CHAPTER XI

THE TRUTH OF IT ALL

The Principal received a telephone message in the morning from Frattenton, to the effect that the missing ones had arrived safely in the early hours, having spent the night in a shepherd's hut on the downs. Miss St. Leger, with a heart considerably lightened, recalled her search parties and sent back instructions for the girls to be brought to Easthampton by train, after they had been fed and cared for by the kindly owners of the George Inn at Frattenton. The school went in to afternoon lessons with the excitement of the morning calmed down, and a little later the three girls arrived.

Nurse insisted on sending Erica to bed at once, with hot blankets and bottles, but the two seniors protested that they felt none the worse for their adventure, for they had been given hot baths and had their clothes thoroughly dried at Frattenton. Indeed, they looked none the worse. Nurse gave in, on the condition that they went to bed early in the evening and had a "proper night's rest."

The two received a summons from the Principal to tea in her room.

"We're honoured," said Duane to Kitty with a laugh. "It's only on very special occasions that girls have tea with Prinny."

A few minutes later found them comfortably ensconced in easy chairs before a bright fire, in the Principal's charming little sitting-room, with cups of tea in their hands and plates of the same delicate and fragile china on their knees. The Principal talked to them pleasantly while they had tea, and Kitty thought what a charming woman she was; though, to be sure, nothing out of the ordinary to look at!

Then, after the maid had cleared the tea-things away, she drew a chair up next to Duane's and said with a sudden change to gravity:

"And now, Duane, for a very serious little talk. I want to know exactly what happened in this distressing affair of the Richoter examination. I know, of course, that there has been a good deal of trouble in the school over it and that you have been very much concerned in it. I want to hear your version of the affair--all you know about it."

Duane hesitated, looking perplexed. Miss St. Leger, who was watching her closely, went on quietly:

"Need I say that I already know almost all there is to know? The cycling expedition and its sequel have at last brought things to a head, I am thankful to say. I insisted on an explanation from Bertha, and under the circumstances she could do nothing but give me it: I have seen the note for her which Erica left behind. But I want your version of the story as well--all of it."

Duane drew a deep breath.

"I was hoping that it would never come out," she said with a faint smile, "and yet of course, now it has--well, I do feel relieved."

"Yes, I can quite realize that," said Miss St. Leger, somewhat dryly.

"You know who did it, then?" queried Duane.

Kitty was sitting forward in her chair, tense with eagerness. The mystery that had puzzled her and the rest of the school for so long, was to be revealed at last.

"Yes, little Erica Salter was the culprit."

Kitty uttered a cry of surprise.

"Erica Salter--that child!"

Duane nodded. "Yes."

"But surely--" stammered Kitty, "she could not think of such a thing herself. Why, what does a child like her know of chemistry experiments?"

"That is one of the little points I want Duane to make clear," put in Miss St. Leger. "Yes, Kitty can stay and hear, since I believe she also narrowly escaped serious trouble over the affair."

"Through my incorrigible laziness," added Duane, with a drawl in her voice. "How I blessed Miss Vacher at that moment for disturbing me!"

"Begin at the beginning," advised Miss St. Leger.

So the head prefect told her story, quite simply and with some embarrassment, her two listeners hanging intently upon every word.

It seemed that Erica, in her blind, childish adoration of the redoubtable Peggy O'Nell, regarded that rebel's natural enemy, the head prefect, in the light of a hateful tyrant. Her highly-coloured imagination, in fact, exaggerated and magnified the attempts of the prefect to put down the junior leader, and after the ordering-off of Peggy from the sports field, her seething indignation crystallized into a fierce determination to avenge the insult offered to that much-wronged damsel.

How this was to be accomplished she had no idea; probably her feelings would have calmed down before long without any harm whatever being done, but a few chance words from Bertha--words not said in a very kindly spirit--put the whole idea into her head, an idea which would otherwise have never entered it.

The Richoter candidates had been giving an account of their morning's experiences in the laboratory, when they left it for the dinner hour. Bertha, with Erica, had been among the listeners. Strolling off afterwards, the older girl, speaking her thoughts aloud, had said with a laugh:

"Now, a very simple way of upsetting any of their apple-carts would be to meddle with the balances just now. A little weight stuck underneath the pan with a piece of putty would do the trick. Simple but effective, eh?"

