Etheldreda the Ready Part 19

Three minutes ago she had been sure, yet she had not been happy; she had allowed herself to think of the future--to worry and to doubt. Oh, the folly of it! And now she could never be happy any more; her triumph was turned into humiliation and shame.

What would they think--do--say? Mr Rawdon, Miss Drake, father and mother, the other visitors, the girls? What _could_ they say? It would be miserable for everybody--even for Susan. Susan could not enjoy her triumph at such a cost to her chosen friend. Susan's arm pressed lovingly against her side--she was distressed that Dreda seemed unnerved, but she did not guess what had happened. n.o.body guessed! No one _could_ guess if she kept those sheets carefully folded, and destroyed them as soon as she reached the dormitory. It was not her own mistake. It was Mr Rawdon's. Was one called upon to taste the very dregs of humiliation because another person had made a mistake?

Mr Rawdon was still talking. The hands of the clock had only registered ten minutes since he began; it seemed a lifetime before the big hand reached the next figure. No; she would not tell. The mistake had happened, and she must abide by it. There were other people to think of besides herself. Mother had cried for joy; father's eyes had glowed with happy pride--could they bear to have their joy turned to pain?

Mr Rawdon was talking about life, taking up the subject of the girls'

essays, enlarging upon what they had tried to express. The words floated to Dreda's ears; she listened in curious, detached fas.h.i.+on.

"Difficulties and temptations came to us all; they were hard to bear, bitterly hard at the time, but looked upon in the right light they were just opportunities given to us to prove our true worth, to help us farther on our way." Fine words, fine words! It was easy to preach when all was going well for oneself, and there was no terrible mountain of difficulty blocking up the very next step. She _could_ not tell!

All the eyes would stare at her again, but the admiration would be changed into pity--perhaps even into suspicion. Some people might believe that she herself was responsible for this mistake. She would give Susan another copy of the books for Christmas. Susan should not suffer. She would not tell.

Mr Rawdon had put down his notes, the hands of the clock had touched yet another figure; he was looking down the room and smiling in her direction. She lost the drift of his sentence, but his last words were her own name--"an Etheldreda Saxon," he said, and in the midst of the applause which followed a girl's voice rang out: "Three cheers for Dreda Saxon!" And once more the room was in an uproar of delight.

The girls leapt to their feet; Dreda leapt with them. Susan felt her thrust her way forward, and stared in surprise. She feared that her friend had turned faint with emotion, but when Dreda had cleared herself from the crowded forms she marched quietly up the room towards the platform. The unfolded essay was in her hand, her face was as white as the paper itself. The applause died away into a tense, uneasy silence.

Something had gone wrong. What could it be?

Dreda held up the essay towards Mr Rawdon.

She opened her lips, but it was only after several ineffectual efforts that the husky voice would come.

"It is not mine! There has been a mistake. Susan wrote it--Susan Webster--the prize is hers!"

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

A blank silence followed Dreda's announcement. Dismay, disappointment, and distress seemed printed on every face. Mr Rawdon and Miss Drake gazed first at each other, then at the girl, then at the paper which she had laid upon the table. Their foreheads were fretted with perplexity.

For the first few moments they seemed unable to speak; but presently, bending towards Dreda, they appeared to question her in whispered tones, to question anxiously, to cross-question,--to draw her attention to page after page of the typed essay, as if searching for a refutation of her statement. But Dreda shook her head, and could not be shaken. Then Miss Drake turned aside and sat down, turning her chair so that her face was hidden from the audience, and two little patches of red showed themselves on Mr Rawdon's cheek bones.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "a mistake has arisen--a most regrettable mistake. The numbers attached to two of the essays submitted to me have apparently been misplaced. It is impossible to say how this confusion has arisen. Neither Miss Drake nor I can think of any satisfactory explanation. If by chance it should be due to any carelessness of my own, I can only say that I am most deeply sorry, and that I feel myself painfully punished. It appears that the writer of the prize essay is not Etheldreda Saxon, as we believed. She herself discovered the mistake when glancing at the paper which I had returned to her while I was giving my address just now, and has taken the first possible opportunity of making public her discovery. I regret more than I can say that she should have had so painful an experience, and I am sure that you will all share my sorrow. Miss Saxon's essay was one of the four chosen from the rest, and I can only hope that the prophecies which I have already made as to her future will in all truth be fulfilled." (Great applause.) "I now call upon Miss Susan Webster, the author of the selected essay, to come up to the platform and receive her prize." (Faint clapping of hands.)

