Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall Part 30

CHAPTER XXIV

AN UNEXPECTED MISFORTUNE

As Nan lay on the secret drawbridge, she heard a stealthy footstep on the cement floor of the trunk-room. The step was light, and, plainly, there was but one person approaching. It must be one of the girls.

Certainly it could not be Mrs. Cupp, for she was heavy-footed. Nan wished she had not been so foolish as to run, for she was really frightened because of her position over the old cistern. If the intruder was only one of the other girls, coming to open a trunk, she could easily have hidden the doll behind the boxes and waited until the girl had gone up stairs again before putting Beautiful Beulah properly away in her nest.

In a few minutes Nan sat up and began to creep off the dropped door. As her weight was gradually removed from it, the weights began to raise the door into its usual position. There must have been some secret fastening to hold the door shut, that was broken when Nan's weight was cast against the plank wall.

Her fall had been just at the right place to start the door swinging downward. Now, when she carefully stepped away from the part.i.tion, having risen to her full height, the secret door swung up and closed tightly. She could not feel its edge on either side with her fingers.

But that was not what she was most interested in just then. The secret door puzzled her, but the step in the cellar impressed Nan as being of more importance. She peered around the tiers of boxes to see the other girl.

It was Linda Riggs.

The trunks belonging to those girls whose names began with "R" were right next to those whose owners' names commenced with "S." The electric bulb near Nan's trunk gave Linda light enough for her purpose. Nan saw her take a key from her purse and open her trunk with it.

That would not have been surprising, only for the fact that the key had no tag attached to it, such as Mrs. Cupp fastened to all the trunk keys left in her charge. Nan saw that Linda watched the door of the trunk-room sharply as she rummaged to the bottom of her trunk. The girl was evidently down here without Mrs. Cupp's knowledge, and was afraid of being caught.

"That's another key!" Nan whispered to herself. "Why! she owns two and Mrs. Cupp doesn't know it."

She watched Linda without saying a word. Linda, on the other hand, paid no attention to Nan's open trunk. Seeing no other girl about, probably led her to believe that whoever had been in the trunk-room ahead of her had carelessly gone out, leaving her trunk open, and the door open and the lamp lit, as well.

Linda soon obtained the article she desired--a small, flat parcel--and with this, after relocking her trunk, she went away. Nan was curious enough to watch to see how Linda went up stairs. Surely she had not come down past Mrs. Cupp's open door.

That suspicion was verified when Nan saw Linda turn into the pa.s.sage leading to the kitchen. It was an hour in the afternoon when one might pa.s.s up the kitchen stairs without being observed by the busy women preparing supper. Besides, as Linda was always giving presents to the servants, they might be conveniently blind to her movements. Nan went back with Beulah and put her carefully away in the box at the bottom of the trunk. The mystery of the secret door was overshadowed in her mind by the actions of Linda Riggs.

"I guess we're all deceivers," Nan considered. "I'm deceitful myself.

And Linda Riggs is positively dishonorable. Mrs. Cupp would be very angry if she knew Linda was down here without permission and had a private key to her trunk.

"And all we girls seem to be just delighted to break the rules, or try to fool the teachers. It really is dreadful! I guess we all must think that rules are made only to be broken.

"Oh, dear! perhaps if there were no laws none of us would care to go wrong," concluded Nan, perhaps striking the key-note of all human frailty.

She went rather soberly up stairs and delivered her own trunk-key and the door-key to the matron, who she was glad asked her no questions. The afternoon mail had just arrived. May Winslow was acting as postmistress for the week, and the girls were crowding about the office table on which May had sorted the letters.

Either Dr. Prescott or Mrs. Cupp had run through the mail first. Letters from home were never held up. Suspicious looking letters had to be opened in the matron's presence. Nan's only missive this day was an unexpected one from Scotland.

She had grown to know just how the foreign mails were carried and when to look for a letter bearing the Emberon postmark. Somehow, this unexpected epistle frightened Nan.

She hurried up to Room Seven, Corridor Four, to read the letter alone.

Her chum was not there and for once Nan was glad of that. Sitting by the window where the light was fading, Nan opened her letter.

"My dearest child:--

"Since writing you day-before-yesterday, we have received quite a shock.

Your dear father is in such a state of mind that he cannot write to you about it. I am calm myself, dearest Nan, because I know that our Heavenly Father will not see us troubled more greatly than we can bear.

