday's voice, with words indistinguishable, but tone still highly indignant, grew fainter and farther away till it ceased altogether. Diana smiled rather bitterly.

"It's not much use her coming and talking to me," she thought. "If she wants to tell anybody, she can tell Miss Todd. She needn't think I'll give her away. Don't suppose she knows, though, what I saw last night. It's a queer world! I'll be glad when I'm back in America. If Dad gets those passages he'll come and cart me off, Miss Todd or no Miss Todd. I'd like to see his face if he found me locked up in an attic."

Diana's tea was brought to her at five o'clock, and an hour later she was visited by the Principal, who again urged confession.

"What's the use of keeping this up?" asked the mistress impatiently. "You'll have to make a clean breast of it some time, so you may just as well do it at once. It's perfectly evident that you know where the essay is. You don't even deny that. What have you done with it?"

And again Diana stood with the same unyielding look on her face, and stared at the floor, and did not answer a word.

There is nothing so irritating as a person who utterly refuses to speak. Miss Todd glared at her, then turned towards the door.

"Very well; you may spend the night here. I'm not going to waste any more time on you now. Perhaps by to-morrow morning you'll be in a different frame of mind. I intend to know the truth of this; so it's merely a matter of waiting. You can leave here the moment you decide to confess; so you're punishing yourself by staying."

Once more the key turned in the lock, and Diana was a prisoner. At eight o'clock Miss Beverley, in strict silence, brought in a tray with supper, placed it on the table, departed, and secured the defences. After that nobody else even came up the stairs.

"They might some of them have managed to push a note under the door," sighed Diana. "I guess I'd have got a message in somehow if it had been Wendy shut up here. What a set of thick-heads they are! There isn't one of them ever has a decent brain-wave. Wonder how long I'll have to stick in this attic? I've not lost my bounce yet. But I guess, all the same, I'll go to bed now."

Miss Beverley, with the supper tray, had also brought Diana's night-gear in a small bundle. As there was no candle in the attic, it seemed wise to disrobe while there was still light enough to see by. The little bed was rather hard, the pillow was a lumpy one, and the spring mattress squeaked when she moved. Diana watched the room grow gradually darker and darker till stars appeared through the skylight. It was a very long time before she slept. The early sunshine, however, woke her in the small hours of the morning. There was no blind to the window, and the room faced east. Diana sat up in bed. Her eyes fell on the pictureless walls. Perhaps the very fact of their bareness made her look at them more particularly. She did not admire the pattern of the paper. In places it had been badly fitted together, especially in that corner. Why, the magenta roses actually overlapped! They did it in a sort of curve, almost as if they were outlining the top of a door.
Was
it by any chance a door?

At this stage of her inspection she sprang out of bed, went over to the corner, and ran her hand along the portion in question. It certainly felt as if the edge of a door were beneath. She rapped, and there was a hollow sound, very different from that given forth from the wall when she tried it a few yards farther on.

"I'm going to solve the problem for myself," she decided.

There was a knife left on the supper-tray. She thrust it through the paper, and began to cut round the seeming door. And most undoubtedly it was a door, though only a small one, with a curved top that came to the height of her shoulder.

"It must lead somewhere!" she thought excitedly. "Suppose I could get out on to the leads, climb down the ivy, and go off to Petteridge. Cousin Coralie wouldn't let me be brought back here to be shut up in an attic, I know!"

She worked away laboriously, tearing at the paper to free the door. It flashed across her mind that Miss Todd might have something to say about the disfigurement of the wall, but as she had gone so far, that did not deter her.

"Might as well finish it now," she smiled.

More hacking and tearing, then a gigantic shove, and the door suddenly opened inwards. She was looking into another attic, a larger and much darker room, lighted only by a tiny little skylight in the corner. It seemed full of furniture--chairs and tables piled together, and something that looked like a small grand piano. They were so thickly coated with dust that it was difficult in the dim light to distinguish more than upturned legs and general outlines. There did not appear to be the least possibility of escape in this direction. The skylight was more inaccessible than the one in her own attic. She sighed, went back, washed her dusty hands, and got into bed again.

"I guess there'll be a fine old shindy when Miss Todd sees what I've done," she soliloquized.

Miss Todd, who was thoroughly out of patience with Diana, did not hurry to send her breakfast up early that morning. She decided that the prisoner might very well wait until the school had finished its meal. She even distributed the post first, and began to read her own letters. She intended to carry the tray upstairs herself, and have another talk with Diana. It was an unpleasant duty, and could be deferred for a few minutes. Meantime the school also read its letters. There were two for Hilary. One in the well-known home writing, and the other a long envelope addressed in a strange hand. She opened this first. It contained three manuscripts, and a printed notice to the effect that the editor of the
Blue Magazine
much regretted his inability, owing to lack of space, to make use of the enclosed, for the kind offer of which he was much obliged.