For the Sake of the School (22 page)

Then Rona spoke.

"You ask me to confess--you, of all people!" she exclaimed with unconcealed bitterness.

"Yes, dear. I can't urge it too strongly."

"You want me to tell Miss Bowes that I took that pendant?"

"There's no sense in concealing it, Rona."

The Cuckoo's eyes blazed. Her hands gripped the window-sill.

"Oh, this is too much! It's the limit! I couldn't have believed it possible! You, Ulyth! you to ask me this! How can you? How dare you?"

Ulyth gazed at her in perplexity. She could not understand such an outburst.

"Surely I, your own chum, have the best right to speak to you for your own good?"

"My own good!" repeated Rona witheringly. "Yours, you mean. Oh yes, it's all very fine for you, no doubt! You're to get off scot free."

"I? What are you talking about?"

"Don't pretend you don't understand. You atrocious sneak and hypocrite--you took the pendant yourself!"

If she had been accused of purloining the Crown jewels from the Tower of London, Ulyth could not have been more astonished.

"I----!" she stammered. "I----!"

"Yes, you, and you know it. I saw you."

"You couldn't!"

"But I did, or as good as saw you. Who came into our room last night, I should like to know, when Miss Lodge had sent me to bed, and slipped something into one of the blouses hanging behind the door? I'd forgotten by the morning, but I remembered when the pendant came jerking out of my pocket."

"Certainly I didn't put it there!"

"But you did. You came into the room, took off your outdoor coat, and threw it on your bed. I got up, afterwards, and hung it up in your wardrobe for you. Irene told me how you'd joined the cake club. She said you had the password quite pat."

Ulyth was too aghast to answer. Rona, once she had broken silence, continued in a torrent of indignation.

"You a Torch-bearer! You might well ask me not to expose you! 'Remember the Camp-fire,' you said. Yes, it's because of the Camp-fire, and for the sake of the school, that I've kept your secret. Don't be afraid. I'm not going to tell. It wouldn't be good for the League if a Torch-bearer toppled down so low! It doesn't matter so much for only a Wood-gatherer. I won't betray a chum--I've brought that much honour from the Bush; but I'll let you know what I think about you, at any rate."

Then, her blaze of passion suddenly fading, she burst into tears.

"Ulyth, Ulyth, how could you?" she sobbed. "You who taught me everything that was good. I believed in you so utterly, I'd never have thought it of you. Oh, why----"

"Cave! cave!" shouted Lizzie excitedly below. "Cave! Teddie herself!"

Ulyth turned and fled with more regard for speed than safety along the veranda roof, and scrambled through the window into the linen-room again. She was trembling with agitation. Such an extraordinary development of the situation was as appalling as it was unexpected. She must have time to think it over. She could not bear to speak to anybody about it at present, not even to Lizzie. No, she must be alone. She ran quickly downstairs, and, before Lizzie had time to find her, dived under the laurels of the shrubbery and made her way first down the garden and then to the very bottom of the paddock that adjoined the high road. There was a little copse here, of trees and low bushes, which sheltered her from all observation. Nobody was likely to come and disturb her, for the girls preferred the glade, and seldom troubled to enter the paddock. She flung herself down on the grass and tried to face the matter calmly. She had begged Rona to confess, and Rona in return had accused her of taking the pendant. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. How could her room-mate have become possessed of such a preposterous idea? And in what a web of mystery the affair seemed involved! One certainty came as an immense relief. Rona was not guilty. More than this, she was behaving with an extraordinary amount of courage and loyalty.

"She believes I took it, and yet she is bearing all the blame, and shielding me for the sake of the school," groaned Ulyth. "Oh, what must she be thinking of me! We're all at cross-purposes. Did she really fancy that when I said: 'Remember the Camp-fire', I was begging her to screen me? Somebody took the pendant and put it in her pocket; that's the ugly part of the business. It's throwing the blame from one to another. What we've got to do is to find out the real guilty person, and that's not going to be easy, I'm afraid."

Ulyth sighed and wiped her eyes. She had been deeply hurt at Rona's sudden attack. It is humiliating to find that where you occupied a pedestal you are now, even temporarily, a broken idol.

