Part 10

"I think I have enough pride for that," she said quietly, and stooped to pick up one of the gloves she had dropped. Then she walked out of the room with her back held very straight, and Sally heard the front door close with a jerk behind her.

"I hate her! I hate her! How dared she come!" she said to herself, crouching down in one of the armchairs, but in her heart she was not sure if she did not hate Peter most.

So that explained things--Peter was expelled. She knew she would not see Sally at Seascape House any more, and therefore she had not bothered--even to write a postcard. She had just put their whole friendship out of her life as something that no longer counted. It had been the easiest thing to do, and Peter's comfort had, as always, dictated the line of least resistance.

"Confoundedly selfish," that was what her Uncle Tom had called her, and it was true after all.

"I won't think of her again--ever," said Sally passionately, and picking up her crutch, forced herself to go upstairs. She was very tired, and her foot was aching by the time she reached the schoolroom, but she went over to her desk and picked out the few mementoes she possessed of her friendship--a school snap-shot she had stolen from Mabel Gosson, a scrawled note, a caricature done of herself by Trina, in a schoolbook.

In the grate, she burnt them all, angry tears rolling down her cheeks.

When the picnic party returned, Sally was already in bed with her blinds drawn, and refused either to talk or to eat her supper.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

THE NEW TERM

Sally spent a couple of weeks in bed after her interview with Violet Tremson, the renewed swelling of her ankle after her journey downstairs being aggravated by a fever, for which the doctor could not account. As soon as she was better, she was sent off, at his suggestion, to stay with her Uncle Frank and Aunt Antoinette in Brittany for a complete change of air and scene.

"But I don't want to go, so what's the use of sending me? I just want to be left alone," Sally had protested sullenly; but somehow, when she saw her uncle's smiling face at Cherbourg and realised that he knew nothing of the cause of her unhappiness, she began to forget it too, and felt comforted.

"Been overworking, have you, Miss Pale-face? So they have cut off your curls to give your brain air--was that it?" he demanded cheerily: and Aunt Antoinette, who had first of all cast glances of horror at her niece's shaggy head, became sympathetic, and offered to see what her maid and the local hairdresser could do towards improving matters.

They did a good deal, and by the time Sally arrived home just on the eve of her second school term, she no longer looked the shorn little ragamuffin of Parchester Fair. She had grown also, and though very thin, had lost something of the irresponsible elfin wildness of which Mrs. Musgrave had so strongly disapproved.

"You will be happier this term, won't you, darling?" asked her mother, a little anxiously, as they stood looking down on the already packed trunk on the last night of the holidays.

"Oh, yes!" said Sally, "I expect so."

Her tone was careless, but she did not meet Mrs. Brendan's eyes, until, hearing a sigh, she looked up suddenly, put her arms round her mother, and hugged her.

"I'm going to make this term a success," she said, almost fiercely. "Don't say anything to Cissy, but just remember that I mean to--whatever happens. I was nearly expelled last term, but this time I shan't run any risks. It's not good enough."

She laughed bitterly, and Mrs. Brendan kissed her. "My poor Sally," she said, "you take things so hardly."

Sally shrugged. "I did--but I shan't in future--I'll just go on in my own way. You know the Miller--'For I care for nobody--no not I--and nobody cares for me.'"

Again she laughed, and Mrs. Brendan looked a little more distressed.

"My dear, but one can't live to oneself only in this world," she began, when Sally cut her short:

"I can," she said impatiently, "and I mean to do it. As long as my work is up to the mark, and I keep the rules, as I intend, there's nothing you need worry about, is there? I won't disgrace you--or even Cecilia."

Once more she was Sally Cocksure--cool and defiant. But Mrs. Brendan, as she kissed her in silence, felt there was a subtle difference between her old attitude and her new. Before, she had been sure of the citadel of her own independence; now, she had learned that she would have to fight for its defence.

Lying in the dark, with her hands behind her head, Sally sang softly to herself that night, the lines she had taken as her motto:

"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Thinking of it made her eyes shine and her heart beat fast. It was splendid. It meant getting things done as one wanted, as Napoleon did, without being worried by qualms about other people's opinions. Napoleon was Sally's hero at this time, in contrast to Charles the Martyr, who, during the last term, had been the idol of her Form. She remembered with satisfaction how she had outraged public opinion by referring to him in an essay as "the man of straw."

"Strength is the only thing that really counts," she told herself, and the phrase pleased her so much that she repeated it next morning while dressing, and came down to breakfast whistling cheerfully. Fortified by her own courage, she said good-bye with great calmness to her mother at Clinton Station. She had utterly refused to allow Cecilia to go with her, and now she begged Mrs. Brendan to leave her as soon as she had taken her ticket and seen that her box was properly labelled.