It had been carelessly spoken and Bertha did not dream that anyone had taken notice of her words, or in fact heard them, save her little sister; and Erica, fired by impulse, resolved in that way to avenge the wrongs done to Peggy and her confreres by the tyrannous head prefect, who was so mean and horrid to them.

It never occurred to Erica that the laboratory door might be carefully locked to ensure against any tampering with the unfinished experiments. A weight? A little piece of stone would do. Putty? A bit of plasticine out of one of the tins in her classroom, which was quite near the laboratory! The school-rooms would be deserted now; no one would see her. What could be simpler? And if Duane didn't get her experiment correct, it would serve her right. Oh yes, she deserved it all!

Had Erica paused to think, it would never have been done. But the blind impulse aroused by her passionate adoration of Peggy, drove her straight into the school and up the stairs towards the laboratory.

It was the most extraordinary coincidence that she should be following close on the heels of Kitty, intent on Miss Vacher's errand, though Erica was just too far behind to see her; and also a coincidence that Erica, slipping in noiselessly in her drill shoes (it had been drill last lesson that morning), should neither be seen nor heard by Kitty, who at that moment was at the other end of the room beyond the high-backed benches, pausing in the act of hunting for a clean pipette in order to gaze out of the window to see the reason for the loud noise of a motor engine misfiring on the country road outside. Neither knew of the other's presence. Erica had done her work in a few seconds and was gone before Kitty recrossed the room with the pipette, and left, locking the door again behind her.

But the point of the whole affair lay in the fact that Erica, who had not stopped to think, and was in such a state of agitation as hardly to know what she was doing, made a mistake over the balances and weighted Salome's instead of Duane's. She had heard Eileen describe herself as in the middle of the first bench near the door, with Salome on her right and Duane on her left, but she did not stop to consider which would be Eileen's right and which her left; there was the end of the bench conveniently just inside the door, and in her agitation it did not dawn upon her that Duane might be at the other end. "Which shows," Duane put in somewhat quaintly, "that she was not cut out for a conspirator, at any rate."

Then had come the inquiry in the hall and with it so complete a realization of the enormity of the thing which she had done, that the highly-strung, sensitive child, with visions of awful punishments floating before her eyes, could no more come forward and confess her guilt in front of them all than she could have taken wings and flown.

"Up to then," went on Duane, "I knew no more about the affair than any of you. All I knew was that the keys had never left my possession during the dinner interval save once. I had not done it myself; I could only think Kitty was the culprit. I am afraid," looking across at Kitty, "I did you an injustice there."

"And I," responded Kitty with a smile, "knew _I_ hadn't done it, and I could only think _you_ had. We were both mistaken. Of course, what put us all on the wrong track was the fact that it was Salome's balances that had been meddled with. She's so popular with all the girls. We could only put it down to motives of house jealousy."

"Well, up till the evening, as I said, I was as much in the dark as anyone," continued Duane, and went on to narrate how she had received a visit from Bertha and a white, trembling Erica, who had confessed to her older sister what she had done, knowing that Bertha would somehow help her. Bertha, startled and horrified, had sternly enjoined the younger child that on no account must she breathe a word of it to anyone else until she, Bertha, gave her permission. Bertha meant that it should never have been found out, if _she_ could help it, no matter what happened.

But she had to do something to calm the frightened, conscience-stricken child. They could tell Duane, she said, and ask her advice. She was the one Erica had meant to injure.

So Bertha, in the interview that passed between the three girls, had paved the way by explaining that Erica was in trouble and wanted Duane's advice, but she must first promise not to say a word to anyone else. Duane, never dreaming what the trouble really was and thinking it was just some childish scrape Erica had been inveigled into, gave her word. Even she could not conceal her amazement and dismay when she heard the "confession." She was troubled and perplexed, more so than she had ever been in her life before, and did not know what she ought to do for the best. She tried to persuade the child to go to the Principal and confess, pointing out that Miss St. Leger could be trusted to understand and would not be harsh on her. Erica, however, in her over-wrought state, could not credit this.

On the other hand, Bertha, too, was fiercely determined that, if possible, it should never be known, pointing out that Erica was but a child and had not realized what she was doing, and that in time the whole affair would die down and be forgotten.

