SAVED BY THE CHAIN
There was a wild commotion on the shore. Following the example of Dorothy, the Sixth dropped their skirts as they ran, and kicking off their shoes at the edge of the water, plunged in. But they were all under control and acting in concert—no one girl made any attempt to branch out on her own. They were acting now under the orders of Miss Groome, who, also skirtless and shoeless, was standing in the shallow of the water, directing the work of the chain.
“Keep to the left, Hazel,” she called—“more to the left; keep within touch of the Fourth’s chain, but don’t foul them—don’t foul them, whatever you do.”
Hazel was the first of the chain; clinging to her was Joan Fletcher, a powerful swimmer, and calm in moments of crisis—an invaluable helper at a time like this. Following her came Daisy Goatby, blubbering aloud because of the peril of those out there, a girl who turned pale and ran away when a dog yelped with pain at being trodden upon. She hated to be obliged to look on suffering—the thought of any one in extremity made a coward of her—but she could obey orders. Miss Groome had ordered her into the chain, and she would cling to the girl who was in front of her even though she felt her life was being battered out of her. Dora Selwyn was behind her. Rhoda was also somewhere at the back of that wriggling procession, with Margaret and Jessie Wayne. They had reached the chain of plucky Fourths; they were encouraging the kids to hold on, and bidding them not come farther, but rest, treading water until the time for action came. The Sixth pushed ahead with all their strength. They could not swim so fast, hampered by each other; but it was safety first, and they had to obey orders if their work was to succeed.
Miss Mordaunt struggled towards them, holding the unconscious Miss Ball in a tense grip.
“Can you get her ashore, girls? I must go to Dorothy,” she panted; and thrusting Miss Ball within the grabbing clutch of the two first girls, she struck out again to reach Dorothy, who was dropping low in the water, dragged down by the grip of poor Cissie.
Hazel, with a dexterous twist of her arm, passed Miss Ball to Joan, who did not release her grip of the unconscious mistress until Daisy had hold of her and was passing her to Dora. This passing was the extreme test of the power of the chain. It would have been a comparatively easy thing to have towed her ashore. In that case, however, they would not have been on hand to help Miss Mordaunt with Dorothy and Cissie. So they had to pass their burden, and to do it as quickly as they could.
Hazel never looked behind her—she did not speak even; but, lightly treading water, she waited until Miss Mordaunt could reach her. Even then she would have to hold her place, for Cissie would have to be passed before they could tow Dorothy ashore. And it took time—oh, what an awful time it took!
Miss Mordaunt was coming towards them. She was holding Dorothy, to whom Cissie clung with the fierce clutch of despair.
“We cannot pass Cissie along—she is too frightened,” panted Miss Mordaunt, as she reached Hazel with her burden, and clung to the chain for a minute to get back her breath. “Dorothy is so frightfully done, too; but she will bear that clutch until we can get her ashore.”
“We can pass Dorothy along, with Cissie clinging to her,” said Hazel, raising herself a little in the water, and reaching out her hand to get a grip of Dorothy. “Can you swim alongside, Miss Mordaunt, to see that Cissie does not slip away?”
“That will be best,” agreed Miss Mordaunt, and striking out, she swam slowly along the chain of girls as they one after the other accepted and thrust forward the helpless two. When Dora, fourth from the end, laid hold of Dorothy, Hazel swung slowly round in the water, and swimming up behind Dorothy seized her on the other side, holding on to her, and helping to push her from girl to girl as the chain accepted and passed her on.
Cissie was not struggling at all now, though the tightness of her clutch never relaxed; she was realizing that she was being rescued, and her panic was dropping from her. She was acutely conscious, and her black eyes looked so frightened and mournful that no one had the heart to reproach her for all the peril into which her wild panic had brought the others.
The Fourth had managed to hold the chain without a break, and mightily proud they were of their prowess. They even raised a cheer when the last of the Sixth came out of the water; but it died away as they saw Dorothy lying helpless on the beach, while Miss Ball, at a little distance, was being wrapped in blankets by the woman from the lock-house.
Dorothy was not unconscious; she was only so battered and beaten by the struggle in the water that just at the first she could not lift a finger to help herself.
Miss Ball was coming round, so the woman from the lock-house said, and she offered her own bed for the use of the two who had suffered most.
