The Leader of the Lower School/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
A Friend in Need
Miss Poppleton, having, as she deemed, successfully detected Gipsy in her misdoings, was determined to force her into making a full confession. The girl's repeated denials she regarded as mere stubborn effrontery, and after several stormy scenes she had locked her up in the dressing-room, to try if a spell of solitary confinement would reduce her to submission. Poor Gipsy, agitated, overstrung, burning with a sense of fierce anger against the injustice of her summary condemnation, had faced the Principal almost like an animal at bay, and defying her utterly, had persisted in sticking without deviation to her own version of the story.
"You'll gain nothing by this obstinacy!" stormed Miss Poppleton. "I'll make you see who is in authority here! Do you actually imagine I shall allow a girl like you to set herself against the head of the school? Here you stay until you own the truth and beg my pardon."
"Then I'll stop here till I'm grown up, for I've told the truth already," returned Gipsy desperately.
She had kept up a brave front in opposition to Miss Poppleton's accusations; but after the key had turned in the lock, and the sound of footsteps died away down the passage, she sank wearily into a chair, and burying her hot face in her trembling hands, sobbed her heart out. She felt so utterly deserted, friendless and alone. There seemed nobody to whom she might turn for help or counsel, nobody in all the wide, wide world who belonged to her, and would defend her and take her part. Everything appeared to have conspired against her, and this final and most crushing blow was the last straw. Gipsy clenched her fists in an agony of hopelessness. "Oh, Dad, Dad! why don't you come back?" she moaned, and the utter futility of the question added to her misery. Outside the sun was shining and the birds were singing cheerily—they had their mates and their nests, while she had not even a relation to claim her. She could hear the voices of the girls as they took their eleven o'clock recreation; each one had a joyful home to return to, and parents or friends who would shield and protect her.
"I've never had a home!" choked Gipsy. "Oh! I wonder why some people are always left out of everything?"
Then she sat up suddenly, for there was the sound of a hesitating footstep in the passage. The key turned, the door opened gently, and Miss Edith, very nervous and excited, entered the room.
"Oh, Gipsy!" she began tremulously, "Miss Poppleton doesn't know I'm here, but I felt I must come. Oh! you poor, naughty, naughty child, why did you do it? How could you, Gipsy? I'd never have thought it possible. Oh, do be a good girl and own up! Miss Poppleton will forgive you if you'll only tell the truth—and you know you ought to! For the sake of what's right, be brave, and don't go on with this dreadful tissue of lies—it's too wicked and terrible!"
Miss Edith's eyes were full of tears. She laid her hand tenderly on the girl's shoulder, and looked at her with a world of reproach in her twitching face. If Miss Poppleton's scolding had been hard to endure, Miss Edith's concern was far worse. Gipsy seized the kind hand, and held it tightly.
"Oh, Miss Edie, I can't bear you to misjudge me!" she exclaimed bitterly. "Indeed, if you only knew, I am telling the absolute, whole truth. Have I ever told you an untruth before?"
"No, Gipsy. But this, alas! has been so conclusively proved."
"But has it? It all rests on my wet waterproof and galoshes. I don't know how they got wet, but I do know that I didn't go out in them, and if I said I did, why, then I should be really telling a falsehood."
Miss Edith sighed with disappointment, and drew her hand reluctantly away.
"I thought I might have influenced you, Gipsy," she said, with a little sad catch in her voice. "I'm not clever like my sister, but you were always fond of me. I can't put things as she does, but I should have liked to make you feel that doing right is worth while for the sake of your own conscience. Oh, you poor misguided child, do think it over, and make an effort! You'll be glad all your life afterwards if you own your fault, and start afresh. I can't stay any longer now—and you've no need to tell Miss Poppleton that I came—but I'll be your friend, Gipsy, if you'll only confess."
She lingered a moment, half hopefully; then, as Gipsy only shook her head in reply, she gave up her useless attempt, and went sorrowfully away. In black despair Gipsy mentally went over the conversation, wondering how she could have convinced Miss Edith of her innocence. She could not allow herself to be cajoled by kindness into a confession of what she had not done, any more than she could permit herself to be coerced by severity. Miss Edith might use gentle persuasion, and Miss Poppleton might try to cow her and break her spirit, but neither should succeed in forcing her to a false admission.
Helen Roper came up at dinner-time with a plate of meat and vegetables in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She slammed them down hastily on the table, with a scornful glance at the prisoner.
"That's all you'll get," she remarked brusquely. "Miss Poppleton says you don't deserve pudding to-day. And quite right, too! Bread and water'd be enough for you, in my opinion. Why haven't you the pluck to face things in an honourable way, and say you're sorry for what you've done? I never much cared for you, but I thought better of you than this. For the sake of the school, do let's have an end of this wretched business! 'Noblesse oblige' has been our motto, and I hoped every girl would have risen to it. Have you no self-respect?"