"It was Bertha's influence against mine," Duane explained, "and of course, Bertha's was the stronger."

Duane, moved by the pitifulness of the child's shrinking fear and whole-souled repentance to a tenderness which, in spite of all her faults, she was evidently capable of feeling, tried to comfort her, resolving that if Erica could not summon sufficient moral courage to confess, and if she felt happier in the knowledge that her wrong-doing would never become public, she, Duane, would help keep the secret.

The next day had been passed in the visit to the vicar's house, and Duane had heard nothing of the scene in the sports field, and the feeling against Kitty that had arisen.

On her return she had hurried straight from an interview with Miss Carslake to Paddy's mock trial, entering late and just in time to hear the charge against Kitty.

"I thought, of course," she explained, "that it was a deadly earnest affair, and I was so horror-struck that for once I lost my head completely. I don't know what I blurted out--something to the effect that I knew for certain Kitty had not done it----"

"In such a manner as to convince everyone that you were the conscience-stricken culprit yourself," finished off Miss St. Leger. "That was it, was it not?"

"Yes," admitted Duane. "Afterwards I knew I had made an ass of myself. Still, in a way I was glad, for if the girls had gone on believing Kitty guilty, it would have put me in an awful hole, knowing all the time that she wasn't. So I consoled myself with the reflection that it was all for the best."

"And were content to shield someone else at your own expense," said Miss St. Leger bluntly.

"Easiest way," returned Duane with a shrug. "I'm in the habit of choosing it."

"Sometimes, perhaps," said Miss St. Leger cautiously.

"Then what did you mean by saying you were sorry you had wronged me?" asked Kitty eagerly.

"Oh, I was merely referring to my wrongly believing that you were the culprit, the day before."

"And, of course, everybody took it in rather a different way."

"There isn't much more to be told," Duane continued. "I must admit it bothered me sometimes last term when I saw that Erica still worried over the affair, but I thought she'd get over it in time. But she didn't, and what happened yesterday was the result."

Miss St. Leger nodded gravely.

"I gather from this note that it was the hockey match that decided her." She glanced again at the note in her hand, and read it out:

"DEAR BERTHA,

"I can't stand it any longer, having people think Duane did it and knowing all the time it was me. But I'm not brave enough to confess to everyone, and so I'm going to run away home this afternoon. I'm going to try and slip away from the others and get a train at Frattenton. Gracie Morris whose home is at Frattenton told me the way. I am sorry. I hate myself for being such a coward. But after yesterday afternoon I felt I just couldn't go on being such a little pig, though Duane says it's all right and I mustn't worry my head about her. Please will you tell them all about everything after I have gone.

"Your loving sister, "ERICA."

There was a short silence. Then Duane said slowly:

"I'm glad she tried to own up at last. You know, I think she would have done so long ago if it hadn't been for Bertha. She's got heaps of physical courage."

There was a very kind look in the Principal's eyes as she turned towards Duane, and laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, said gently:

"So am I. But I don't think it was altogether by herself that she decided to own up. I think someone helped her, if unconsciously."

Duane looked puzzled.

"How do you mean, Miss St. Leger?"

"Why, I think in the end it was your influence and not Bertha's, that proved the stronger."

"I should jolly well think so," added Kitty emphatically.

Duane flushed and looked uncomfortable. She had told her story with brief simplicity, plainly and unvarnishedly--not as it has been related here. But her two listeners, knowing the dramatis personæ so well, had imagined clearly and vividly all the details and side issues that Duane had mentioned so baldly. The girl had, to a great extent, dropped her flippant, blasé manner to tell the story. Now, for a moment she succeeded in throwing off the reserve in which she had been trained to hide her emotions, as she had done before Kitty in the hut last night.

"I--Miss St. Leger, perhaps I made an awful mess of things," she said in a low voice. "When you talked to me that day you asked me to--to take on the head prefectship, and I promised you I would do my best for the house. I honestly meant it. I--it made me feel a bit sore sometimes, when I could see quite plainly I wasn't succeeding, and how the girls disliked me----"

"Yes, I know," interrupted Miss St. Leger. "But you remember that I told you, knowing well enough your task was a difficult one, that if the juniors were insulting or refused to acknowledge your authority in any way, or if you found yourself in difficulties, you were to come to me and I would settle things for you. As you never came, perhaps I hardly realized how badly things were going sometimes."