"I loathe hanging about for last words, Mummy," she said. "You'll probably want to cry, and that will make me feel softy too--so do let us get it over here. There are crowds of Seascapers on the platform, so I shan't be stranded by myself, or anything."

"I thought I saw that girl--Mrs. Musgrave's niece, you know--I liked her when I met her that time you were in bed ill," and Mrs. Brendan looked round hopefully, but rather vaguely. She did not care for the idea of Sally travelling by herself.

"I daresay you did see her, and perhaps I shall run into her, but I'm not going to be left in her charge, or anyone's--so there!" Sally bumped her suit-case impatiently against a seat, but at that minute she saw Miss Castle in the distance, and hastily leaving her mother, made off.

"One of the mistresses--I'll be all right--so long!" she called out, and disappeared.

The porter, standing close by with her box, grinned.

"Don't you worry, ma'am, she'll be all right--I'll see she don't miss the train."

Mrs. Brendan, presenting him with a shilling, turned back slowly into the town; she remembered that she had some shopping to do for Cecilia. As she went, she sighed. Sally, in the meantime, had indeed run very hard into Violet Tremson, with her suit-case, because she was wondering where Miss Castle had gone, and looking over her shoulder to try to find her.

"Sorry," she said with a scowl, and encountered a cold stare that was so unlike her remembrance of Violet's tranquil friendliness that it made her feel uncomfortable. She could never recall exactly what she had said that evening in the drawing-room, for all she had thought about was her longing to find Peter; and then, when she was disappointed, a desire almost as strong had taken possession of her to hurt the immediate cause of her disappointment and make her suffer a little of her own pain.

"I don't care if I was beastly--do her good--interfering missionary!" she muttered, mindful of Trina's sneers, and came upon Miss Castle as she was seeing a couple of new girls into one of the carriages.

"Keep a corner seat there for me with a book," Sally heard her say, and running up to her, asked:

"Please, Miss Castle, may I get in with you too?"

"Why, Sally,--of course you can--climb in--how's the foot?"

"Better--but I mayn't play hockey this term. Isn't it a shame?"

She got in happily, and as she stood in the doorway, saw two scowling faces watching her. One belonged to Olive Parker, her old enemy of the Shrimps, and the other to a friend, Susy Cranstone, of the Upper Fourth, who had been one of the group that had ducked her in the sea. Susy, for the time being at any rate, "adored Miss Castle"--as she announced on every possible occasion. She had obviously wished to travel in the same carriage as her idol, but had not dared to ask the adored one's leave; and now there was no room for her, as besides Sally and the new girls, there were several quite small juniors giggling together at the far end.

"Silly ass!--why didn't she bag the seat, if she wanted it so much?" said Sally to herself, with great contempt, in her best Napoleonic manner--and settled herself ostentatiously opposite Miss Castle, by shifting a new girl--then fell to reading her magazines till the train started.

To her annoyance, when she arrived at Seascape House and went to take up her old quarters in room No. 9, she found she had been moved. Her cubicle was now in a bigger dormitory, A, on the top floor, at the end of a passage--and her next-door neighbour was no other than Susy Cranstone. Beyond Susy was Frisky Harrison, quite recovered from her last term's measles, and ready to live up to her nickname, to judge by the noise going on behind her curtains--where she was supposed to be unpacking.

"Can't you kids be quiet?" said a voice suddenly, and Poppy Bristow flounced into the room.

"What are you doing--standing about there?" she demanded of Sally, who answered coolly:

"Looking at you. I've only just turned up, and I'm not making a row."

This remark led to further noise and giggles behind the curtains, and Frisky Harrison pushed her head out between them.

"Ah, Poppy, darlint, have pity on me. Sure, isn't it the first day of term?"

(Frisky was not Irish, but she cultivated a brogue for humorous purposes.)

Poppy scowled. She did not seem to have come back in a good temper, and was certainly not amused on this occasion.

"Be quiet," she said. "I want everyone who sleeps in this room to come out here a minute."

There was something so truculent in her manner that complete silence fell, and in a minute Frisky Harrison and Susy Cranstone were standing beside Sally. They were joined by Violet Tremson, from the fourth cubicle in the corner.

"What is it?" said Violet.

Poppy's face cleared slightly. "Oh, I didn't know you were going to be here, Violet--it's these three kids I meant. Now listen, you three. I have got a 'single' at the end of the passage, and Miss Cockran has put me in charge of this room. She says she won't have any of the insub-sub-subordination there was last term, and if I have any trouble I am to report it at once--and I j-jolly well mean to--see?"

As she grew excited she began to stammer, but no one laughed--there was too much grim earnestness in her tone. "All right, Poppy--I didn't mean anything," muttered Frisky at last, in a weak voice; and she and Susy went back soberly behind their curtains. Violet Tremson had already disappeared. Sally was turning into her cubicle with a shrug when Poppy caught her by the shoulder.

