THAT DAY AT HOME
The term ended with Dorothy at the top of the school, and she went home feeling that the Lamb Bursary might be well within her grasp, if only she could keep up her present rate of work. The girl who was running her hardest was Rhoda. Hazel and Margaret, very close together in their weekly position, were too far behind to be a serious menace.
The first thing which struck Dorothy when she reached home was the careworn look of her father. Dr. Sedgewick had not been very well; some days it was all he could do to keep about, doing the work of his large practice.
“Mother, why doesn’t father have an assistant to tide him over while he is so unfit?” asked Dorothy.
She had been home three days, and on this particular morning she was helping her mother in sorting and repairing house-linen, really a great treat after the continuous grind of term.
“Times are bad, and he does not feel that he can afford the luxury of an assistant,” said Mrs. Sedgewick with a sigh. “Dr. Bowles is very good at helping him out: he has taken night work for your father several times, which is very good of him. I think that professional men are really very good to each other.”
“Dr. Bowles ought to be good to father; think how father worked for him when he had rheumatic fever—so it is only paying back.” Dorothy spoke with spirit, then asked, with considerable anxiety in her tone, “Is it the expense of my year at the Compton School that is making it so hard for father just now?”
Mrs. Sedgewick hesitated. Of choice she would have kept all knowledge of struggle from the children, so that they might be care free while they were young. But Dorothy had a way of getting at the bottom of things—and perhaps, after all, it was as well that she should appreciate the sacrifice that was being made for her. “We had to go rather carefully this year on your account, of course. Tom is an expense, too, for although he has a scholarship there are a lot of odds and ends to pay for him that take money. But we shall win through all right. And if only you are able to get the Lamb Bursary you will be set up for life—you may even be able to help with the twins when their turn for going away comes.”
“Mother, if I did not go in for the Lamb Bursary, I could take a post as junior mistress when I leave school; then I should be getting a salary directly.” Dorothy spoke eagerly; she was suddenly seeing a way out, in her position with regard to the Mutton Bone—a most satisfactory way out, so she said to herself, as she thought of the horrible story of her father’s past that had been told to her by Mrs. Wilson.
A look of alarm came into the face of Mrs. Sedgewick, and she broke into eager protest. “Don’t think of such a thing, Dorothy. A mistress without a degree can never rise above very third-rate work. Your father and I are straining every nerve to fit you to take a good place in the world; it is up to you to second our efforts. You have got to win the Lamb Bursary somehow. If you can do that your father’s burden will be lifted, and he will have so much less care. Oh! you must win it. We sent you to the Compton School because of that chance, and you must not disappoint us.”
Dorothy shivered. Next moment a hot resentment surged into her heart. She was doing her best to win it, and it was not her fault that in real truth she was not eligible for it.
She had told her mother of her meeting with Mrs. Wilson. What she did find impossible to tell Mrs. Sedgewick was about the stories Mrs. Wilson had told her of her father’s past; there was a certain aloofness about Mrs. Sedgewick—she always seemed to keep her children at arm’s length.
Greatly daring, Dorothy did try to find out what she could about those old days, and she ventured to ask, “Mother, what has become of that cousin of father’s, Arthur Sedgewick? Mrs. Wilson spoke of him to me.”
“Then try and forget that you ever heard of him.” Mrs. Sedgewick spoke harshly; she seemed all at once to freeze up, and Dorothy knew that she would not dare to speak of him to her mother again.
She sighed a little impatiently. Why could not mothers talk to their daughters with some show of reasonable equality? She was nearly a woman; surely her mother might have discussed that old-time story with her, seeing she had been compelled to hear of it from an outsider.
There was a sort of desperation on her that morning—she did so badly want some sort of guidance on the subject of her fitness to work for the Lamb Bursary. Presently she brought the talk back to the subject of the Bursary. She described the enrolment ceremony for her mother’s benefit, and she watched keenly to see the effect it would produce. She told how the provisions of the Bursary read that no girl could be a candidate whose parents had been in prison; she said no girl might enrol who knew herself guilty of cheating or stealing. She waxed really confidential, and told her mother of one girl whom she had seen stealing who had yet dared to enrol.
“That was very wrong of her,” said Mrs. Sedgewick, who was looking rather pale. “Should you not have told about her, Dorothy?”
“Oh, mother, I could not! They would have called me a sneak!” cried Dorothy in distress.
“Well, see to it, then, that the girl does not get a chance of winning the Bursary, or you will be compounding a felony.” Mrs. Sedgewick spoke brusquely, so it seemed to Dorothy, who felt that she could dare no more in the way of extracting guidance in her present dilemma. Several times she tried to say, “Mother, Mrs. Wilson told me about father having to go to prison—was it true?” but the words stuck in her throat—they positively refused to be uttered.
Then a doubt of her mother’s sense of honour crept into her mind. Tom declared that women had no hard-and-fast standpoints with regard to honour, and that it was second nature with them to behave in a way which would be reckoned downright dishonourable in a man.
Was it possible Tom was right? Dorothy set herself to watch her mother very carefully for the remainder of the vacation; but she got no satisfaction from the process, except that of seeing that her mother never once deviated from the lines of uprightness.
