“We’re almost there,” said Penny, who had been sitting up straight, watching the road. “Slow up, Glenn; we don’t want to drive too close … That’s it, better stop here. Well, good night, boys. It’s been charming.”
Francie hastily kissed Glenn, and recovered the butter-muslin, which she had nearly forgotten. They whispered now. “Wait until we’ve had the chance to get indoors,” she said, “and then drive off as quietly as you can, while their attention’s being distracted. You never know; we may smuggle ourselves in without any noise.”
On tiptoe the girls approached the house. Somewhat to their surprise, it was not blazing with lights and loud with search parties. In fact, the place looked remarkably dark. The gates stood open, but then they usually did; nobody ever closed them. Fairfields seemed fast asleep in the gathering dark as the moon was whirled around to the other side of the planet. It was almost disappointing, when they were so keyed up. Only as they drew nearer, around the corner of one of the turrets, Francie saw a light.
“That’s in staff headquarters,” Penny whispered when her attention was drawn to it. “It doesn’t mean anything. Listen, Francie, I’m going to try the cloakroom window. It isn’t often locked.”
“Good egg!” Francie would never have thought of that for herself.
The cloakroom window could be reached from outside if you stepped on a sloping part of the wall underneath it. Sometimes in wet weather this could not be done because the slope was precipitous, and when it was slippery as well the thing was hopeless. Besides, you had to hang on to the ivy, and you had to pick your bit of ivy carefully. Francie was not at all sure they would be able to negotiate it, but it was worth trying. She felt a nervous desire to giggle, but stifled the impulse and with Penny crept carefully around the house to the right spot.
Penny went first. With Francie holding her around the waist she stood on the sloping bit of wall and with excruciatingly silent care she attempted to raise the sash. After a breathless moment, it went up quietly. Francie breathed easier; half the battle was won.
Carefully Penny made her way through the window, with Francie pushing her in the small of the back. Inside, she turned to help her friend; Francie could see her face, white and earnest in what was left of the moonlight. Penny held out her hand to help.
Francie took it, placed her foot on the slope, and with her other hand took firm hold of a bit of ivy. She swung up. She was going to make it—then the ivy gave way.
For a second Francie stood on one foot, wildly reaching with the other for foothold, and trying to grab Penny’s wrist with her free hand. It was no use. She hung, as it were, in space, and then she fell. The crash sounded appallingly loud.
She had barely time to climb to her feet and feel herself for broken bones when a light went on in the passage beyond Penny’s head. Francie, holding her breath, heard a shocked whisper inside the window, and then Miss West’s voice no longer bothering to whisper.
“Penelope! What in the world are you doing here? And who is that outside?”
Francie on tiptoe pulled herself up to the window sill.
“It’s me, Miss West,” she said. “Please can you help me in, or open the door or something?”
CHAPTER 11
Francie woke in the morning, blinking in sleepy, stupid surprise at her new surroundings. The sun was coming in at an unaccustomed angle and the first thing her eyes fell on was a white washstand that she could not remember having seen before.
“What in the world …”
Then it all poured into her consciousness at once, appallingly. She was in isolation. She and Penny were in disgrace, and had been sent to the sickroom and an unused guest room, separately, for the night. They were moral lepers. They were to stay there, Miss West had said, until she could tell Miss Maitland about their sin, and a decision could be made as to their fate.
“As if we were about eight years old,” said Francie to herself scoffingly, but she could not rally her spirits with mockery. No matter how often she told herself that it couldn’t make any real difference to her, she was apprehensive. Of what? She could not have said. Pop, she was sure, would not be terribly angry, because in his philosophy her crime would not seem great. He would see her point of view, she was sure. He was her Pop, her own property. That was why it had been maddeningly narrow of Miss Maitland not to take her word for it, and assume that Pop’s permission would have been forthcoming if he had been asked; and Miss Maitland had been in the wrong, too, in hinting that Francie might lie to get her own way. Oh, very much in the wrong! Francie could still make herself angry at the thought of it.
