Peggy Part 14

"I certainly hope justice will be done, Miss Russell," she said, with a smile of sweetened vinegar. "It would be a great pity, wouldn't it, if the school got the reputation--he! he!--of injustice and favouritism?"

"It would," said the Princ.i.p.al, gravely.

"But there is another matter that I feel bound to speak of before we separate," Miss Pugsley went on. "Are you aware that room No. 18, in corridor A, the room formerly occupied by Miss Lightwood, is again being used as a place of exit for parties of students going on lawless expeditions?"

The Princ.i.p.al looked at her steadily.

"I fear that is true," said one of the other teachers. "I had meant to speak to you before about it, Miss Russell, but waited till to-night."

"Of course it makes no possible difference to me!" cried Miss Pugsley.

"It is not my corridor, and I have no authority there; but as long as one is in the school, of course one must consider the honour of it, you know, and I am glad some one else is here to bear me out in _this_ complaint."

The Princ.i.p.al still looked at Miss Pugsley; teachers who had been long in the school were glad that she was not looking at them in that way.

"I have heard of this matter before," Miss Russell said, at last. "I am going to devote my own time to investigating it, and think I shall need no help; though I thank you," it was to Miss Ivors that she spoke, "for bringing it to my notice, as it was right for you to do. I think I need not detain you longer, ladies."

When the teachers were gone, Miss Russell stepped to the window and said, softly, "Grace!"

There was no reply. An owl hooted in the distance; a bird chirped somewhere near by. That was all.

"Grace!" said the Princ.i.p.al again. "If you are there, I wish you would come in and let me speak to you."

Still no reply. After waiting a moment, the Princ.i.p.al closed the window with a sigh. On leaving the room she paused a moment to look at the photograph of a lovely young woman, in the dress of twenty years ago, which stood on her desk.

"Dear Edith!" said Miss Russell. "My first pupil! I'll keep your girl for you, Edith, if I can!"

Was Grace Wolfe outside the window when the Princ.i.p.al called her? Who can tell? It is certain that ten minutes after she was at the supper in Bedlam.

The tenant of Bedlam, Miss Cornelia Hatch (familiarly known as Colney Hatch, in remembrance of the famous English Insane Asylum), was not actually mad, though many of the scholars thought her so. She was a special student of natural history, botany, and zoology; she was absent-minded and forgetful to the last degree. When she came into cla.s.s, she often had to be brought there, some good-natured cla.s.smate dragging her away by main force from her private experiments. If she did remember to come of her own accord, she was apt to have a half-completed articulation hanging around her neck, or a dried frog skin stuck behind her ear for safe-keeping. Her hair was generally untidy, owing to this habit of sticking things in it while she worked; you never could tell what it would be, vertebrae, or seaweed, or pine-cones, but you could safely reckon on finding something extraneous in Colney's ruffled black hair. As for her clothes, she was usually enveloped in a huge brown gingham ap.r.o.n, with many pockets, which held snakes, or eggs, or roots, or anything else that would not go comfortably in her hair. When the ap.r.o.n became too dirty (she had had two at the beginning of the term, but one had been destroyed in an explosion), Miss Carey took it away and washed it, while Colney went around looking scared and miserable in a queer flannel gown of a pinkish shade. Report said it had once been brown, but that the colour had been changed by the fumes of something or other, no one knew what. Sometimes she had b.u.t.tons on frock and ap.r.o.n, more often not. Periodically, Miss Carey or the Owls descended upon her, and sewed on her b.u.t.tons and mended her up generally; and she was very grateful, and said how nice it was to have b.u.t.tons. But she soon pulled them off again, because she never had time to do anything but tear her clothes off when she went to bed, and drag them on again when she got up. When a b.u.t.ton flew off, she pinned the place over, if a pin was in sight; if not, she went without; it made no difference to her, and she was not conscious of it in five minutes. Miss Russell, and most of the teachers, were very tender with Colney. She was poor, and meant to work her way through college; even now she paid part of her schooling by stuffing birds and setting up skeletons for one of the college professors. If she did not kill herself or somebody else before she graduated, Miss Russell looked forward to a distinguished career for the tenant of Bedlam; so, as I have said, she was tender and patient with her; and good Miss Carey mended her when she could, and saw that she remembered to eat her dinner, and Miss Boyle and Miss Mink rejoiced over her, and Miss Cortlandt led her gently through English literature, giving her Walton and Bacon and all the scientific men of letters that she could find. Only one teacher failed to do her best to smooth poor Colney's path through school; that was Miss Pugsley. Rhetoric was simply an empty noise to the girl. She never by any chance knew a lesson, and Miss Pugsley lashed her with so cruel a tongue that Peggy used to ache and smart for her as well as for herself, and would get hold of Colney's hand and hold it and squeeze it, growing red the while with pity and anger. But Colney never noticed it half as much as Peggy did; she used to look at the angry teacher for a few minutes in an abstracted kind of way, and then retire within herself and make imaginary experiments.

This was what happened on the dreadful day when Miss Pugsley said:

"The subject of this sentence is _I_. How do we go to work to form the predicate, Miss Hatch?"

Cornelia started, but replied, instantly:

"By mixing one part hydrogen with three parts--"

"Indeed!" said Miss Pugsley, with ominous calm. "And what happens next, pray?"

"It turns green, and explodes with a loud report."

And this was exactly what did happen. Poor Colney!

