A harum-scarum schoolgirl Part 32

"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 inst.i.tutions. 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 a.s.sociation"

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 pa.s.sages 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 Princ.i.p.al, 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 n.o.body 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 ma.n.u.scripts, and a printed notice to the effect that the editor of the _Blue Magazine_ much regretted his inability, owing to lack of s.p.a.ce, to make use of the enclosed, for the kind offer of which he was much obliged.

"My stories packed back by return of post. How disgusting!" groused Hilary. "He might have taken one of them. Are they all here, by the by?

Yes; 'The Flower of the Forest', 'The Airman's Vengeance', and--Good Heavens! What's this? Why--why, it's actually my essay on 'Reconstruction'!"

Hilary was so utterly dismayed that at first she could only stare aghast at her recovered ma.n.u.script; then she tore straight off to Miss Todd.

"I must have put it in in mistake for my other story," she explained. "I can't imagine how I could; but evidently I _did_! I'm too sorry for words. _Poor_ Diana!"

Everybody said "Poor Diana!" when the news--as news will--spread like wildfire over the school. Miss Todd ordered some fresh tea to be made, and an egg boiled for the breakfast-tray. She was a just woman, and ready to make damages good. She even asked Miss Hampson to get out the last jar of blackberry jelly; there was still one left in the store-room. Diana, in the attic, having dressed hours ago, sat hungrily by the table, listening for footsteps, and wondering if starvation were to be part of her punishment. She glanced guiltily at the torn wall-paper as the key turned in the lock. Miss Todd, however, was so full of the good news that she hardly looked at the attic wall.

"Why did you say, Diana, that you knew something about the essay?" she asked.

"I never said anything at all," replied Diana, which, of course, was literally true.

It was nice to eat a dainty breakfast at leisure and not hurry down to lessons. She felt herself the heroine of the school that morning as she strolled into the French cla.s.s just when the disagreeable grammar part of the lesson was over. Later on in the day there were confidences in the ivy room.

"I knew you hadn't done it, darling!" declared Loveday. "It wasn't like you one little bit. I had a regular squabble with Miss Beverley. I tried to come and talk to you through the door, and she came and dragged me away. Why didn't you tell Miss Todd you'd never even seen the wretched essay?"

"Sissie," whispered Diana, "will _you_ tell _me_ what you were doing at Hilary's desk in the middle of the night?"

"Why--why, surely you never thought----"

"Yes, I did; and that's why I held my tongue," said Diana, burying her hot face on Loveday's shoulder. "Forgive me, please, for having thought it."

"It never struck me that anybody should think that," said Loveday, still amazed at the idea. "And how did you know about it? Did you follow me?

Well, I'll tell you what I was doing. We seniors have a secret--not a very desperate one; it's only a little literary society. We make up stories for it, and fasten them together into a sort of magazine.

Geraldine is president, and Hilary is the secretary. It was the night for giving in the stories, and I put mine with the others inside Hilary's desk. Geraldine and I haven't been quite hitting it lately; so I'd made a girl in my story exactly like her, only nastier, and written a lot of very sarcastic things. I thought they were awfully clever. Then when I got into bed I was sorry. It seemed a mean sort of thing to do. I made up my mind I'd go down first thing in the morning and tear up the story. But I'm such a sleepy-head in the mornings, and you know how early Geraldine generally gets up. I was afraid she'd come down first, and probably rummage the stories out of Hilary's desk and read mine. The more I thought about it the more ashamed I was of what I'd written. I couldn't go to sleep. I felt I shouldn't be easy till it was burnt; so at last I got up, and lighted the candle, and went downstairs and did the deed. That's how you saw me at Hilary's desk. By the by, Geraldine said she caught _you_ there before supper. What were _you_ doing?"

"Putting pepper among her books to pay her out and make her sneeze,"

confessed Diana.

"Why, she did say her desk smelled somehow of pepper!" exclaimed Loveday. "We were all so excited, though, about the essay being missing that we didn't take much notice of it. The whole affair's been a sort of 'Comedy of Errors'."

One substantial result remained from Diana's confinement to the attic, and that was the discovery of the door into the room beyond. Miss Todd explored, and carried some of the dusty chairs out into the light of day. She was enough of a connoisseur to see at a glance that they were Chippendale, and extremely valuable. She had the rest of the furniture moved out and cleaned, then sent for a dealer in antiques to ask his opinion about it. He said it made his mouth water.

"A set of ten Chippendale singles with two armchairs will fetch almost anything you like nowadays," he added.

"The question is, to whom do they legally belong?" said Miss Todd. "I'm only the tenant here. I must tell my landlord."

The owner of the Abbey, who had bought the property many years before from Mr. Seton, was a man with a fine sense of honour. Though, legally, the furniture in the forgotten attic might have been transferred to him with the house, he did not consider himself morally ent.i.tled to it.

"It certainly belongs to the heirs-at-law of the late Mr. Seton," he declared.

There was only one heir, or rather heiress-at-law, and that was Loveday.

It was decided, therefore, to sell the furniture for her benefit. The collection included objects of great rarity, among them a genuine spinet and a beautifully inlaid bureau. At the present boom for antiques they would realize a very substantial sum, quite a windfall, indeed, for Loveday.