And yet, and yet—hadn’t Pop told her that she must try to accept the code of the place where she was living? He would take a poor view of her failure to do that. No, Pop would not be pleased, nor would he be quite whole-heartedly on her side … “But he won’t punish me,” she reassured herself. “He’ll scold me, I suppose, and make me feel ashamed, but that’s as far as it can go. When it comes to the point he’ll back me up. And what can Miss Maitland do that would be worse? Nothing. She can kick me out, but who cares?”
The answer came, out of the middle of the sore place on Francie’s conscience. Penny would care.
Francie’s heart sank like a stone. Not only herself, but Penny would get into a mess. Penny would be sent home, not to an indulgent, understanding Pop, but to that mean-eyed, conceited, bigoted Uncle Jim. And just at the most critical time, too, for Penny’s hopes and chances. Underneath their deliberately pessimistic forecasts, both girls had clung to the last hope of a scholarship for Penny in the dramatic school. If that came through, they had been confident, Uncle Jim would not be able to hold out. Mrs. Stewart would take her stand on Penny’s side, and with the financial question settled Uncle Jim’s misgivings as to the suitability of such a career would not be enough to support his objections. Now, Penny would undoubtedly be expelled. There would be no possible chance under those circumstances of a scholarship.
“And it’s all my fault,” mused Francie miserably. “She only came along because of me. She didn’t even know what she was going to be in for, at the beginning, and then, just to show she was my friend …”
She jumped out of bed and began to dress, burning with anxiety to undo the harm she had done. Now at last she was really frightened.
Her toilet was completed before she remembered that Miss West had told her with severe emphasis that she must remain in that room until summoned. How could she bear the delay? She fretted like the prisoner she was. She walked up and down the room, now and then pausing to peer miserably from the window for signs of life. She had evidently waked up earlier than usual, and the time crawled along. “I would wake early,” she thought. Moreover, the window of this room didn’t overlook the driveway, so there was no method of knowing whether or not the girls were up and about, taking their exercise. The suspense grew worse and worse. What were those schoolmistresses doing all this time? Perhaps they were already at work, ruining Penny’s career and her very life before Francie could so much as put in a word for the hapless victim. Oh, she could not bear it; soon she would go out of the room, orders or no orders, to find Miss Maitland and speak her mind. At the thought of Miss Maitland’s face should she actually do just that, Francie giggled hysterically. The giggle was throttled in her throat; the door opened.
It was only Ella with a tray. “Good morning,” said the maid, just as if everything were normal. “I’ve brought your breakfast. Miss West says she’ll be up directly after prayers.”
“Oh Ella, is Penelope all right?”
“She was quite all right just now when I took her tray in.”
Francie felt Ella’s subtly amused and admiring gaze, but she was in no mood for flattery. “What did Miss West say about coming up for her? Same message as mine?” she demanded.
“Yes, just the same.” Ella looked over her shoulder, as if she had heard someone calling her, and hurried out.
Another hour passed, and then at last Miss West arr
ived. She too said “Good morning, Frances,” quite calmly. Penny was with her; the mistress had evidently been sent only to collect the miscreants and not, as Francie realized in momentary relief, to discipline them. Penny looked pinched and miserable. The girls’ eyes met, but they didn’t speak. In a grim silence the three went down the stairs, past the murmuring classrooms, and on through the corridor to Miss Maitland’s office. Francie recalled the day after the Richard the Third treat. Miss Maitland’s scolding then was nothing compared to what this would be!
The headmistress sat behind a flat-topped desk, regarding them with expressionless eyes. Her hair was parted exactly in the middle, she sat at the exact middle of the desk, and her hands rested, loosely clasped, on a clean blotter. Francie’s eyes went at once to the corner of the desk where stood a slender vase with a rose in it. The vase, she wanted to say, upset the balance of the symmetrical design; there should have been another one exactly like it standing at the opposite corner. Her eyes traveled erratically—she was merely trying to avoid meeting Miss Maitland’s gaze—from chair to lamp to carpet, and she was absorbedly tracing out the seam of that when Miss Maitland said,
“Thank you, Miss West; you may go to your class now.”
