Chapter Twenty One.
A blank silence followed Dreda’s announcement. Dismay, disappointment, and distress seemed printed on every face. Mr Rawdon and Miss Drake gazed first at each other, then at the girl, then at the paper which she had laid upon the table. Their foreheads were fretted with perplexity. For the first few moments they seemed unable to speak; but presently, bending towards Dreda, they appeared to question her in whispered tones, to question anxiously, to cross-question,—to draw her attention to page after page of the typed essay, as if searching for a refutation of her statement. But Dreda shook her head, and could not be shaken. Then Miss Drake turned aside and sat down, turning her chair so that her face was hidden from the audience, and two little patches of red showed themselves on Mr Rawdon’s cheek bones.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “a mistake has arisen—a most regrettable mistake. The numbers attached to two of the essays submitted to me have apparently been misplaced. It is impossible to say how this confusion has arisen. Neither Miss Drake nor I can think of any satisfactory explanation. If by chance it should be due to any carelessness of my own, I can only say that I am most deeply sorry, and that I feel myself painfully punished. It appears that the writer of the prize essay is not Etheldreda Saxon, as we believed. She herself discovered the mistake when glancing at the paper which I had returned to her while I was giving my address just now, and has taken the first possible opportunity of making public her discovery. I regret more than I can say that she should have had so painful an experience, and I am sure that you will all share my sorrow. Miss Saxon’s essay was one of the four chosen from the rest, and I can only hope that the prophecies which I have already made as to her future will in all truth be fulfilled.” (Great applause.) “I now call upon Miss Susan Webster, the author of the selected essay, to come up to the platform and receive her prize.” (Faint clapping of hands.)
There is no doubt that it was a painful anticlimax. It is not often that a literary genius looks the part so delightfully as Dreda had done twenty minutes before—Dreda, in her new blue dress, with her flaxen mane floating past her waist, her beautiful eyes darkened with excitement, her complexion of clearest pink and white. As she had mounted the steps to the platform the watching faces had shone with pure artistic pleasure in the sight. So young, so strong, so lovely, and so gifted—it was a privilege even to look upon so fortunate a creature. And now! Guided by Miss Drake’s thoughtful hand, the fairy princess had slipped behind the screen which hid the back of the platform, and creeping slowly across the floor came the mouselike figure of Susan in her dun brown dress, her plain little face fretted with embarrassment and distress, a victor with the air of a martyr, a conqueror who shrank from her spoils.
Despite himself, Mr Rawdon’s voice took a colder tone as, for the second time, he presented the pile of books; despite herself, Miss Drake’s smile was mechanical and forced; while the visitors made only a show of applause. “Hard luck for that fine, bright girl!” whispered the fathers one to another; the mothers almost without exception had tears in their eyes. “And she looks so sweet and pretty! It’s a shame!” cried the sisters rebelliously. Even the girls on the benches at the back of the room—Susan’s companions who loved her and appreciated her worth—even they looked oppressed and discomfited. The romance of Dreda’s triumph had appealed to their young imaginations; they understood even more keenly than their elders the suffering involved in that humiliating confession. “Poor Dreda!” they whispered to each other. “Oh! poor old Dreda!”
At tea in the drawing-room the tone of the teachers was distinctly apologetic—the high spirits characteristic of the early hours had ebbed away, and the visitors were glad to beat an early retreat. Mr and Mrs Saxon received Miss Drake’s apologies in the kindest and most sympathetic manner, and would not allow her to take any blame to herself.
“It was an accident—no one can be blamed. We are so sorry for you, too!” Mrs Saxon said sweetly. “It is a disappointment, of course; it was a very happy moment when we believed our dear girl had gained such a prize. We were so proud of her!”
“We are proud of her now,” interrupted Dreda’s father quickly, and at that both his hearers smiled and nodded their heads in sympathetic understanding. “Yes, yes; we are proud of her now.”
To Dreda herself her parents made no allusion to the tragic mistake. The girl only made her appearance when the motor drove up to the door, and her cool, somewhat haughty manner showed that sympathy was the last thing which she desired at the moment.
“Good-bye, darling, till Thursday. Only two days more before we have you back among us.”
“Good-bye, my girl. I’ll drive over for you on Thursday morning.”
“Dreda, darling, I’m so glad you are coming. I’ve such lots to tell you!”
“You’ve got your belt fastened on the wrong hook. The point’s crooked.”
For once Maud’s literal mind was a blessed relief. Her parting words made everyone laugh, and the car drove off with the cheery sound of that laughter ringing in the air, and the remembrance of merry faces to cheer Dreda’s aching heart. She turned and crept upstairs to the study. She had shed her own gala dress, thrusting it away in the cupboard as if she never wished to behold it again. The study was filled with odd pieces of furniture which had been taken out of the big classrooms, and the fire was dying out upon the grate.
