TROUBLE FOR TOM
Dorothy and Milly Stokes were chaired round the courts by ardent admirers, and they were cheered until their heads ached from the noise.
As soon as Dorothy could escape she went in search of Tom. It was some time before she could find him; and when she did run him down he was in a temper that was anything but sweet.
“Oh, Tom! I am so sorry for the trouble,” she burst out with ready sympathy. Tom usually wore such a happy face, that it was just dreadful to see him looking so glum.
“It is pretty rotten,” he growled. “We are to be hauled up before the Head in the morning, and goodness knows what will happen then. There is one comfort—I am not the only one in the soup; there are about twenty-five of us involved. The thing that passes my comprehension is how it all came out.”
“Don’t you know?” gasped Dorothy, so amazed at his words that she had no time to think of being discreet.
“How should I know?” he said blankly. “Why, you might have knocked me down with a feather when Clarges Major told me we’d been spotted, and that the game was up so far as our night-club was concerned. It has been such a jolly lark, too! We used to go about three nights a week, and get back about three o’clock in the morning. Some club it was, too, I can tell you! Say, Dorothy, how did you know anything about it?”
“Joan Fletcher told me. She told me how Rhoda had written all about the club to your Head, because you would not lend her the money when she was in a hole about the archery club subscriptions.” Dorothy spoke in a quiet tone; she was determined that Tom should know the true facts of the case. But she quailed a little when he turned upon her with fury in his face.
“Rhoda told because I would not lend her the money! What on earth are you driving at? That time when she talked to me about being so short, I told her then that I was in the same boat—absolutely stoney.”
“It was because you did not answer her letter, when she gave you twenty-four hours to find some money to help her out of her fix.” Dorothy stopped suddenly because of the surprise in Tom’s face. “Didn’t you have that letter?” she asked.
“I have never set eyes on it,” he answered. “When did she send it, and how?”
“I don’t know,” answered Dorothy. “Joan told me that Rhoda was so angry and so very desperate because you did not answer her letter, that, to pay you out for leaving her in the lurch, she wrote a letter to Dr. Cameron, telling him about the night-club. A little after her letter went she got the money she wanted from home, and she would have recalled her letter to your Head then if she had been able to do it, but, of course, it was too late.”
“The insufferable little cad, to blow on us like that out of sheer cattish spite!” growled Tom. Then he asked, with sharp anxiety in his tone, “Has it leaked out yet among our crowd that Rhoda told?”
“I am afraid so,” answered Dorothy, and again she quailed at the look in his eyes. “Didn’t you hear all the booing when we won the cup?”
“Of course. I booed myself with might and main; but that was only because we had lost it,” said Tom.
Dorothy shook her head. “I am afraid it is more than that—there was such a lot of malice in the noise. Hazel told me that some one threw a bag of flour at Rhoda, and written across the bag were the words ‘For a sneak’; so it looks as if they knew.”
“If that is the case, you bet I am in for it right up to my back teeth,” growled Tom; and turning he walked away with never another word to Dorothy, who reflected sorrowfully that he was much more concerned at the prospect of losing the goodwill of his fellows than because he was implicated in such a serious breach of rules and regulations.
Dorothy did not see him again that day. She did not see him on the next day either; but rumours were rife in the girls’ school that the boys involved in the night-club business were in for a row of magnitude.
The work of the week was so exacting and absorbing that Dorothy found herself with but little time for thinking of Tom and his troubles.
On Sunday—the last Sunday of term it was—Tom appeared with the other boys in the gardens of the girls’ school; but he looked so miserable that Dorothy had a sudden, sharp anxiety about him.
“Oh, Tom, what is it?” she cried.
“Don’t you know?” he said, looking at her with tragic eyes. “The Head has sent for the governor, and I don’t feel as if I could face him when he comes.”
