Jane Abbott, page 11
"I know—Pat and I'll buy the flowers and maybe some of the others will help, and you write some verses to go with them, Jerry."
Though to write verses would, ordinarily, to Jerry be a most alarming task, she was glad of anything that she could do to help Miss Gray and assented eagerly.
Peggy Lee was enlisted in the cause, and the next day the conspirators made a trip to the florist's shop. They were dismayed but not discouraged by the exorbitant price of flowers; they scornfully dismissed the florist's suggestion of a "neat" little primrose plant—they were equally disdainful of carnations. Patricia favored roses, and when the florist offered them a bargain in some rather wilted Lady Ursulas, she wanted to buy them and put them in salt and water overnight, to revive them. Finally they decided upon a bunch of violets, which sadly depleted their several allowances. And Jerry attached her verses, painstakingly printed on a sheet of azure-blue notepaper in red ink. "Blue's for the spirit, you know, and the red ink is heart's blood. Listen, girls, isn't this too beautiful for words?" Gyp read in a tragic voice:
"Only to love thee, I seek nothing more,
No greater boon do I ask,
Only to serve thee o'er and o'er,
And in thy smile to bask.
"Only to hear thy sweet voice in my ear,
Though thy words be not spoken for me,
Only to see the lovelight in thy eyes,
The love of eternity.
"They're wonderful, Jerry! And so sad, too."
"Do they sound like a lover?" asked Jerry anxiously.
"Exactly," declared Pat, solemnly. "Oh, won't it be fun to see her open it? And she'll think, of course, that it comes from the black-and-white man."
"And we must each one of us pledge to keep our eyes open for the creature."
"Think of it, girls—if we could make Miss Gray happy again it would be something we could remember when we're old ladies. Mother told me once that things we do for other people to make them happy come back to us with interest."
In the English class, on the following day, four girls sat very demurely in the back row, their eyes riveted on their books. When presently there was a knock at the door (Gyp had timed carefully the arrival of the messenger), Pat Everett exclaimed, "my goodness" aloud, and Jerry dropped her book to the floor. But their agitation passed unnoticed; Miss Gray's attention was fixed upon the little square box that was brought to her.
Jerry had a moment of panic. She scribbled on the top of a page in her text-book: "What if she's angry?" To which Gyp replied: "If your life was empty, wouldn't you jump at a crumb?"
Only for a moment was the machinelike precision of the English class broken. Miss Gray untied the cord, and peeped under the cover. The girls, watching from the back row, saw a pink flush sweep from her small nose to the roots of her hair, then fade, leaving her very white. Then:
"Please continue, Miss Chase."
When the class was dismissed even Gyp had not the courage to linger and watch Miss Gray open the box. "She might suspect you," Patricia had warned. But at recess she rushed to the girls, her eyes shining.
"Jerry! Pat! She's crazy about 'em! I went in after the third hour and pretended I was hunting for my book. The violets were sitting up on her desk and she had a few of them fastened in her old cameo pin—and she looked different—already! Let's keep up our good work! Let's swear that we'll leave no stone unturned to find the black-and-white man!"
* * *
CHAPTER XVI
FOR THE HONOR OF THE SCHOOL
"Oh, I'm sick of winter! I wish I was a cannibal living on a tropical island eating cocoanuts."
"——Missionaries, you mean," laughed Isobel.
Virginia Cox threw her skates over her shoulder; Isobel, Dorrie Carr and herself were the last to leave the lake. The school grounds were deserted.
"Oh, look at the snowman someone's started," cried Ginny, as they walked through the grounds. "Say, this is spliffy snow to pack! Let's finish up the work of art." In her enthusiasm over her suggestion her ennui was forgotten. "I know, let's make him into a snowlady."
Ginny's fingers were clever. Her caricatures, almost always drawn in ridicule of the faculty or her fellow-classmates, were famous. If, in her make-up, she had had a kindlier spirit and a truer sense of the beautiful, she might have become a great artist or sculptor.
Now she worked feverishly, shaping a lifelike figure from the huge cakes of snow that the others brought to her. As she stood back to view her handiwork a naughty thought flashed into her mind.