"Yes—too much to say I've done what I haven't," retorted Gipsy, glowering her defiance.
Helen shrugged her shoulders.
"Miss Poppleton says you're as obstinate as a mule, and she's about right!" she remarked tartly, as she banged the door and locked it noisily behind her. Gipsy was not hungry, so the plentiful supply of meat and vegetables was quite sufficient for her needs, and the lack of pudding was no grievance. Helen's severe censure hurt her desperately. Had the girls all condemned her equally without fair trial, and without sifting the evidence against her? Did Hetty, and Dilys, and Meg, and Lennie, her own particular friends, consider her guilty? Had they no better belief in her honour than that? Had everybody forsaken her? Gipsy pushed her half-finished plateful aside. She was choking too much with sobs to swallow another morsel.
"There isn't a single soul here who cares! I shall have to go away and find Dad!" she exploded in a kind of desperation, standing up and scrubbing her eyes with her wet pocket-handkerchief.
In the meantime Gipsy's friends had not altogether abandoned her, as she supposed. They had been on the alert all the morning to discover some means of communicating with her, though, owing to Miss Poppleton's vigilance, their efforts had so far met with ill success. Any girl found loitering in the vicinity of the passage that led to the dressing-room had been packed off in a most summary fashion, with a warning not to show herself there again under penalty of an imposition. After dinner, however, Meg, who had secret plans of her own, managed to dodge Miss Lindsay, and by creeping under the laurels in the plantation made her way to a forbidden part of the garden which commanded a view of the dressing-room window. Exactly underneath this window stood a greenhouse with a sloping glass roof, and at the corner of the greenhouse there was a long down spout to drain the gutters above. Meg advanced under cover of the bushes with the caution of a scout, and reviewed the position carefully before she ventured into the open.
"I believe I can manage it," she murmured. "My toe would fit into that hole, and I could catch hold of the bracket. I haven't learnt mountaineering for nothing, and if I could tackle that crag on Hawes Fell I oughtn't to be stumped by a gutter pipe. I flatter myself there's not another girl in the school who could do it, though. Between half-past one and two is a good time. Probably no one will be round at this side of the house, but I shall have to risk something, and trust to luck."
The down spout certainly put Meg's climbing powers to the utmost test. It was smooth and slippery, while the footholds in the wall were of the very slenderest. With considerable difficulty she swung herself up, and creeping over the roof of the greenhouse reached the small railed balcony that gave access to the dressing-room window. She peeped in. There was Gipsy, sitting, doing nothing, and looking the picture of disconsolate misery.
"Gipsy!" called Meg, under her breath.
"Hello! It's never you! Oh, Meg, you angel!"
"Don't make such an idiotic noise, but help me in quietly. Mum's the word! How are you getting on here?"
"Come in and I'll tell you. But you'll have to whisk out pretty quickly if we hear Poppie's fairy footsteps in the passage. We must listen with both ears open while we talk."
"Trust me! Oh, Gipsy, we're all so sorry for you!"
"You believe in me, then? How does the school take it?"
"Variously. Some are for you, and some are against. Dilys and Lennie and Hetty of course stand up for you hard, and funnily enough so does Leonora. She took your part this morning quite hotly, and had such a quarrel with Maude and Gladys that she won't speak to them. I didn't think Leonora would have behaved so decently. The Seniors are very dubious, especially Helen Roper."
"Yes, Helen lashed into me when she brought my dinner. She's always ready to think the worst of me."
"Poppie's furious," continued Meg. "She says you're only making your punishment worse by obstinate falsehoods, and she means to make an example of you."
"What's she going to do?" asked Gipsy with apprehension.
"I don't know—she didn't condescend to tell us."
"Look here, I'm sick of the whole business!" said Gipsy bitterly. "I'm not wanted at Briarcroft. Poppie'd be only too delighted to get rid of me. I'm not going to stay here any longer to be ordered about and scolded, and accused of things I've never done. I'll run away. If you can climb up the greenhouse roof, I can climb down it."
"Oh, Gipsy! Where will you go? Come to us! We'd hide you somewhere at home, and Mother wouldn't give you up to Poppie, I know!"
But Gipsy shook her head emphatically. The very fact of the Gordons' kindness made it impossible for her to trespass upon their generosity. She knew that if she were to seek sanctuary at their house, she would place Mrs. Gordon in a most awkward and difficult position, and her natural delicacy of feeling caused her to shrink from such a course. It would be a poor return indeed for their former hospitality.