There is no doubt that it was a painful anticlimax. It is not often that a literary genius looks the part so delightfully as Dreda had done twenty minutes before--Dreda, in her new blue dress, with her flaxen mane floating past her waist, her beautiful eyes darkened with excitement, her complexion of clearest pink and white. As she had mounted the steps to the platform the watching faces had shone with pure artistic pleasure in the sight. So young, so strong, so lovely, and so gifted--it was a privilege even to look upon so fortunate a creature.

And now! Guided by Miss Drake's thoughtful hand, the fairy princess had slipped behind the screen which hid the back of the platform, and creeping slowly across the floor came the mouselike figure of Susan in her dun brown dress, her plain little face fretted with embarra.s.sment and distress, a victor with the air of a martyr, a conqueror who shrank from her spoils.

Despite himself, Mr Rawdon's voice took a colder tone as, for the second time, he presented the pile of books; despite herself, Miss Drake's smile was mechanical and forced; while the visitors made only a show of applause. "Hard luck for that fine, bright girl!" whispered the fathers one to another; the mothers almost without exception had tears in their eyes. "And she looks so sweet and pretty! It's a _shame_!"

cried the sisters rebelliously. Even the girls on the benches at the back of the room--Susan's companions who loved her and appreciated her worth--even they looked oppressed and discomfited. The romance of Dreda's triumph had appealed to their young imaginations; they understood even more keenly than their elders the suffering involved in that humiliating confession. "Poor Dreda!" they whispered to each other. "Oh! poor old Dreda!"

At tea in the drawing-room the tone of the teachers was distinctly apologetic--the high spirits characteristic of the early hours had ebbed away, and the visitors were glad to beat an early retreat. Mr and Mrs Saxon received Miss Drake's apologies in the kindest and most sympathetic manner, and would not allow her to take any blame to herself.

"It was an accident--no one can be blamed. We are so sorry for you, too!" Mrs Saxon said sweetly. "It is a disappointment, of course; it was a very happy moment when we believed our dear girl had gained such a prize. We were so proud of her!"

"We are proud of her now," interrupted Dreda's father quickly, and at that both his hearers smiled and nodded their heads in sympathetic understanding. "Yes, yes; we are proud of her _now_."

To Dreda herself her parents made no allusion to the tragic mistake.

The girl only made her appearance when the motor drove up to the door, and her cool, somewhat haughty manner showed that sympathy was the last thing which she desired at the moment.

"Good-bye, darling, till Thursday. Only two days more before we have you back among us."

"Good-bye, my girl. I'll drive over for you on Thursday morning."

"Dreda, darling, I'm _so_ glad you are coming. I've such lots to tell you!"

"You've got your belt fastened on the wrong hook. The point's crooked."

For once Maud's literal mind was a blessed relief. Her parting words made everyone laugh, and the car drove off with the cheery sound of that laughter ringing in the air, and the remembrance of merry faces to cheer Dreda's aching heart. She turned and crept upstairs to the study. She had shed her own gala dress, thrusting it away in the cupboard as if she never wished to behold it again. The study was filled with odd pieces of furniture which had been taken out of the big cla.s.srooms, and the fire was dying out upon the grate.

"Here sit I, and my broken heart!" sighed Dreda dramatically, as she subsided into a chair and drew her shoulders together in an involuntary s.h.i.+ver. It had been cold work standing at the door watching the departure of the car, and the atmosphere of the deserted room was not calculated to cheer her spirits. "When you've had a great shock your const.i.tution is enfeebled; when you're enfeebled, you are sensitive to chills; a chill on an enfeebled const.i.tution is generally fatal.

Perhaps I've received my death blow this afternoon in more ways than one." Dreda sniffed and s.h.i.+vered miserably once more. The stream of visitors was still departing, saying good-bye to Miss Bretherton and the teachers in the drawing-room and making their way to the door. Dreda would not risk leaving the study and encountering strange faces on the staircase; besides which, it did not seem her place to seek her companions at this moment. It was her companions who should seek _her_.