Penny and Francie stood side by side, their hands held stiffly down by their gray flannel skirts, and faced the headmistress. Francie stole a glance at Penny’s white face, and began tumultuously,
“Miss Maitland, I want to—”
“Just a minute, Frances, please.” Miss Maitland’s words dropped like bits of clear ice. “You will have your chance to speak in good time. Now then. According to Miss West, neither of you was at school during tea yesterday, nor did you put in an appearance all evening. You had received permission, I remember, to go to Farham in the afternoon. I am given to understand that Frances telephoned at teatime to say you had both missed the bus and would return later. Is this, in the main, a correct version of what happened?”
“Yes, Miss Maitland,” said Penny.
“Yes, Miss Maitland,” said Francie, “but—”
“Following this,” continued Miss Maitland inexorably, “the mistresses and the girls, naturally preoccupied with other affairs, did not keep a watch for you, though Miss West began to feel uneasy as bedtime approached. She sat up waiting for some time after the school had retired, and at last heard the noise of a motorcar which paused briefly not far from the gates. She presumed it was your taxi. On her way down to make certain that the front door was not locked, she was astonished”—her eyes shot a blue gleam—“astonished to encounter you, Penelope, creeping through the window, no doubt in a childish attempt to conceal your late return, with you, Frances, waiting outside on the ground. Is this what happened?”
“Yes, Miss Maitland, but I want to tell you—”
“Must I repeat, Frances, that I wish you to wait your turn?”
“No, Miss Maitland. Sorry.”
“Thank you. Then I will ask Penelope first to give me an account and an explanation of your behavior throughout this escapade,” said the headmistress in her chilly, impartial tones.
“Yes, Miss Maitland,” said Penny. Her voice had a barely perceptible quaver, but she spoke without hesitation. “We went into Farham by the three o’clock bus and bought our butter-muslin. Then in the street we met two friends in a motorcar. We talked a little and decided to take a short ride with them.”
“One moment, Penelope. Just who were these friends? People from your village?”
“No,” said Penny, hesitating just a little. “They come from America.”
“Ah. Old friends?”
“Not very,” said Penny, twisting her fingers.
Francie nearly shouted. “They aren’t Penny’s friends; she never met them before; it wasn’t her fault, Miss Maitland, it was—”
“You did not, in fact, know them before yesterday, Penelope?” continued Miss Maitland, without acknowledging by more than a flicker, as well as her question, that she had taken in what Francie said.
“No, Miss Maitland.”
“Yet the meeting was not by chance,” stated the headmistress, without making a question of it. “It was prearranged.”
“Yes, Miss Maitland.”
“She didn’t know,” cried Francie.
This time, however, Miss Maitland refused to register at all. She only said, “Continue, Penelope. What happened next? I can scarcely believe that you merely toured about the country lanes for seven hours.”
Haltingly Penny went on. She told how they had gone to the seaside and overstayed, how they realized too late they had missed the bus back to school, and how they went driving and stopped for more substantial food later on. Francie noticed that she made no mention of the telephone call. That, she knew, was because it was exclusively Francie’s wrongdoing; Penny was trying to avoid calling Miss Maitland’s attention to the telephone call. All the way through the tale, Penny had been shouldering half the blame. Was there ever such a girl? Francie felt she had never before encountered such decency, the more so since now at last it was dawning on her that the affair was truly grave. The awed expression on Penny’s face and the controlled shock of Miss Maitland’s countenance were something beyond her experience of scrapes at school. Francie had done more than merely break a few irksome rules. She had outraged the entire system of English education. It gave her a chill down her spine to think of it, and yet the sun poured in through the window and out of doors a hundred birds were singing in the summer warmth.
Fairfields had never seemed lovelier. Some of the girls were practicing tennis, working for the coming tournament; the sound of thumping balls and laughing remarks came to her ears. Everything and everyone outside was in the right place, doing the right thing, but here in this cold room Francie was in the wrong. She was not nearly so nice a girl as—well, as Jennifer, for example. She felt that she would never be in the right again. And Penny! She had dragged Penny with her into the outer darkness. It didn’t bear thinking about, but she must think about it nevertheless.