“For the governor?” echoed Dorothy blankly, and in the eyes of her mind she was seeing those grave frock-coated gentlemen who had sat on the dais in the lecture hall that day last autumn, at the enrolment of the candidates for the Lamb Bursary. She wondered why Dr. Cameron had thought it necessary to send for one of the school governors about a case of school discipline.
“Father, I mean, and he is coming to-morrow.” Tom spoke impatiently, for he thought Dorothy was much more thick in the head than she ought to have been.
“Father coming to-morrow?” Dorothy’s voice rose in a shout of sheer ecstasy. “Why, Tom, we will make him stay over Wednesday, and then he will be present when the Bursary winner is declared!”
No sooner had she uttered that joyful exclamation than a cold chill crept into her heart. How dreadful for her father to be present if she had really won the Mutton Bone; for he would have to be told perhaps that she could not be allowed to keep it because of that ugly fact of his past, which had landed him in prison for fourteen days.
What a shame that there should be any clouds to mar his coming—and it was really a cloud of an extra heavy sort that was the reason of his being obliged to come.
“It is pretty rotten that he should have been sent for,” growled Tom. “All the fathers have been asked to come. So you see Rhoda raised a pretty heavy dust when she butted in.”
“Why have they all been sent for?” asked Dorothy in dismay. To her way of thinking such extreme measures boded very ill for the culprits.
“The fathers and the masters are going to confer as to what is to be done with us,” explained Tom, who was leaning against a tree and moodily kicking at the turf. “Dr. Cameron has got a bee in his bonnet about the gambling stunt going on in the schools; he is making a bid to wipe it out for always—don’t you wish he may do it? He thinks the best way is to let our governors take a hand in the business. He told us that if it had only been a question of our sneaking out of dorm when we were supposed to be fast asleep in bed, he would have dealt with the matter himself, and taken care that we had so much work to do that we would be thankful to stay in bed when we had a chance to get there.”
“Oh, Tom, how I wish you had never given way to betting and that sort of thing!” cried Dorothy, dismayed at the turn things had taken.
“You’ll have to be more sorry still if I have to lose the scholarship,” said Tom with a savage air.
“It won’t—it surely won’t come to that!” said Dorothy in dismay. Again a pang smote her as she thought of the double trouble there might be in store for the dear father. It did not even comfort her at the moment to remember how wholly innocent she was of any hand in bringing on the trouble which might arise on her account.
“It may do.” Tom’s tone was gloomy in the extreme. “On the other hand, it may tell in my favour that I am a scholarship boy. The authorities may argue that there must be good in me because I have worked so well in the past. They will say that, as I am one of the youngest of the crowd, I was doubtless led away by the seniors. Oh, there is certain to be a way out for me.”
“I am not sure that you deserve to have a way out found for you,” she said severely. “Oh, Tom, how could you bring such trouble on them at home!”
“Don’t preach,” burst out Tom impatiently. “I get more than enough of that from Bobby Felmore.”
“Bobby wasn’t in with the night-club crowd?” questioned Dorothy.
“Not he.” Tom snorted in derision of Bobby and Bobby’s standpoints. “He is too smug for anything these days. Downright putrid, I call it. I’ve no use for mugs.”
“Here comes Rhoda!” cried Dorothy with a little gasp of fright. “Oh, Tom, what are you going to say to her?”
“Nothing,” he answered with a snarl. “If she were a boy I would fight her. Seeing she is a girl, I can’t do that; so the only thing to be done is to look right through her and out the other side without taking any further notice of her.”
Rhoda bore down upon them with a little rush, her hands held out in imploring fashion. “Oh, Tom,” she cried, “I am thankful to see you here! Why have you not answered my letters? I have fairly squirmed in the dust at your feet, begging forgiveness for my cattish temper. But I was fairly desperate, or I should never have been so mad as to let you down, and your crowd as well. Words won’t say how sorry I am——”
She broke off with a jerk, for Tom, after looking at her with a cold and steady stare, turned on his heel and walked away, calling over his shoulder as he went,—
“So long, Dorothy, old girl; see you later.”