"Girls—it's going to be Miss Gray! And mother's got a funny old lavender crocheted shawl like that thing Miss Gray wears when it's cold, that the moths won't even eat. And I can fix a hat like the dreadful châpeau of hers that came out of the ark. And glasses, too——"
Isobel and Dorrie laughed delightedly.
"How can you get them out here?"
"Oh, I'll find a way!" Ginny always could! "Do you think that nose is pug enough?" She deftly packed it down on each side with a finger, then gave it a quick, upward touch. "Isn't that better?"
Her companions declared the likeness perfect—as far as snow could make it.
"And I can hunt up two blue glass allies for eyes." There was, plainly, no end to Ginny's resourcefulness. "You just wait and see what you'll see in the morning."
During the night King Winter maliciously abetted Ginny in her work, for a turn in his temper laid a sparkling crust over everything—and especially the little snowlady who waited, immovable, on a little rise of ground near the main entrance of the school.
The pupils, arriving at Highacres the next morning, rubbed their eyes in their amazement. Not one failed to recognize the English teacher in the funny, shawl-draped figure, with enormous glasses framing round blue eyes, shadowed by a hat that was almost an exact counterpart of the shabby one Miss Gray had hung each morning for the past three winters on her peg in the dressing-room. But there was something about the rakish tilt of the hat that was in such strange contrast to the severe spectacles and the thin, frosty nose, that it gave the snowlady the appearance of staggering and made her very funny.
All through the school session groups of pupils gathered at the windows, laughing. There was much speculating as to who had built the snowlady; the three little sub-freshmen who had begun the work Ginny had finished were vehement in their assertions that they had not. Gradually it was whispered about that Ginny Cox had done it.
"We might have known that," several laughed, thinking Ginny very clever.
Then, over those invisible currents of communication which convey news through a school faster than a flame can spread, came the rumor that trouble was brewing. One of the monitors had told Dorrie Carr that Miss Gray had had hysterics in the office; that, in the midst of them, she had written out her resignation and that, after the first period, not an English class had been held!
Another added the information that Barbara Lee had quieted Miss Gray with spirits of ammonia and that Dr. Caton had refused to accept her resignation and had been overheard to say that the culprit would be punished severely.
Ginny's prank began to assume serious proportions. Ginny was more thoughtless than unkind; it had not crossed her mind that she might offend little Miss Gray. But she was not brave, either—she had not the courage to go straight to Miss Gray and apologize for her careless, thoughtless act.
There had been, for a number of years, one well-established punishment at Lincoln; "privileges" were taken away from offenders, the term of the sentences depending upon the enormity of the offence. And "privileges" included many things—sitting in the study-room, mingling with the other pupils in the lunch rooms at recess, sharing the school athletics. This system had all the good points of suspension with the added sting of having constantly to parade one's disgrace before the eyes of the whole school.
"If Ginny Cox is found out, she can't play in the game against the South High," was on more than one tongue.
Gyp, deeply impressed by the criticalness of the situation, summoned a meeting of the Ravens. Her face was very tragic.
"Girls—it's the chance for the Ravens to do something for the Lincoln School! We've had nothing but spreads and good times and now the opportunity has come to test our loyalty."
Not one of the unsuspecting Ravens guessed what Gyp had in mind!
"Ginny Cox did build that snowlady—Isobel saw her. But if she gives herself up she'll be sent to Siberia!"
"Well, it'll serve her right. She needn't have picked out poor little Miss Gray to make fun of."
Gyp frowned at the interruption. "Of course not. We know all about Miss Gray and feel sorry for her, but Ginny doesn't. And, anyway, that isn't the point. I was talking about loyalty to Lincoln." Gyp made her tone very solemn. "Disgrace—everlasting, eternal, black disgrace threatens the very foundations of our dear school!" She paused, eloquently.
"Next week, Tuesday, our All-Lincoln girls' basketball team plays our deadly enemy, South High. And what will happen without Ginny Cox? Who else can make the baskets she can? Defeat—ignominious defeat will be our sad lot——" Her voice trailed off in a wail that found its echo in every Raven's heart.