“They’ll send me away, and Penny too. I don’t want to go away,” she thought. In her distress she did not pause to wonder at this contradiction of much she had been saying for weeks. Now her sense of loss was overwhelming. It had outgrown such small misgivings as what her father might say or think.
“.… and so,” Penny was concluding her crisp, emotionless account, “we were so very late by the time we got the petrol that we thought the door would be locked. Of course we didn’t want to knock up anybody, so we came in by the side window and there we met Miss West.”
“I see.” Miss Maitland sat there for a moment, thinking. Then she turned to Francie. “Now, Frances, do you agree with this story, or have you anything to add? You seem to have something on your mind.”
“Yes, Miss Maitland, thank you.” Francie spoke in a rush of relief. “Penny hasn’t told you half of it because she’s being nice—”
“Oh?” Miss Maitland raised her eyebrows.
“Penny didn’t know I’d made the date with the boys.”
“No more did I,” said the headmistress grimly. “I thought I had forbidden, expressly forbidden you to see your young friend without a written permission from your father. Did you not understand my attitude?”
“Oh yes,” said Francie, “but I didn’t agree.”
“You didn’t agree?”
With anyone less controlled than Miss Maitland one might have said her voice here became a squeak of indignation. She looked really astonished.
“Why, no, I didn’t,” said Francie, faintly surprised at the effect her words had. “You see, Miss Maitland, I know my father so well that I was absolutely positive I was right. He would have given me that permission. To withhold it just because we couldn’t get into contact with him—it wasn’t fair.” Her eyes met Miss Maitland’s squarely. “I’ll think that no matter what anybody says,” she added defiantly. “It wasn’t fair.”
The headmistress caught her breath, and by some inner process
of her mind regained control of herself. No doubt she reflected that this philosophy, though alien to hers, was a widespread phenomenon in Francie’s own country. She caught and held on to the temper which had nearly slipped from her grasp. “I will give you the benefit of believing, Frances, that you are not speaking in an impertinent spirit, but I’m afraid you haven’t the slightest conception of our way of looking at things. The point is not whether you think a decision of your headmistress is fair or just. The point is that you are still a pupil under my direction, a member of my school. You are expected, like every one of the others, to obey my orders. I couldn’t run a school unless my girls accepted this very simple, fundamental idea. Until you are an independent adult—”
“But surely we’re supposed to think a little bit for ourselves, at this age? We’re not children. Why, at Jefferson High we had our own council meetings, and made up our own student government rules, and everything. Of course there was some control by the faculty, but they wanted us to learn to govern ourselves, Miss Maitland. That was the whole idea of education, they said. If Pop were here to explain to you—”
Francie was very much in earnest now, and had long since forgotten her customary awe of Miss Maitland. Her mind was seething with ideas and the urge to explain herself. Her eyes sparkled as she talked. Penny stared at her in amazement. The headmistress’s impassive face relaxed a little; her mouth may even have twitched a little, though neither girl could see this.
“I understand,” Miss Maitland said, as Francie paused for breath. “I have heard of this system before. After all, Frances, our prefect system helps toward self-government, too. And at Jefferson High, no less than at Fairfields, there are certain fundamental rules which must be enforced by the faculty when the students fail—as you have failed. As long as you were a student here, you should have abided by the rules.”
The past tense was significant to Francie. She cried, “Even if I knew you weren’t being fair?”
“Even if you thought I wasn’t being fair,” replied Miss Maitland with emphasis. She placed her arms on the desk and leaned forward. “Try to see it from my viewpoint, Frances. Where would I be, where would Fairfields be, if I allowed every one of you big girls to decide for herself which rules she approved and which she did not? Every one of you would run wild in her own way. Of course she would! It’s so obvious that even a stupid person would understand, and with all your faults, Frances, I have never considered you stupid.”