"See here, kid--your precious friend has left, and I'll stand no cheek. You've not got a good name at headquarters, so you'd better be careful."

Sally met her glance without flinching. It was with a great effort of will that she prevented herself from smiling contemptuously as she would have liked to do.

"I haven't cheeked you yet, have I?" she asked quietly, and it was Poppy's eyes that fell before hers, as the prefect turned away.

"All the same, it will be difficult not to get into a row with her as monitress," Sally told herself, as she reflected complacently on the triumph of will that had kept her from giving Poppy a handle to abuse her.

How difficult it was going to be she had not yet realised.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

THE BLOTTED ESSAY

Half the autumn term had gone, and Sally, though she did not mention it in her letters home, found that she disliked her life at Seascape House a great deal more than even when she had been a new girl. It was true that she had achieved her move into the Lower Fifth, where she sat, like an infant prodigy, among her elders; but the change was not to the throne of triumph which she had pictured in imagination.

Violet Tremson was head of the form, and kept her place by a narrow margin, above her friend, Doreen Priestly. It was only on occasions that Sally came third, more often she was fifth or sixth; and though at her age she should have been contented with this position, it did not satisfy her ambition to take the lead and dominate those around her.

What worried her most was that she could not understand her failure to achieve anything for which she worked. To her mother, she wrote that her new Form-mistress, "Old Cheeserings," disliked her; and though this was probably true--for Sally's manners were not endearing towards those whom she herself disliked--she knew in her heart that mutual lack of affection would make no difference in her marks.

The only other explanation was that Sally was still too young to achieve, with her usual ease and quickness of grasp, the standard of work in the Lower Fifth, and this she was not prepared to admit.

"Of course, it is difficult to play a lone hand," she wrote Roger, in a moment of expansion, when she longed for sympathy--even in her brother's almost illegible scrawl--and she added, "Still, you bet I hold some trumps, and will make the most tricks in the end."

She also put "Napoleon did," but crossed this out, for Napoleon had been beaten at Waterloo. He had trusted his friends--people like Bernadotte--and they had betrayed him.

Sally never meant to trust anyone at school again; but though she made no effort to win friends, she would have been glad of a group of admirers--however humble.

In the end, one admirer presented herself--a putty-faced girl, called Catherine Dowl, who had been in the Lower Fifth for years, and was almost as much disliked there as Sally herself--though no one quite knew why.

She had very curly hair, and queer, slanting eyes, that seemed to disappear when she talked, beneath her lazy eyelids; and when she laughed it was noiselessly, so that the only sign was the show of teeth and upper gums.

"The Cat," she was nicknamed, or "Puss Puss," but it was not an attractive member of that much-maligned race that she resembled. There was no Persian pride, or grace, in her, but rather the self-defensive cunning of a persecuted slum tabby.

Frisky Harrison, who had also been moved into the Lower Fifth at the same time as Sally, declared that "Puss Puss" cheated in arithmetic, at which she was very bad, and other members of the Form ostentatiously drew their books away, when she sat near them. She did not seem to resent this, nor was she put off at first when Sally refused to have anything to say to her.

"Your essay was much better than Violet's this week--Miss Cheeseman favours her," she said one day, in the middle of the morning interval. To which Sally, who had been thinking so herself only a minute before, responded:

"Rot!"

She knew suddenly, that it wasn't true.

"You ought to be head of the Form, for you are much more original," went on the girl, in her soft voice. "That's why they don't like you."

"I shall be head very soon," said Sally, flattered, in spite of herself, by a tribute to her powers that quite met her own views on the subject.

"I know--you are the horse for my money, and I have put all I possess on your winning--so mind you do."

The girl laughed noiselessly, and as she spoke seated herself quite close to Sally.

"Tell me what you think of Wordsworth," she said confidentially. "I was watching you yesterday and could see that you didn't agree with Cheeserings."

"It's no use disagreeing with her, is it?"

"No, I should think not--sheer waste of time."

The "Cat" bared her teeth and threw back her head, as though her companion had said something extraordinarily funny.

"But you didn't change your opinion, did you? I expect it is very rarely you change when you have made up your mind."

"Hardly ever," said Sally carelessly, and forgot that she was changing it at the minute. She no longer definitely disliked Catherine Dowl. That day she talked to her in class, between the lessons, and walked up and down the passages with her, indifferent to the contemptuous curiosity of the Juniors.

"They haven't any brains, of course," said the "Cat" tranquilly, when Olive Parker miawed and crowed at them from behind a pillar, and the other shrugged and agreed.

"I don't care a hang, if it amuses their small minds," she said.

"You wouldn't. Have you ever noticed how often really great people have been disliked at school?"

Sally had not, and was glad to have it pointed out. She would remember Shelley.

In the meantime, she was quite prepared to neglect the names of all those who had been both popular and illustrious.