She was out with her father a great deal during those holidays. He was old-fashioned enough to still use a horse and trap for most of his professional work. Dorothy drove him on his rounds nearly every day. This should have been Tom’s work; but Tom was choosing to be very busy in other directions just then, and as Dorothy loved to be out with her father, she was quite ready to overlook Tom’s neglect of duty.
Never, never did she dare to ask him the question which she had tried to ask her mother. She spoke to him of Mrs. Wilson, and although his face kindled in a gleam of pleasure at hearing of an old acquaintance, he did not seem to care to talk about her, or of the part of his life in which she figured, and again Dorothy was up against a stone wall in her efforts at further enlightenment on that grim bit of history.
Then came the morning before the two went back to school, and, as usual, Dorothy was out with her father, whose round on this particular day took him to Langbury, where he had to see a patient who was also an old friend. He was a long time in that house; but the spring sunshine was so pleasant that Dorothy did not mind the waiting.
She was sitting with her eyes taking in all the beauty of the ancient High Street, when a car came swiftly round the corner, hooting madly, and missing the doctor’s trap, which was drawn up on the right side of the road, only by inches.
Dorothy heard herself hailed by a familiar voice, and saw Rhoda Fleming leaning out and waving wildly to her as the car went down the street.
Dr. Sedgewick came out at the moment and stood looking at the fluttering handkerchief which was being wagged so energetically.
“Was that some one you know?” he asked. “Downright road hogs they were, anyhow. Why, they almost shaved our wheel as they shot past. It was enough to make a horse bolt. It is lucky Captain is a quiet animal.”
“The girl who was waving her handkerchief was Rhoda Fleming, one of the Sixth, and a candidate for the Lamb Bursary,” said Dorothy, as she guided Captain round the narrow streets of Langbury, and so out to the Farley Road.
“Where does she come from?” asked Dr. Sedgewick, and he frowned. Rhoda’s face had been quite clear to him as she was whirled past in the racing car, and he had been struck by a something familiar in it.
“Her people live at Henlow in Surrey, or is it Sussex?” said Dorothy. “Her father is a rather important person, and has twice been mayor of Henlow.”
“I know him—Grimes Fleming his name is—but I do not know much good about him.” The doctor spoke rather grimly, then asked, “Is this girl a great chum of yours?”
“Not exactly.” Dorothy laughed, thinking of the openly avowed dislike Rhoda had displayed for her. “I think Tom and she are great pals; but I do not know that she is particularly good for him.”
“Seeing she is her father’s daughter, I should say that she is not. Can’t you stop it, Dorothy?” There was anxiety in her father’s tone that Dorothy was quick to sense.
“I have tried, but Tom won’t listen to me,” she said in a troubled tone. “He is like that, you know; to speak against her to him would only make him the more determined to be friends with her.”
“Oh yes, Tom is a chip off the old block, and in more senses than one, I am afraid.” The doctor sighed heavily, thinking of the abundant crop of wild oats which he had sown in those back years. Then he went on, taking her into confidence, “I am a bit worried about Tom: he seems to have got a little out of the straight; there are signs about him of having grown out of his home. He asked me, too, if I could not increase his allowance so that he could spread himself a little for the benefit of his future.”
“Oh, father, what did you say to him?” Dorothy’s tone was shocked. She thought of all the evidence of sacrifice that she had seen since she had been at home, and she wondered where Tom’s eyes were that he had not seen them too.
“I laughed at him.” The doctor chuckled, as if the remembrance was amusing. “I told him he would best advance his future by sticking at his work rather tighter, and leave all ideas of spreading himself out of count until he was in a position to earn his own living. Why does he want a girl for a pal? Are there not enough boys at the Compton School to meet his requirements?”
“Oh, lots of the boys and girls are pally. It is rather looked upon as the right thing in our little lot; and Rhoda is enough older than Tom to be of great use in rubbing down his angles, if she chose to do it,” Dorothy answered, and her cheeks became more rosy as she thought of the part she herself had had in putting down gambling in the boys’ school, by her influence over Bobby Felmore.
“Humph, there is sense in the idea certainly,” the doctor said. “Of course it depends for success on what sort of a girl a boy like Tom gets for a pal. I should not think a daughter of Grimes Fleming would be good for Tom. Do what you can to stop it, Dorothy. Remember, I depend on you.”
“Oh dear, I am afraid you will be disappointed, then,” sighed Dorothy. “I do not seem to have any power at all with Tom. I am older than he is, but that does not count, because he says he is the cleverer, as he won a scholarship for Compton and I did not. I suppose he is right, too, for he has won his way where I have had to be paid for.”
“It looks as if you are going to beat him now, if you keep on as you have done for the last two terms,” said her father. “We are looking to you to win that Lamb Bursary, Dorothy. You have got to do it, for our sakes as well as your own. It will mean a tremendous lot to your mother and me.”
Something that was nearly like a sob came up in Dorothy’s throat and half-choked her. She realized that her father was actually pleading with her not to fail. In the background was that damaging story told to her by Mrs. Wilson. Because of that she was in honour bound not to go in for the Lamb Bursary. What was the right thing to do? If only—oh! if only she knew what was the right thing to do!
The hard part was that she could find no help at home, and she had to face going back to school with her question unsolved.