"She's right to scorn me if she imagines I'm such a sneak, but how could she suppose I would? And yet I thought her guilty. Oh dear, it's a horrible muddle! How shall we ever get it straight?"

Ulyth sat thinking, thinking, and was no nearer to a solution of her problem when she suddenly heard the brisk ringing of a bicycle-bell on the road below. Springing up eagerly, she rushed to the wall, and shouted just in time to stop Mrs. Arnold, whose machine was whisking past.

"Hallo, Ulyth! What are you doing there?"

"I'm coming over. Do please wait for me!"

And Ulyth, scrambling somehow across the wall, slid down a gravelly bank on to the road.

"You're the one person in the world I want to see," she added, hugging her friend impetuously. "Oh, Mrs. Arnold, the most dreadful things have been happening at school! Somebody took Stephie's pendant, and it fell out of Rona's pocket, and everybody thinks Rona took it, and Rona thinks it's me. What are we to do?"

"Sit down here and tell me all about it. Yes, please, begin at the very beginning, and don't leave anything out, however trivial. Sometimes the little things are the most important. Cheer up, child! We'll get to the bottom of it, never fear."

Sitting on the bank, with Mrs. Arnold's arm round her, Ulyth related the whole of her story, mentioning every detail she could remember. It was such a comfort to pour it out into sympathetic ears, and to one whose judgment was more likely to be unbiased than that of anyone connected with the school.

"You always understand," she said, with a sigh of relief, as she kissed the hand that was holding hers.

"It certainly is a tangled skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the pendant in her blouse pocket?"

"Yes; and she was sure that somebody was myself."

"Then what we have to do is to produce the real culprit."

"If we can find her."

"Just now I was wheeling my bicycle up Tyn y Bryn Hill, and I met one of the boys from Jones's farm. He stopped me and handed me a letter. 'A girl gave it to me five minutes ago,' he said. 'She asked me if I was going to the village, and if I'd post it for her; so I promised I would. But it's addressed to you, so I may as well give it to you as post it, and save the stamp.' I read the letter, and it puzzled me extremely. I hardly knew what to make of it; but since you've told me about the pendant I think I begin to understand its meaning. You shall see it for yourself."

Mrs. Arnold spread out the letter on her knee, so that Ulyth might read it. It was written on village note-paper, in a childish hand, with no stops.

"DEAR MRS ARNOLD

"this comes hoping to find you as well as it leves me at present i am in dredful trubble and i cannot stay here eny longer dear Mrs Arnold after what cook said this afternoon i am sure she knows all and i daresunt tell miss Bowes but you are the camp fire lady and i feel i must say goodbye to ease your mind dear Mrs Arnold wen you get this letter I shall be Far Away as it says in the song you tort us by the stream and you will never see me agen but i shall think of you alwus and the camp fire and i wish i hadn't dun it only I was skared to deth for she said she wuld half kill me and she alwus keeps her wurd your obedient servant Susannah Maude Hawley."

"Susannah Maude!" exclaimed Ulyth. "I never even thought of her. Is it possible that she could have taken the pendant?"

"From the letter it looks rather like it. It is very mysterious, and I cannot understand it all; but the girl appears to have done something she shouldn't, and to have run away."

"Where has she run to?"

"She can't have gone very far. She evidently did not mean me to receive this letter until to-morrow morning, as she asked Idwal Jones to post it. He forestalled her intention by giving it to me now. It's a most fortunate thing, as we may be able to overtake her. She is probably walking to Llangarmon, and cannot have gone more than a few miles by this time. I shall follow her at once on my machine, and shall most likely come up with her before she even reaches Coed Glas."

"Oh, let me go with you!" pleaded Ulyth, starting to her feet and seizing the bicycle. "I could ride on the carrier. I've often done it before. Oh, please, please!"

"What about school rules?"

"Miss Bowes wouldn't mind if you took me. Just this once!"

"Well, I suppose my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame if we get into trouble about it."

"Oh, we shan't! We must find Susannah Maude. Miss Bowes would want us to stop her running away."

"Come along then, and mind you balance yourself, so that you don't upset us."

"Trust me!" chuckled Ulyth delightedly.