Miss Groome felt that, having borne so much, it was better for them to bear a little more, and be carried to where they could have more comfort. She issued a few crisp orders. The girls, still in their wet clothes, ran to obey. Then, while the Fourth dived into their tents to dress with all the speed of which they were capable, the Sixth in their wet garments loaded Miss Ball, Dorothy, and Cissie on to three trucks which were standing under the wall of the lifeboat house, and harnessing themselves to them, started at a brisk pace for the school. They had no dry clothes on the shore to change into, and so it was wisdom to move—and to move as quickly as they could. The woman from the lock-house had lent them blankets to cover the half-drowned ones; on to these blankets they spread skirts; then each girl wrapping her own skirt round her, they set off from the shore at the best pace they could make.
Dorothy was bumped along on that fearful hand-truck. She felt she could not bear much of such transport, and yet knew very well that she had no strength to walk. She was so tired—so fearfully weary—that she simply could not bear anything more.
When she had been in such danger of drowning, dragged down by Cissie’s frenzied clasp of her shoulders, it had seemed such deep peace and rest, she had not even wanted to struggle. Then had come the confusion of Miss Mordaunt’s rough grip, and the girls dragging her here and pulling her there as they passed her along. Then had come the moment when she was hauled to safety up the steep shingly beach. How the stones had hurt her as she lay! Yet even that was as nothing to this. At least she had been able to lie still on the stones, but now the life was being bumped out of her! She could certainly stand no more! She must shriek—she must do something to show how intolerable it all was——
“Why, Dorothy, it looks as if you had been getting it rough. Have you been competing for a medal from the Humane Society, or just doing a swimming stunt off your own bat?”
Dorothy opened her eyes with a little cry of sheer rapture. “Oh, Daddy, Daddy, I had forgotten you were here! I can’t bear this old truck one minute longer—I can’t, oh, I can’t!” she wailed.
Dr. Sedgewick had been warned by the girl who had run on ahead of the procession to tell matron of what was coming, and he had met the girls and the hand-trucks down the lane a little beyond the school grounds. He gave a rapid glance round to size up the possibilities of the situation. Catching sight of the little gate into the grounds which would cut off a big piece of the way, he called to them to open it, and stooping down, he lifted Dorothy from the truck, swinging her over his shoulder.
“Guide me by the shortest way to the san,” he said to the nearest girl; and while she ran on ahead of him, he followed after her, carrying Dorothy.
“I am so heavy, you will never manage it,” she protested, yet half-heartedly, for it was such a delightful change to be borne along like this after that awful bumping on the truck.
“I think I shall be able to hold out,” he answered, laughing at her distress, and then he passed in at the door of the san, where the matron met him, and showed him where to carry Dorothy.
The hours after that were a confusion of pain and weariness, a succession of deep sleeps and sudden, startled wakings. Then presently Dorothy came out of a bad dream of being dragged down to the bottom of the sea by Cissie, and awoke to find a light burning, and her father sitting in an easy-chair near her bed, absorbed in a paper—or was it a book?
Her senses were confused—she did not seem as if she could be sure of anything; and there was something bothering her very badly, yet she could not quite remember what it was.
“Daddy, is it really you?” she asked half-fearfully. It was in her mind that she might be dreaming, and that it was not her father who was sitting there, only a fancy her imagination had conjured up.
Dr. Sedgewick dropped the paper he had been reading, and came quite close to the bed, stooping down over her, and slipping his fingers along her wrist in his quiet, professional manner.
“Better, are you?” he asked cheerfully, and his eyes smiled down at her, bringing a choking sob into her throat. The heavy sleep was clearing from her now, and she was remembering the big trouble which lay behind.
“Oh, Daddy, I can’t bear it!” she wailed.
“What is the matter?” he asked in sudden concern. “Have you pain anywhere?”
“Oh, I am all right; there is nothing the matter with me,” she burst out wildly. “It would have been better if I had gone down with Cissie, when I was so nearly done; it would have saved all the explaining that would have to come after.”
“What explaining?” he asked quietly, and then he dragged his chair closer to the bed, and leaning over her, gently stroked the hair back from her forehead.