"I'd forgotten the game! What a shame!"
"Why couldn't Ginny have thought of that?"
"Maybe Doc. Caton will just let her play that once."
"Not he—he's like iron. Didn't he send Bob Morely down for three whole days just before the Thanksgiving game 'cause he got up in Cæsar class and translated 'bout the 'Garlic Wars'?"
Gyp sensed the psychological moment to strike.
"Never before in the history of our secret order has such an opportunity to serve our school been given to us——"
"What can we do?"
"One of us can offer ourself on the altar of loyalty——"
Her meaning, stripped of its eloquent verbage, slowly dawned upon six minds! A murmur of protest threatened to become a roar. Gyp hastily dropped her fine oratory and pleaded humbly:
"It's so little for one of us to do compared to what it means, and if we didn't do it and South High beat us, why, we'd suffer lots more with remorse than we would just taking Ginny's punishment for her. Anyway, what did the promise we solemnly made mean? Nothing? We're a nice bunch! I'm perfectly willing to take Ginny Cox's place, but I think each Raven ought to have the chance and we should draw lots——"
"Yes, that would be the fairest way," agreed Pat Everett in a tone that suggested someone had died just the moment before.
"I always draw the unlucky number in everything," shivered Peggy Lee.
"There'll have to be two this time, then, for I always do, too," groaned a sister Raven.
"Shall we do it, girls? Shall we prove to the world that we Ravens can make any sacrifice for our school?"
"Yes—yes," came thickly from paralyzed throats.
In a dead silence Gyp and Pat prepared seven slips of paper. Six were blank; upon the seventh Pat drew a long snake with head uplifted, ready to strike. The slips were carefully folded and shaken in Jerry's hat. Gyp put the hat in the middle of the room.
"Let's each one go up with her eyes shut tight and draw a slip. Then don't open it until the last one has been drawn." They all agreed—if they had to do it they might as well make the ceremony as much of a torture as possible!
So horrible was the suspense that a creaking board made the Ravens jump; a shutter slamming somewhere in another part of the building almost precipitated a panic. After an interval that seemed hours each Raven sat with a white slip in her nervous fingers.
"Now, one—two—three—open!" cried Gyp.
Another moment of silence, a sharp intake of breath, a rattle of paper, then: "Oh—I have it!" cried Jerry in a small, frightened voice.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
DISGRACE
"Will the young gentleman or lady who built the snow-woman that stood on the school grounds yesterday morning go at once to my office?"
Dr. Caton's tone was very even; he might have been asking the owner of some lost article to step up and claim it, but each word cut like a sharp-edged knife deep into poor Jerry Travis' heart.
She sat in the sixth row; that meant that, to reach that distant door, she must face almost the entire school! Her eyes were downcast and her lips were pressed together in a thin, bluish line. She heard a low murmur from every side. Above it her steps seemed to fall in a heavy, echoing thud.
Not one of the Ravens dared look at poor Jerry; each wondered at her courage, each felt in her own heart that had the unlucky slip fallen to her lot she could never have done as well as Jerry had——
Then, instinctively, curious eyes sought for Ginny Cox—Ginny, who had been unjustly accused by her schoolmates. But Ginny at that moment was huddled in her bed under warm blankets with a hot-water-bag at her feet and an ice-bag on her head, her worried mother fluttering over her with a clinical thermometer in one hand and a castor-oil bottle in the other, wishing she could diagnose Ginny's queer symptoms and wondering if she had not ought to call in the doctor!
Jerry had had a bad night, too. At home, in her room, Gyp's eloquent arguments had seemed to lose some of their force. Jerry persisted in seeing complications in the course that had fallen to her lot.
"It's acting a lie," she protested.
"The cause justifies that," cried Gyp, sweepingly. "Anyway, I don't believe Dr. Caton will be half as hard on you as he would have been on Ginny Cox. It's your first offence and you can act real sorry."
"How can I act real sorry when I haven't done anything?" wailed Jerry.
