A Sweet Girl Graduate, L. T. Meade [summer books .txt] 📗

Shortly after the girls got home that evening they received letters in their rooms to inform them that Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston had come to the resolution not to report the affair of the auction to the college authorities. They would trust to the honor of the students at St. Benet’s not to allow such a proceeding to occur again and would say nothing further on the matter. Prissie’s eyes again filled with tears as she read the carefully worded note. Holding it open in her hand she rushed to Maggie’s room and knocked. To her surprise, instead of the usual cheerful “Come in,” with which Miss Oliphant always assured her young friend of a welcome, Maggie said from the other side of the locked door:

“I am very busy just now— I cannot see any one.”

Priscilla felt a curious sense of being chilled; her whole afternoon had been one of elation, and Maggie’s words came as a kind of cold douche. She went back to her room, tried not to mind and occupied herself looking over her beloved Greek until the dinner-gong sounded.

After dinner Priscilla again looked with anxious, loving eyes at Maggie. Maggie did not stop, as was her custom, to say a kind word or two as she passed. She was talking to another girl and laughing gaily. Her dress was as picturesque as her face and figure were beautiful. But was Priscilla mistaken, or was her anxious observation too close? She felt sure as Miss Oliphant brushed past her that her eyelids were slightly reddened, as if she had been weeping.

Prissie put out a timid hand and touched Maggie on the arm. She turned abruptly.

“I forgot,” she said to her companion. “Please wait for me outside, Hester; I’ll join you in a moment. I have just a word to say to Miss Peel. What is it, Prissie” said Maggie then, when the other girl had walked out of hearing. “Why did you touch me?”

“Oh, for nothing much,” replied Prissie, half frightened at her manner, which was sweet enough but had an intangible hardness about it, which Priscilla felt, but could not fathom. “I thought you’d be so glad about the decision Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston have come to.”

“No, I am not particularly glad. I can’t stay now to talk it over, however; Hester Stuart wants me to practise a duet with her.”

“May I come to your room later on, Maggie?”

“Not to-night, I think; I shall be very busy.”

Miss Oliphant nodded brightly and disappeared out of the dining-hall.

Two girls were standing not far off. They had watched this little scene, and they now observed that Prissie clasped her hands and that a woe-begone expression crossed her face.

“The spell is beginning to work,” whispered one to the other. “When the knight proves unfaithful the most gracious lady must suffer resentment.”

Priscilla did not hear these words. She went slowly upstairs and back to her own room, where she wrote letters home, and made copious notes from her last lectures, and tried not to think of the little cloud which seemed to have come between her and Maggie.

Late, on that same evening, Polly Singleton, who had just been entertaining a chosen bevy of friends in her own room, after the last had bidden her an affectionate “good night,” was startled at hearing a low knock at her door. She opened it at once. Miss Oliphant stood without.

“May I come in?” she asked.

“Why, of course. I’m delighted to see you. How kind of you to come. Where will you sit? I’m afraid you won’t find things very comfortable, for most of my furniture is gone. But there’s the bed; do you mind sitting on the bed?”

“If I want to sit at all the bed is as snug a place as any,” replied Maggie. “But I’m not going to stay a moment, for it is very late. See, I have brought you this back.”

Polly looked, and for the first time observed that her own sealskin jacket hung on Maggie’s arm.

“What do you mean?” she said. “My sealskin jacket! Oh, my beauty! But it isn’t mine, it’s yours now. Why do you worry me— showing it to me again?”

“I don’t want to worry you, Miss Singleton. I mean what I say. I have brought your jacket back.”

“But it is yours— you bought it.”

“I gave a nominal price for it, but that doesn’t make it mine. Anyhow, I have no use for it. Please take it back again.”

Poor Polly blushed very red all over her face.

“I wish I could,” she said. “If there has been anything I regretted in the auction, besides getting all you girls into a mess, it has been my sealskin jacket. Dad is almost certain to ask me about it, for he never made me such a handsome present before. Poor dad! he was so proud the night he brought it home. He said, ‘Look here, Poll, I paid a whole sheaf of fivers for this, and although it cost me a good round eighty guineas, I’m told it’s cheap at the price. Put it on and let me see how you look in it,’ he said. And when I had it on he twisted me round, and chucked me under the chin, and said I was a ‘bouncer.’ Poor old dad! He was as proud as Punch of me in that jacket. I never saw anything like it.”

“Well, he can be as proud as Punch of you again. Here is the jacket for your very own once more. Good night.”

She walked to the door, but Miss Singleton ran after her.

“I can’t take it back,” she said. “I’m not as mean as all that comes to. It’s yours now; you got it as fair as possible.”

“Listen, Miss Singleton,” said Maggie. “If I keep that jacket I shall never wear it. I detest sealskin jackets. It won’t be the least scrap of use to me.”

“You detest sealskin jackets? How can you? Oh, the lovely things they are. Let me stroke the beauty down.”

“Stroke your beauty and pet it as much as you like, only let me say ‘Good night’ now.”

“But, please, Miss Oliphant, please, I’d do anything in the world to get the jacket back, of course. But I’ve ten guineas of yours, and honestly I can’t pay them back.”

“Allow me to lend them to you until next term. You can return me the money then, can you not?”

Polly’s face became on the instant a show of shining eyes, gleaming white teeth and glowing cheeks.

“Of course I could pay you back, you— darling,” she said with enthusiasm. “Oh, what a relief this is to me; I’d have done anything in all the world to have my jacket back again.”

“It’s a bargain, then. Good night, Miss Singleton.”

Maggie tossed the jacket on Polly’s bed, touched her hand lightly with one of her own and left the room. She went quickly back to her own pretty sitting-room, locked her door, threw herself on her knees by her bureau and sobbed long and passionately.

During the few days which now remained before the end of the term no one quite knew what was wrong with Miss Oliphant. She worked hard in preparation for her lectures and when seen in public was always very merry. But there was a certain hardness about her mirth which her best friends detected and which caused Nancy Banister a good deal of puzzled pain.

Priscilla was treated very kindly by Maggie; she still helped her willingly with her Greek and even invited her into her room once or twice. But all the little half-beginnings of confidence which, now and then, used to burst from Maggie’s lips, the allusions to old times, the sentences which revealed deep thoughts and high aspirations, all these, which made the essence of true friendship, vanished out of her conversation.

Priscilla said to herself over and over that there was really no difference— that Miss Oliphant was still as kind to her, as valued a friend as ever— but in her heart she knew that this was not the case.

Maggie startled all her friends by making one request. Might they postpone the acting of The Princess until the middle of the following term?”

“I cannot do it justice now,” she said. “I cannot throw my heart and soul into my part. If you act the play now you must allow me to withdraw.”

The other girls, Constance Field in particular, were astonished. They even felt resentful. All arrangements had been made for this special play. Maggie was to be the Princess herself; no one could possibly take her place. It was most unreasonable of her to withdraw now.

But it was one of the facts well known at St. Benet’s that, fascinating as Miss Oliphant was, she was also unreasonable. On certain occasions she could even be disobliging. In short, when Maggie “took the bit between her teeth,” to employ an old metaphor, she could neither be led nor driven. After a great deal of heated discussion and indignant words, she had her will. The play was deferred till the following term, and one or two slight comedies, which had been acted before, were revived in a hurry to take its place.