"I have, all the time, had perfect confidence in the final adjustment of Mr. Hughie Blake's estate and the establishment of our clear t.i.tle to it. It seemed as though this already was a fact. But a new difficulty has arisen. Just as Mr. Andrew Blake was about to take possession of the property in our name, a court order restrained him. A new branch of the family, at least, a newly discovered claimant by the name of Blake, has appeared. There are two sisters, maiden ladies, who claim that their mother was married to a man named Hugh Blake, who afterward separated from her. They have only recently found their mother's marriage lines and their own birth certificates, proving the marriage and their own t.i.tle to any property of which their father may have died possessed.

"Mr. Andrew Blake pooh-poohs this claim as he did the others. He is positive that Mr. Hughie Blake was never married. He was, in fact, notoriously a woman-hater. But while the Laird of Emberon was on his Continental travels many years ago, his steward, Hughie Blake, was for two years away from Castle Emberon. These two years correspond with the years in which these Blake sisters claim their father lived with their mother in a North of England shire.

"This is the story, dear Nan, the details of which will not interest you much, only as they affect our financial situation. We are greatly in Mr.

Andrew Blake's debt at the present time. Your father is writing by this mail to the lawyer in Tillbury to raise money on our little home by a mortgage to pay these debts and to pay your school bills for the remainder of the year.

"This holding up of our fortune is only temporary, I am sure. I am trusting in our Father's goodness still. I will not be alarmed. But the delay worries your poor papa very much. Our friends here are very kind to us, and Mr. Andrew Blake urges us to accept his financial aid again; but Papa Sherwood can be, you know, the most stubborn of men when he wants to be."

There was more of the letter--intimate, tender pa.s.sages that Nan could have shown to n.o.body. Her mother's heart was opened wide to the girl, as it always was when they were together. "Momsey" and she had been much more intimate than mothers and little daughters usually are. Mrs.

Sherwood now confided in Nan as she would have done had they been at home together.

The hour darkened, and Nan could no longer see to read as she sat by the window. She put the letter away and bathed her eyes and face before turning on the light.

In fact, she was still in the dark when Bess came romping in. Nan seemed no more quiet to Bess than she had for several days.

"I declare!" cried Bess. "I'd just as soon room with a funeral mute, as with a girl who won't talk. You're the limit, Nan Sherwood!" and she went off to join some of the girls who were under no ban of silence.

CHAPTER XXV

RUMOR BLOWS ABOUT

Bess Harley was not at all a heartless girl; and she really loved Nan devotedly. But she could not understand just why her chum was so particular in her honorable observance of the sentence of silence. Nor did she know anything about the very upsetting letter Nan had received from Scotland. Finding Nan far from gay on this particular evening, and being fond of bustle and excitement herself, Bess deserted Number Seven, Corridor Four, and found amus.e.m.e.nt in the companionship of other girls who could talk.

Nan was unhappy; yet she was glad to be left to herself. She faithfully prepared her tasks for the next day, and then put out the light and sat by the window, looking out into the starlit night.

From her window she had an un.o.bstructed view of the top of the flight of steps leading to the sh.o.r.e, as well as the blinking light on the point and the many windows of a lake steamer going past.

Of late the water had grown too cold for swimming, and boating was not so popular as it had been. The keen winds sometimes blew over the lake and into the school cove, foretelling the winter which was steadily approaching from the Canadian side.

Besides, as the term progressed, the school tasks for the girls became more arduous. Dr. Prescott began the year cautiously; but when she once had her girls "into their stride," as she called it, she pushed them hard. There was less and less time for sport and recreation for those girls who desired to stand well in the monthly reports sent home to parents or guardians.

Girls like Linda Riggs and most of her friends, did not seem to care what their reports were. But Nan felt differently; and even careless Bess had ambition to please the folks at home.

As Nan sat at the window on this evening, however, she wondered if it greatly mattered, after all, what she did--whether she studied, or not.

For the letter from Scotland had made the girl very hopeless, indeed.

She could not, for this once, at least, feel the uplift of "Momsey's"

hopeful nature. She feared that the fortune which, like a will-o'-the-wisp, had danced before their eyes for so many months, was now about to disappear in a Mora.s.s of Despair. The little "dwelling in amity" mortgaged! That seemed to Nan a most terrible thing.

And "Papa Sherwood" and "Momsey" would have to come home, and "Papa Sherwood" would have to take up the search for work again which had so clouded their lives during the first weeks of this very year.

With the outlook on life of a much older person, Nan saw all these approaching difficulties, and they loomed up mountain high in her imagination. After the joy of believing poverty was banished forever from their lives, it seemed to be marching upon them with a more horrid mien than ever.