"Anyhow, it doesn't matter, does it?" she said grandly, "I mean being unpopular. Success so often is envied just because it is the thing that counts most."

The next week Violet Tremson was only third, and Sally second, in Form marks. Violet remembered giving in her arithmetic paper, but it had not reached Miss Skalding, the mathematical mistress, while her essay was so covered in blots as to be perfectly unintelligible.

"I can't understand it," said Miss Cheeseman. "It is not like you to be so untidy."

"I ... I didn't make those blots," said Violet slowly. Her eyes were astonished. "I ... I'm sure I didn't," she added.

"Who else could have made them without your seeing them?" asked Miss Cheeseman in an annoyed tone. She had an unfortunately querulous manner; and everyone looked round at everyone else, except Violet, who was turning the pages of her essay with rather a high colour in her cheeks.

Sally wondered if it could be Frisky Harrison; she was often careless with ink, and had a leaky fountain pen which her neighbours dreaded; but her expression was one of obvious innocence. Then the girl looked beyond her, and caught for a moment a rather peculiar gleam in Catherine Dowl's slanting eyes. It was triumph--there was no doubt of it.

So the Cat had done it--Sally knew in a flash--and also that it had not been done for love of her, but in hatred of Violet Tremson.

Putting her evidence rapidly together she could find none direct, but everything pointed to this decision. Peter had once told her, as an illustration of Violet's missionary spirit, that Violet had caught "Puss Puss" cheating and had forgiven her, on promise of amendment.

"Much use to forgive a slimy beast like that," Peter had said. "She should have reported her to a prefect, and got her expelled. She is such a second-rate cad."

In her revulsion of feeling against Trina Morrison, Sally had pushed this judgment into the back of her mind, when accepting the Cat's homage.

"Cheating is silly," she had told herself, and argued that it was therefore impossible; but now, remembering the cunning in Catherine Dowl's eyes, she realised that it was not impossible. What was unlikely, was that the Cat would ever forgive those who found her out.

With a feeling of rising discomfort, she stood in front of the notice-board on Monday morning, and saw her name second, with Violet Tremson's third.

"Congratulations," whispered Catherine Dowl, appearing as usual at her elbow. "Now there is only one more rung for you to climb in this Form."

"Shut up," said Sally fiercely, forgetting wisdom in her indignation. "Violet ought to be first or second, and you know that quite well."

"Ought she?" The Cat raised her eyebrows. "I didn't know. Well, she isn't there, is she?" And she laughed noiselessly.

"I wish she was," said Sally. "I loathe winning anything by underhand means."

"Ah!" said the Cat quickly, and she suddenly raised her usually soft voice.

"Then did you make the blots on the essay?"

"No, I didn't--but you know who did, quite well."

"On the contrary--I quite believed it was Violet who must have done it, as Miss Cheeseman said, until you accused yourself."

Sally glared; but the Cat's slanting eyes merely blinked, without any expression at all in them, as they met hers.

By this time a large part of the Form had gathered round and were sniggering happily at the quarrel.

"Quite amusing when thieves fall out," said Doreen Priestly. "Do come here, Violet. I have never heard anything like it before. The Cocky-doodle says she threw ink on your essay to get above you on the Form List."

"I didn't," said Sally furiously, "I said I hated being above her, just because someone had played a dirty trick."

"Well, who was the someone if it wasn't you?"

Sally looked round the ring of hostile faces; she saw that the Cat had slipped away, and was already seated at her desk, with her head bent over a book.

"I didn't do it," she said sullenly.

"Then who did?" demanded Doreen. "You know something about it--you and your precious friend--or why did you bring up the subject at all?"

The hostile glances shifted for a moment to Catherine Dowl, who looked up tranquilly and then laughed.

"Does Sally accuse me?" she asked. "Then I suppose she has a proof--or else she is in one of her tempers. I am too old to do anything so childishly spiteful--besides, why should I? I'm sure I don't care who is head of the Form, for I know it will never be me."

At this there was a slight titter. Catherine, however much she may have cheated, remained steadily at the bottom of the Lower Fifth. The hostile glances left her, and focused themselves once more on Sally.

"Why don't you own up, kid?" said Doreen contemptuously.

"Because I didn't do it, you fool."

Sally's face was white with passion, and her anger seemed to communicate itself to the rest of the Form. There were shouts of--"You did," "You must have," "Sneak!" "Own up!" when suddenly Violet Tremson, who had been seated unconcernedly at her desk, leaped to her feet and pushing her way through the group called out sharply:

"Shut up, everyone, and listen--it's my essay you are talking about, isn't it? Well, I spilt the ink myself."

There was prolonged silence, till Frisky Harrison said, in an injured voice:

"You told Cheeserings you didn't."

"It's possible to make mistakes, isn't it--even over an essay?"