Back along the road by which she had come sped Mrs. Arnold, past the lane that led to her own house, and away in the direction of Llangarmon. Ulyth managed to stick on without impeding her progress, and felt a delirious joy in the stolen expedition. To be out with her dear Mrs. Arnold on such an exciting adventure was an hour worth remembering. She could not often get the Guardian of the Fire all to herself in this glorious fashion. She would be the envy of the school when she returned. Susannah Maude was apparently a quick walker. They passed through the hamlet of Coed Glas, and were half a mile beyond before they caught sight of the odd little figure trudging on ahead. They overtook her exactly on the bridge that crossed the Llyn Mawr stream.

As Mrs. Arnold dismounted and called her by name, Susannah Maude started, uttered a shriek, and apparently for a moment contemplated casting herself into the stream below. The Guardian of the Fire, however, seized her firmly by the arm, and, drawing her to the low parapet, made her sit down.

"Now tell me all about it," said Mrs. Arnold encouragingly, seating herself by her side. For answer Susannah Maude wept unrestrainedly, the hot tears dripping down her hard little cheeks into her rough little hands.

Mrs. Arnold waited with patience till the storm had subsided, then she began to put questions.

"Did you take the young lady's locket, Susan?"

"Yes, I did; but I didn't want to. I wouldn't if I hadn't been so scared. I'm scared to death now as she'll find me."

"You needn't be afraid of Miss Bowes."

"I ain't. Leastways not so bad. It's her I'm feared of."

"Whom do you mean, child?"

"Her--my mother."

"I didn't know you had a mother. I thought you were an orphan," burst out Ulyth.

"I wish I was. No, my father and mother wasn't dead--they was both serving time when I was sent to the Home. When Mother come out she got to know where I was, and she kept an eye on me; then when I comes here to a situation she turns up one day at the back door and says she wants my wages. I give her all I got; but that didn't satisfy her--not much! She was always hanging about the place. She used to come and sell sweets and cakes, unbeknown-like, to the young ladies."

"Was that your mother? The gipsy woman with the basket?" exclaimed Ulyth.

"That was her, sure enough. She pestered me all the time for money, and then when she found I'd got none left she said I must bring her something instead. 'The young ladies must have heaps of brooches and lockets, and things they don't want, so just you fetch me one,' sez she; 'and if you don't I'll catch you and half kill you.' Oh, I can tell you I was scared to death! I don't want not to be honest; but she'd half killed me once or twice before, when I was a kid, and I know what her hand's like when she uses it."

"So you took something?"

"Yes. I waited till the young ladies was all at supper; then I got down one of their coats from the pegs in the corridor and slipped it over my black dress and apron, and I put on one of their hats. I thought if I was seen upstairs they'd take me for one of themselves. I went into the studio, and there, right opposite on a little table, was that kind of locket thing. I slipped it in my pocket, and looked round the room. If there wasn't another just like it on the bench! I took that, and put it on the table. It wasn't likely, perhaps, it would be missed as quick as the other. Then I thought I'd better be going. I was just walking down the landing when I hears a step, and darts into one of the bedrooms. 'Suppose they catches me,' thinks I, 'with one of the young ladies' coats and hats on and the locket in my hand!' There was a blouse hanging behind the door, with a little pocket just handy, so I stuffed the locket down into that; then I pulled off the coat and threw it on the bed, and flung the hat out of the window. I thought if anyone came in and found me I'd say I'd been sent to refill the water-jug. But the steps went on, and I rushed out and downstairs, and left the locket where it was. I was so scared I didn't know what I was doing."

"Gracie found her hat in the garden this morning," gasped Ulyth. "She wondered how it got there."

"But what made you run away?" asked Mrs. Arnold, returning to the main question. "Did you think you were suspected?"

"Not till this afternoon. Then the servants were all talking in the kitchen about how one of the young ladies was supposed to have taken what they called a 'pendon' or something, and Cook looked straight at me and says: 'If anything's missing, it's not one of the young ladies that's got it, I'll be bound.' And I turned red and run out of the kitchen. My mother'd said she'd be coming round this evening, and how was I going to meet her with no locket? So I says, there's nothing else for it, I'd best go back to the Home. Miss Bankes, she was good to me, and Mother daresn't show her face there. So I wrote a letter, and asked Jones's boy to post it. I didn't think you'd get it till to-morrow."