"You'll have to—you must pretend. The harder it is the nobler your sacrifice will be. And some day everyone will know what you did for the honor of the school and future generations will——"
"And I was trying so hard for the Lincoln Award!" Real tears sprang to Jerry's eyes.
"Oh, you can work harder than ever and win it in spite of this," comforted Gyp, who truly believed Jerry could do anything.
"And I can't play on the hockey team in the inter-class match this week!"
"Of course it's hard, Jerry." Gyp did not want to listen to much more—her own conviction might weaken. "But nothing matters except the match with South High. That's why you're doing it! Now if you want to just back out and bring shame upon the Ravens as well as dishonor to the school—all right! Only—I've told Ginny."
"I'll do it," answered Jerry, falteringly. But long after Gyp had gone off into dreamless slumber she lay, wide-eyed, trying to picture this sudden and unpleasant experience that confronted her. Her whole life up to that moment when, in Mr. John's automobile, she had whirled around her mountain, bound for a world of dreams, had been so simple, so entirely free from any tangles that could not be straightened out, in a moment, by "Sweetheart" that her bewilderment, now, made her lonely and homesick for Sunnyside and her mother's counsel. The glamour of her new life, happy though it was, lifted as a curtain might lift, and revealed, in the eerie darkness of the night, startling contrasts—the rush and thronging of the city life against the peaceful quiet of Jerry's mountain. It was so easy, back there, Jerry thought, to just know at once, what was right and what was wrong; there were no uncertain demands upon one's loyalty to the little old school in the Notch—one had only to learn one's lesson and that was all; even in her play back there there had not been any of the fierce joy of competition she had learned at Highacres!
And mother, with wonderful wisdom, had brought her so close to God and had taught her to understand His Love and His Anger. Jerry dug her face deep into her pillow. Wouldn't God forgive a lie that was for the honor of the school? Wouldn't He know how Ginny was needed as forward on the Lincoln team? It was a perplexing thought. Jerry told herself, with a sense of shame, that she had really not thought much about God since she had come to the Westleys. She had gone each Sunday with the others to the great, dim, vaulted church, but she had thought about the artists who had designed the beautiful colored saints in the windows and about the pealing music of the organ and not about God or what the minister was saying. Back home she had always, in church, sat between her mother and the little window where through the giant pines she could see a stretch of blue sky broken by a misty mountain-top; when one could see that and smell the pine and hear, above the drone of the preacher's voice, the clear note of a bird, one could feel very close to the God who had made this wonderful, beautiful world and had put that sweet note in the throat of a little winging creature.
Then Gyp's words taunted her. "You can back out—if you want to!" Oh, no—she would not do that—now; she would not be a coward, she would see it through; she would measure up to the challenge, let it cost what it might she would hold the honor of the school—her school (she said it softly) above all else!
Jerry had never been severely punished in her life; as she sat very quietly in Dr. Caton's office waiting for assembly to end she wondered, with a quickening curiosity, what it would seem like. Anyway, nothing could be worse than having to walk out of the room before all those staring boys and girls.
But Jerry found that something was! Barbara Lee came into the room, looking surprised, disappointed and unhappy.
"Jerry," she exclaimed, "I can't believe it."
Jerry wanted to cry out the truth—it wasn't fair. Miss Lee sat down next to her.
"If you had to make fun of someone, why didn't you pick out me—anyone but poor little Miss Gray! I think that if you knew how unhappy and—and drab poor Miss Gray's life has been, how for years she had to pinch and save and deny herself all the little pleasures of life in order to care for her mother who was a helpless invalid, you'd be sorry you had in the smallest measure added any to her unhappiness."
"I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world," burst out Jerry. Did she not know more about poor little Miss Gray than did even Barbara Lee?
"Then why——" But at this dangerous moment Dr. Caton walked into the room.
Jerry's sentence was very simple. She listened with downcast eyes. She was to lose all school privileges for a week; during that time she must occupy a desk in the office, she must eat her lunch alone at this desk, she must not share in any of the school activities until the end of suspension. She must apologize to Miss Gray.