For a moment Rhoda stood staring at Tom’s retreating figure as if she could not believe her eyes, then she turned upon Dorothy with fury in her face.
“This is your work, then?” she cried shrilly. “I always knew you were jealous because Tom thought so much of me. A fine underhand piece of work, to try and separate me from my friend!”
“I have not tried to separate you from Tom; it would not have been any use,” said Dorothy calmly. “The separating, as you call it, was your own work. Tom will have to bear such a lot from his crowd because of your letter to his Head that he says he will not speak to you again.”
“Oh, he will come round,” Rhoda said, and tried to believe it; but she was hurt in her pride—the more so because she had the sense to see that she had brought the whole disaster on herself.
Dorothy turned away. She was feeling pretty sore herself because of the trouble that was bringing her father to the Compton Schools just then. It took away all her joy at the prospect of seeing him, to think how he might have to suffer on her account before he went away. She could not even comfort herself with the thought that she might not win the Bursary, because if she did not win it herself, the probabilities were that Rhoda would win it, in which case she was pledged to the Head to reveal that thing against Rhoda which she had seen in the showrooms of Messrs. Sharman and Song. What a miserable tangle it all was, and what a shame that people could not be happy when they so badly wanted to be free from care.
Monday came with hours of examination work. Happily, she was so absorbed in it that she hardly noticed how the hours went by. There was an archery contest in the afternoon. The younger boys came over, and some of the seniors, but there were big gaps in the Fifth and the Sixth of the boys’ school. None of the luckless twenty-five were present, they being gated for that day and the next—that is to say, until the council of fathers and masters had determined on what to do with them.
Dorothy guessed that she would not see her father that day. Tom had told her he would reach Sowergate by the six-thirty train, and as he would go straight to the boys’ school to dine with Dr. Cameron, and would have to be at the council afterwards, there would be no chance of seeing him until next morning.
She heard the train run in to Sowergate station, and there was a thrill in her heart to think of her father being so near. The worst of it was that she felt so bad on his account, because of what he would have to face both for Tom at the boys’ school, and for herself at the girls’ school.
She was so tired that night when bedtime came that she fell asleep directly her head touched the pillow, and she slumbered dreamlessly until morning. It was early when she woke, and sitting up in bed she thought of all the things that were before her in the day. She wondered what she would say to her father, and whether she ought to tell him of the arrangement the Head had made with her. It did not seem fair that he should have to face a situation of such gravity without some preparation.
“I can’t tell him! Oh, I can’t tell him!” she murmured distressfully, and then, because lying still and thinking about it was so intolerable, she sprang out of bed, beginning to dress with feverish haste. It was such a comfort to pitch straight into work, and to lose sight for a little while of the things which bothered her so badly.
The whole of the Sixth were to work at term finals from eleven o’clock until one that day, and they set off down to the beach at half-past nine, to bathe and get back for a little rest before the time for the exam. The Fourth Form girls had already gone down; the Fifth were sitting for their finals, and would go to bathe when their work was done.
As the group of girls with Miss Groome turned out of the school gates, they met Dr. Sedgewick coming in. Dorothy’s heart gave a great bound when she saw him, for he looked so tired and so very careworn.
Miss Groome stayed with her to speak to him, while the rest of the girls went on.
“I have not come to see you at this moment, Dorothy,” he said, with his hand on her shoulder, while his gaze travelled over her with great content. “Your Head has sent a message asking to see me, and I am going to her now. If you are back from the beach in good time, I may have a few minutes with you; and then later in the day, when your finals are over, we will have a great time together, and a regular pow-wow. You are looking fine; it is evident that work agrees with you.”
“Dorothy is a very good worker,” said Miss Groome graciously; and then she hurried on with Dorothy, to catch up with the girls who were in front, while Dr. Sedgewick walked on to the hall door for his interview with the Head.