Kitty broke in, with a chuckle, "Duane wouldn't ask for help from a soul. I know her and her pig-headed pride by now. If she were dying she'd never admit herself beaten."

"But I did," said Duane, smiling. "The Richoter complicated things a bit, and, frankly, I didn't want to come to you about it, Miss St. Leger----"

"No," interrupted the Principal. "As I said before, you were so busy shielding that child at your own expense that you didn't want me to smell a rat. For I shouldn't and didn't believe it of you, you know. You have been long enough in the school for me to know you, and what you are and are not capable of doing, pretty well by now. However, I believe you had a partiality for the child and that prejudiced you."

"But one couldn't help being sorry for her, Miss St. Leger. It seemed so absurd to hold her responsible. She's such a tender-hearted, timid little thing really. She wouldn't hurt a fly if she could help it."

"But I could be trusted to see that too," remarked the Principal, somewhat dryly.

"Oh yes, Miss St. Leger," replied Duane quickly and with an eagerness that was almost passionate. "Of course, I knew that. If it had only rested with you! But it was the publicity that would have followed that the child couldn't have faced, the realization that everyone in the school knew and somehow despised her. She thought all the girls would be simply disgusted with her. I couldn't make her believe anything else."

"The truth is," said Miss St. Leger, "that you are much too soft-hearted for your job."

"I soft-hearted!" Duane exclaimed indignantly. "Whatever next! But anyway," with a mischievous gleam in her grey eyes, "I did realize my limitations, Miss St. Leger. I was reduced to sending in my resignation at one time, and you know you refused to accept it."

"We were a lot of idiots," Kitty interposed with much vigour. "I was a new girl, it is true, but the others ought to have known you were far and away above doing a petty, spiteful thing like that." Needless to say, Kitty was referring to the Richoter trouble.

Miss St. Leger rose.

"Well, I'm not going to keep you here any longer. The girls will be dying to see you again and hear about your adventures. Besides, Nurse is going to pack you off to bed early. Duane, I think Miss Carslake is anxious to see you for a few minutes, so you had better go there first and then come along to the hall."

As Duane disappeared the Principal turned to Kitty.

"You can come along with me, Kitty. I gave orders for the girls to assemble in hall after tea. We shall find them there now."

Kitty understood without being told that she meant to make a public announcement concerning the Richoter examination.

When they arrived they found the girls waiting. The Principal motioned Kitty to follow her upon the dais, turned to the sea of expectant, upturned faces, and addressed them briefly.

"I want a misunderstanding cleared up this evening, girls, a misunderstanding that has been amongst us too long. You have for a long time been treating one amongst you with grave injustice. I am, of course, referring to Duane. May I state most emphatically that the two girls upon whom suspicion appeared to rest for attempting to spoil Constance's chances in the Richoter examination are both quite innocent. We have just discovered the whole truth of the matter."

There was a stir among the crowd of girls, a quick intake of breath. They had naturally guessed that there was something more than met the eye in this last mysterious affair in which, it was whispered, Bertha's little sister Erica had tried to run away from school, and Duane and Kitty had gone after her. Now, at last, they were going to know everything.

The Principal's face had been softened by a smile. "You'll be rather surprised to hear that I'm not going into any long explanations myself. I'm going to leave Kitty, here, to do that. She's an authority on the subject, having had first hand information, and I fancy she'll plead Duane's cause better than I could. I'll give you till prep time, girls, and when prep bell rings the prefects will see you all go quietly to your classrooms as usual. Is that understood?"

There was a prompt and eager chorus of "Yes, Miss St. Leger," and the Principal took her departure, still with that half-smile about her lips.

Kitty found her task strangely congenial, and though according to her own statements she believed in deeds and not words, on this occasion she found it surprisingly easy to be fluent. Perhaps the breathless interest with which she was listened to, broken only by eager questions from one or other of the girls, spurred her on. Not until every smallest detail was described to them were her hearers satisfied.