She lay quite still for a few seconds, revelling in the peace and comfort that came from his touch. Then, wrenching her head from under his hand, she asked anxiously, “Daddy, you have seen the Head—do you think I shall win the Lamb Bursary?”
“I very much hope you will,” he answered. “The Head, of course, could make no hard-and-fast pronouncement, but there seems not very much doubt about the matter.”
Dorothy’s brows contracted—there was such a world of misery in her heart that she felt as if she would sink under the weight of it. “Oh, I wish I had not enrolled! I wish I had not come to Compton!” she burst out distressfully.
“Why do you wish that?” he asked quietly. “I thought you had been so happy here, and you have certainly done well—far, far better than Tom.”
“Ah, poor Tom! What have you done with him and with all the others?” she asked, catching at anything which seemed as if it might put off for a minute the necessity of explaining to her father her trouble about the Lamb Bursary.
Dr. Sedgewick laughed, and to her great relief there was real amusement in the sound. “We all agreed—and there were fifteen of us to agree, mark you—that we had absolute confidence in Dr. Cameron’s methods in dealing with boys. We felt the affair was a problem we would rather leave him to solve free-handed, and we have left their punishment to him. They are all to return next term, and he will decide on what course to take with them.”
“Won’t they be punished in any way now?” she asked in surprise.
“Yes, in a way, I suppose,” he answered. “They will, of course, lose all conduct marks, because they were acting in known defiance of regulations—that goes without saying. The great majority of us were in favour of flogging, but our suggestion met with no encouragement from the Head. He told us there were some things for which flogging was a real cure, but gambling was not one of them. The only real and lasting cure for gambling was to lift the boy to a higher level of thought and outlook—in short, to fill his life so full of worthier things that the love of gambling should be fairly crowded out. He argued, too, that if it were crowded out in youth, it would not have much chance to develop later on in life.”
“It sounds like common sense,” said Dorothy, turning a little on her pillow, and looking at the shaded night lamp as if the softened glow might show her a clear way through her own problems. Then she asked, with a timid note in her voice, “So you are not being anxious about Tom any more?”
“I did not say that,” Dr. Sedgewick answered quickly. “You know, Dorothy, a doctor never gives up hope while there is life in a patient; so one should never give up hope of recovery of one suffering from—what shall I call it?—spiritual disease. We will say that Tom has shown a tendency to disease. But checked in its first stages—arrested in development—he may be entirely cured before he reaches full manhood. That is what I am hoping, and what those other fathers are hoping and believing too. We feel that the discipline of school is the best medicine for them at the present stage, and that is why we are so content to leave the whole business in the hands of Dr. Cameron.”
Dorothy lay silent for a minute or two, and again her eyes sought the soft glow from the lamp. Then making a desperate effort, she made her plunge. “Daddy,” she whispered, catching at his hand and resting her cheek upon it, “Daddy, I have got a trouble—a real, hefty-sized trouble.”
“I know you have,” he answered gravely, and then he sat silent, waiting for her to speak.
How hard it was! Why did he not help her? She held his hand tighter still. Oh! if only she could make him understand how it hurt her to speak of that old story to him! And yet it had to be done! She could not in honour take the Bursary, knowing herself disqualified for it.
“Had you not better out with it, and get it over, Dorothy?” he asked quietly.
She gasped, and suddenly burst out with a jerk, “Daddy, Mrs. Wilson told me you had been sent to prison for a fortnight when you were a young man, and the rules of enrolment for the Lamb Bursary candidates state specially that girls cannot compete whose parents have been in prison.”
It was out now—out with a vengeance—and Dorothy hid her face so that she might not have to see the pain she had caused. So strained was she that it seemed a long, long time before her father spoke, and when he did, his voice seemed to come from a great distance.
“Mrs. Wilson made a little mistake; it was not I who went to prison, but my cousin Arthur,” he was saying. “It was Arthur who was driving home from the dance that night, and I was sitting beside him trying to hold him back from his mad progress. You would have spared yourself a lot of suffering, Dorothy, if you had come to me with that old story when you were home last vacation.”
“Then you have never been in prison?” cried Dorothy, her voice rising in a shout of sheer joyfulness. “And I can have the Mutton Bone!”
“You have to win it first,” Dr. Sedgewick reminded her.