"In the hour of my triumph they all crowded round me; now I am a pelican on the housetop, and no one cares if I am dead or alive. I must get accustomed to it, I suppose. Shame and humiliation must henceforth be my portion. Only fifteen and a half--in _years_. In suffering I'm an old, old woman! Mr Rawdon was sorry; I saw it in his face; but he liked Susan's best. Susan has won the prize. Where is Susan now? Has she forgotten all about me?"

As if in answer to this question the handle of the door turned, and a head was thrust round the corner. A voice exclaimed: "Here she is!" and Nancy entered the room, followed closely by Susan herself. They stood and looked at Dreda, and Dreda looked at them, but none of the three uttered a word. Then suddenly Susan whispered something in Nancy's ear, and while that young person hurried from the room with a most unusual celerity, Susan dropped quietly on her knees beside the dying fire and began coaxing it into a blaze.

Dreda sat back in her chair and watched the process with a dull, detached curiosity. Susan's back looked so narrow and small; the brown dress fastened at the back with a row of ugly bone b.u.t.tons; as she knelt the soles of her new slippers seemed to fill up the entire foreground.

They were startlingly, shockingly white! As she bent from side to side blowing skilfully upon the struggling flames, one could catch a glimpse of her profile, white and wan, with red circles round the eyes. Such a poor, weary little conqueror, on her knees striving to serve her fallen rival. Something stirred in Dreda's heart; the ice melted, she cleared her throat, and addressed her friend by name.

"Susan!"

Susan sat back on her heels, lifting scared, pitiful eyes.

"Susan," said Dreda regally, "I don't hate you. You needn't be frightened. I don't hate you a bit--I'm _sorry_ for you. This should have been your triumph, and I have spoiled it. It's very hard on you too, Susan!"

"Oh, Dreda!" gasped Susan breathlessly. "Dreda, you're _magnificent_!"

She was wan and white no longer; her eyes blazed. No one seeing Susan at that moment could possibly have called her plain; the lovely soul of her shone through the flesh, working its transformation, even as the leaping flames were now turning the dull hearth into a thing of beauty and life.

Still on her knees, Susan crawled across the few intervening yards of floor, and rested her head against Dreda's knee.

"I'd have given it up a hundred times--a thousand over, Dreda, rather than let you have this experience!" she said brokenly. And Dreda knew that she spoke the truth.

It was in this att.i.tude that Nancy discovered the two girls when she entered the room a few minutes later, bearing in her hands a temptingly spread tea-tray. One glance of the red-brown eyes testified to her satisfaction at such eloquent signs of peace, but manner and speech disdained sentiment.

"Corn in Egypt!" she cried cheerfully. "The Duck fairly showered dainties upon me--scones, sandwiches, cakes, _and_ a fresh pot of tea.

Let's fall to at once. I am fainting with hunger."

She placed three chairs round the table, seated herself in front of the tray, and, pouring out three cups of tea, handed them round with hospitable zeal. Dreda ate and drank and felt comforted, in spite of herself. It was wonderful how the mere creature comforts of warmth and food seemed to soothe the pain at her heart. She even began to feel a faint enjoyment in the dramatic element of her position, to realise that if she had failed she had failed in a noticeable, even in a tragic, fas.h.i.+on. To Susan belonged the glory, yet she, the beaten one, remained unquestionably the heroine of the day!

By the time that second cups of tea had been handed round, and an attack made upon the iced cake, Dreda was ready and eager to discuss her trouble.

"How _could_ those numbers have been altered, Susan? Mine was five and yours was ten. They aren't in the least alike!"

"Dreda, I don't know--I can't _think_! If they had come loose and Mr Rawdon had clipped them on again, he would have remembered doing it. At least, an ordinary person would; but he is a genius. Perhaps geniuses are different."

"_You_ are a genius, Susan. You ought to know!" said Dreda, whereat the poor little genius flushed miserably, and Nancy, rattling the tea-tray, rushed hastily into the breach.

"Accidents _will_ happen! It's no earthly use worrying your head about the how and the why. There it is, and you've got to make the best of it, and forget it as soon as possible."

Dreda rolled tragic eyes to the ceiling.

"I shall never forget. You can't reach the height of your ambition and then see your treasure crumble to pieces in your hands in less than ten minutes, and fall down into a very pit of humiliation without wearing a mark for life."