Peggy Montfort did not form one of the party in Bedlam that night. The room lay at the extreme end of the corridor, round a corner, so that it was in a manner shut off from the rest of the wing. It was an extraordinary place. Stretched on the walls, dried or drying, were specimens of every possible variety,--bats, frogs, snake skins, bird skins. Along the mantelpiece were jars and bottles, all containing other specimens preserved in spirits. In one corner stood part of a human skeleton. It stood on one leg, with a jaunty air, having indeed but one leg to stand on; both arms were wanting, but the skull, which was a very fine one, made up for much. On account of this fragmentary skeleton, few of the younger girls ever dared to enter Bedlam, and some of them would run past the door with face averted, and beating heart, fearing lest the door should be open and they should catch a glimpse of the gruesome thing. But this object was the pride of Colney's heart. She could not, of course, afford to buy a whole skeleton, so she was collecting one, bit by bit; even Peggy had been quite uncomfortable one day, when Colney had told her, hanging over each bone with delight, where and how she had come by each one. It was always honestly, one could be sure of that.

Everywhere in the room, underfoot and overhead, were setting-boards and pill-boxes, blowpipes and crucibles. One could not move without upsetting something; and yet it was here that the Gang came to have its annual supper.

Colney Hatch was dissecting a mouse. She was perfectly happy, and oblivious of the world, when the door opened, and in came fluttering the wild spirits of the junior and soph.o.m.ore cla.s.ses. Last year the soph.o.m.ores had been freshmen, and must not know anything about the Gang, save in wondering envious whispers and surmises. Next year the juniors would be seniors, and they too must forget that such a thing as the Gang had been, and think only of dramatics, examinations, and graduation.

Such had been the unwritten law at Miss Russell's, since time was.

Here were Vanity and Vexation of Spirit, one smiling and dimpling, the other with her usual air of blase superiority. Here was Blanche Haight, the leader among the soph.o.m.ores; here were six or eight girls, in fact, chosen from the two cla.s.ses for the same characteristics, lawlessness and love of fun; last but not least, here was Grace Wolfe, the acknowledged leader and queen of the Gang, when she deigned to be so.

Grace was in her wildest mood to-night. She danced solemnly around poor Colney, who looked up in dismay from her mouse as the silent crowd came pouring in, and a.s.sured her that her last hour was come.

"We are the Secret Tribunal!" she cried. "We have come to make a pile of all your rubbish, Colney, and burn it, with you on top, like the Phoenix. I am sure you would come up out of the ashes, if we left the mouse out for you to finish."

"Oh, do be careful, please, Goat!" cried Colney Hatch. "Don't sit down on that frog, he isn't dry! Dear me! do you--do want anything, girls?"

"We want your room, my love; and your company!" replied Grace. "Yet we are merciful. Here!"

She twirled Cornelia's chair around, and set her with her face to the wall; then moved the lamp so that its light fell on the board in her lap.

"There!" she said. "Finish him, poor old dear, and we'll wake you up when supper's ready. Now then! who's brought what?"

Then, from pockets, from surplice folds, from shawls and cloaks hung carelessly over the arm, came forth a strange array of articles. One had brought a chicken, one a cake. Here was a Dutch cheese, a tin of crackers, a bottle of coffee, a bottle of olives, and a box of sardines.

Grace herself told in high glee how she had met one of the teachers in the corridor, and had stood for five minutes talking about the next day's lesson. "And with this under me cloak the while!" and with a dramatic gesture she produced and held out a dish of lobster salad.

"If it had been potato," she declared, "I had been lost; the onion had betrayed me. Blessings on the bland, the seductive mayonnaise, which veiled the ardent lobster and his smell. She did smell it, however, and said, so cheerfully, poor dear, that Miss Carey was evidently going to give us a surprise to-morrow, for she smelt lobster. It was Miss Cortlandt, too; I did want to say, 'Oh, come along, and have some!' She is a rectangular fragment of baked clay, used for building purposes, Miss Cortlandt is."

"What do you mean, Goat?" asked some one.

"I never use slang, as you know!" replied Grace, gravely. "It argues a poverty of intellect, as well as a small vocabulary. I suppose you would have said she was a brick, my child."

"Oh, Goat, how funny you are!" giggled the girls.

"Not at all, I a.s.sure you," said Grace, unmoved. "But I pray you fall to! Have some salad, Vanity? yes, I'll take a wing, thank you."

"Isn't this perf'ly fine?" cried Viola Vincent. They were all seated by this time, some on the floor, others wherever they could find a few inches of spare room, and were dispensing the viands with reckless liberality. "I say! I wish we had these every week, instead of only once a year. Why, it's just as easy! Oh, what an elegant cream pie! Give me some!"

"No!" said Grace Wolfe, with emphasis.

"Why not? What's the matter, Goat?"

"I will _not_ have pies called elegant while I am leader of this Gang,"

said Grace. "Take my life, if you will, but spare my feelings!"

"All right," said Viola, cheerily. "Your own way, Goat. I'd just as lief call it dandy, and it _is_ dandy, you can't deny that."

"Perhaps the Goat is thinking of succeeding her Puggy in the rhetoric chair!" said Blanche Haight, with a sneer.

"Perhaps I am thinking of stopping your--" began Grace; but she checked herself, and turned away abruptly.

"Look at Colney!" said Vivia Varnham. "Isn't she too perfectly killing?

She doesn't know we are here, I believe. Look at her hair, girls! It gets more ratty, not to say woozzy, every day. I wonder when she brushed it last."

"Possibly when you brushed your manners," said the Scapegoat. "Colney is our hostess, I beg to remind you. And n.o.body giving her a bite of supper!"