"No, Meg; it's awfully good of you, but I must go farther away than that. I'm off to Liverpool. Don't look so staggered; I've quite made up my mind!"
"Liverpool! Why, that's miles and miles away! How will you go? And what will you do when you get there?"
"I shall manage somehow to sell my watch. It's a gold one, you know, so it ought to be worth enough to pay my railway fare, at any rate. It belonged to my mother, and I wouldn't have parted with it under any other circumstances than these. Thank goodness I put it on this morning! I don't wear it always. When I get to Liverpool I have a plan. Captain Smith—the captain of the vessel we were wrecked on—lives at a suburb called Waterloo. I'll enquire and enquire till I find the house. If he's at home, it's just possible that he could give me some little hint about my father. Dad might have dropped something in talking to him that he did not tell to me. I believe Captain Smith would help me if he could."
"But suppose he's gone to sea again?"
"That's quite likely. I've thought of that too. Well, I mean to go to some of the shipping offices, and see if they'll give me a post on a South African liner as assistant stewardess. Don't look so frightfully aghast! It's work I could do very well, though it wouldn't be pleasant. I've travelled so much about the world that I'm absolutely at home on board ship. I know all the ins and outs of voyaging, and I'm a splendid sailor, never seasick in the least. I could make myself most uncommonly useful. I'd buy a packet of hairpins and tuck up my hair so that I'd look much older, and I believe they'd engage me, because it's so difficult sometimes to meet with assistant stewardesses. I'm nearly fifteen now, and I'd rather earn my own living like that than stay here at Briarcroft on Poppie's charity. American and Colonial girls are never ashamed to work. When I get out to Cape Town, I'll go to the headmistress of the school where I stopped three months. She was a trump, and I believe she'd help me to find Dad."
So bold a plan almost took Meg's breath away, yet its ambitious daring appealed strongly to her schoolgirl imagination. She had absolutely no knowledge of the world, and the scheme which an older person would have instantly vetoed sounded to her inexperienced young ears not only perfectly feasible, but delightfully enterprising and romantic. She entered into it with enthusiasm, absolutely certain that anything that Gipsy proposed must be right. Having worshipped her friend for so long, she could not believe her idol's judgment would be at fault.
"I'll tell you what we'll do!" she exclaimed. "Let's change dresses! Then if Poppie tries to follow you, it will throw her off the scent. Mine's longer than yours, too, so it will be better for a stewardess."
"Won't they notice it in school? It might give the thing away," hesitated Gipsy.
"It's Drawing the whole afternoon with Mr. Cobb, and he won't know the difference. Quick, or somebody may be coming! Take my hat too. I'll get yours out of the cupboard, or go home without one. None of the girls would tell, and I'll dodge mistresses."
It did not take very long for the pair to effect an exchange of costumes. They were soon arrayed in each other's dresses, an arrangement which was certainly more to Gipsy's advantage than Meg's. They knew there was no time to be lost, so, swinging themselves over the balcony railings, they began creeping cautiously down the greenhouse roof. They had just about reached the middle when Meg, who was first, suddenly stopped with a stifled exclamation, and lay as flat and as still as she could. Gipsy naturally followed suit, and looking downwards saw the reason for the alarm. They were in horrible and imminent danger of discovery. Miss Poppleton herself had entered the conservatory below, and with a little watering can in her hand began to attend to her plants. Would she look up and notice the two dark bodies on the roof above her?
Gipsy felt she had never been so thrillingly interested in gardening in the whole of her life. She watched while the geraniums and fuchsias received their due sprinkling, and held her breath when the Principal appeared about to stretch up to a hanging basket. Most fortunately for the two girls, she changed her mind, and evidently thinking there was not enough water in the can, emptied the remainder on a box of seedlings, and went into the house for a fresh supply.
"Now!" breathed Meg. "As quick as you can, without putting your heels through the glass!"
"It was the nearest squeak!" gasped Gipsy, as the pair, after a rapid slide down the gutter pipe, reached the ground in safety. "She'll be coming back directly."
"Rush under the shrubs—quick!" said Meg. "Oh, I say! There's the bell! I must fly. I daren't walk in late, or your dress might be noticed at call-over."
"I'm off too, then," returned Gipsy. "When Poppie unlocks the dressing-room door, she'll find the bird has flown!"
"Goodbye! I can't wait! Oh, Gipsy! when shall I see you again?"
"Some day. I promise that! The bell's stopping! You'll be late, Meg, if you don't scoot."
Torn in two between her reluctance to part from her friend and her anxiety to be in time for call-over, Meg hurried away without further farewell; and Gipsy, in wildest fear of detection, metaphorically speaking burnt her boats, and darting through the side gate, ran with all possible speed down the high-road.