"I tell you what," announced Paddy loudly, when Kitty had finally come to a full stop. "There's no getting away from the fact, you girls, that we've treated Cato pretty shabbily."

Paddy's remark was unnecessarily obvious. The girls, big and little, looked at each other rather shamefacedly, and were all of the same opinion. Peggy was expressing herself forcibly to her followers:

"Come to think of it, we are rather a lot of chumps, you kids. As if a girl who played the game like Duane did in that match against the school, could do a mean trick like that!"

Then Salome had sprung upon the dais and was speaking:

"There's just another thing, girls. As it happens, far more fuss has been made over the affair that it--it deserves. We must remember that Erica Salter is little more than a child, and did not realize fully what she was doing. I am sure, by Kitty's account, she has suffered enough, and we mustn't be hard on her. The best thing to do is to put the whole affair away and forget it as quickly as we can." She paused a moment, then had one of the "nice" ideas that were part of the secret of Salome's well-deserved popularity, and concluded with a smile, "We won't be nasty to little Erica, if it's only out of regard for all the trouble Duane's taken to try and keep her from being unhappy and miserable."

Everybody signified their assent by stamping on the floor, and Vanda, as a head prefect, also thought it the proper thing to add her opinion:

"We shall have to make it up a bit to Duane for treating her so shabbily, shan't we?"

"Rather!" came an enthusiastic chorus from everybody.

Then Kitty had an inspiration.

"I say, girls, I've got a brain-wave. Duane'll be coming along in a minute, you know, when Miss Carslake's finished with her. Isn't there a match against St. Magdalene's to-morrow?" and Kitty proceeded to impart her "brain-wave" to her interested audience.

When Duane, a little later, strolled into the hall with leisurely step and tranquil mien, and found the whole school assembled there and regarding her with ludicrously solemn, immovable faces, a little of her coolness deserted her. She eyed them uneasily for a moment. Why this remarkable silence? Why did they all stare at her so hard?

Then Salome called from the dais at the top end of the room:

"Oh, is it you, Duane? Just the person we want. Come along up here. We have a little business transaction to carry out."

Duane recovered her customary calm, and, mounting the dais, bowed exaggeratedly to Salome.

"Well met by gaslight, proud Titania."

Somebody giggled, then subsided with a little squeak.

Salome looked at Duane. "The school sports club have great pleasure in presenting you with this," she said gravely and very distinctly. "They have also put your name down in the eleven for the match against St. Mary Magdalene's to-morrow, and hope you will play. They also wish me to say," and there was a slight tremor in her voice, "that they are quite convinced that you have always worn it with honour in the past, and they know you will continue to do so in the future."

The tension relaxed with a tumultuous burst of applause. Duane, her old hockey colour tightly clutched in the hand that hung at her side, bit her lip hard to control its trembling. But only for the moment. With the loud, delighted yells of "Speech, Speech!" from everybody sounding on all sides, she turned and faced them, speaking in the old familiar drawl as soon as the noise had died down.

"I see by your anxiety to hear me that you are well aware I speak with authority and not as the scribes"--loud cheers--"or perhaps I should say, the juniors--but on this occasion I'm not going to say much. I will convince the hockey club of my earnestness by the number of goals I shall score on its behalf to-morrow. When they see shots falling about the St. Mary's goalkeeper like--like leaves in autumn----"

Everybody, amid laughter, realized that it was apparently the same old Cato talking and not some unfamiliar heroine of fiction. The rest of the speech was never heard, for someone struck up "For she's a jolly good fellow," and they continued it till prep bell put an end to the din.

Smiles and kindly words were seen everywhere in Carslake's that evening. Kitty and Duane were actually going in to supper arm-in-arm; France and Margaret beamed with delight at everybody. The girls in Dormitory A were squabbling as to who should fetch their head prefect's hot water, but Duane settled the matter by asking Erica if she wouldn't mind doing it, and as Erica took the jug, a happier look on her face than there had been for many a week, no one said an ungenerous word or gave her an unkind look.

When Miss Carslake came round to switch off the lights there was a very hearty "Good night" in response to hers, and the house mistress went on her way happily conscious that one could say of her house at last, "All's well."

_Made and Printed in Great Britain by The Greycaine Book Manufacturing Company Limited, Watford_ 100.537