“Here sit I, and my broken heart!” sighed Dreda dramatically, as she subsided into a chair and drew her shoulders together in an involuntary shiver. It had been cold work standing at the door watching the departure of the car, and the atmosphere of the deserted room was not calculated to cheer her spirits. “When you’ve had a great shock your constitution is enfeebled; when you’re enfeebled, you are sensitive to chills; a chill on an enfeebled constitution is generally fatal. Perhaps I’ve received my death blow this afternoon in more ways than one.” Dreda sniffed and shivered miserably once more. The stream of visitors was still departing, saying good-bye to Miss Bretherton and the teachers in the drawing-room and making their way to the door. Dreda would not risk leaving the study and encountering strange faces on the staircase; besides which, it did not seem her place to seek her companions at this moment. It was her companions who should seek her.
“In the hour of my triumph they all crowded round me; now I am a pelican on the housetop, and no one cares if I am dead or alive. I must get accustomed to it, I suppose. Shame and humiliation must henceforth be my portion. Only fifteen and a half—in years. In suffering I’m an old, old woman! Mr Rawdon was sorry; I saw it in his face; but he liked Susan’s best. Susan has won the prize. Where is Susan now? Has she forgotten all about me?”
As if in answer to this question the handle of the door turned, and a head was thrust round the corner. A voice exclaimed: “Here she is!” and Nancy entered the room, followed closely by Susan herself. They stood and looked at Dreda, and Dreda looked at them, but none of the three uttered a word. Then suddenly Susan whispered something in Nancy’s ear, and while that young person hurried from the room with a most unusual celerity, Susan dropped quietly on her knees beside the dying fire and began coaxing it into a blaze.
Dreda sat back in her chair and watched the process with a dull, detached curiosity. Susan’s back looked so narrow and small; the brown dress fastened at the back with a row of ugly bone buttons; as she knelt the soles of her new slippers seemed to fill up the entire foreground. They were startlingly, shockingly white! As she bent from
side to side blowing skilfully upon the struggling flames, one could catch a glimpse of her profile, white and wan, with red circles round the eyes. Such a poor, weary little conqueror, on her knees striving to serve her fallen rival. Something stirred in Dreda’s heart; the ice melted, she cleared her throat, and addressed her friend by name.
“Susan!”
Susan sat back on her heels, lifting scared, pitiful eyes.
“Susan,” said Dreda regally, “I don’t hate you. You needn’t be frightened. I don’t hate you a bit—I’m sorry for you. This should have been your triumph, and I have spoiled it. It’s very hard on you too, Susan!”
“Oh, Dreda!” gasped Susan breathlessly. “Dreda, you’re magnificent!” She was wan and white no longer; her eyes blazed. No one seeing Susan at that moment could possibly have called her plain; the lovely soul of her shone through the flesh, working its transformation, even as the leaping flames were now turning the dull hearth into a thing of beauty and life.
Still on her knees, Susan crawled across the few intervening yards of floor, and rested her head against Dreda’s knee.
“I’d have given it up a hundred times - a thousand over, Dreda, rather than let you have this experience!” she said brokenly. And Dreda knew that she spoke the truth.
It was in this attitude that Nancy discovered the two girls when she entered the room a few minutes later, bearing in her hands a temptingly spread tea-tray. One glance of the red-brown eyes testified to her satisfaction at such eloquent signs of peace, but manner and speech disdained sentiment.
“Corn in Egypt!” she cried cheerfully. “The Duck fairly showered dainties upon me—scones, sandwiches, cakes, and a fresh pot of tea. Let’s fall to at once. I am fainting with hunger.”
She placed three chairs round the table, seated herself in front of the tray, and, pouring out three cups of tea, handed them round with hospitable zeal. Dreda ate and drank and felt comforted, in spite of herself. It was wonderful how the mere creature comforts of warmth and food seemed to soothe the pain at her heart. She even began to feel a faint enjoyment in the dramatic element of her position, to realise that if she had failed she had failed in a noticeable, even in a tragic, fashion. To Susan belonged the glory, yet she, the beaten one, remained unquestionably the heroine of the day!
By the time that second cups of tea had been handed round, and an attack made upon the iced cake, Dreda was ready and eager to discuss her trouble.
“How could those numbers have been altered, Susan? Mine was five and yours was ten. They aren’t in the least alike!”
“Dreda, I don’t know—I can’t think! If they had come loose and Mr Rawdon had clipped them on again, he would have remembered doing it. At least, an ordinary person would; but he is a genius. Perhaps geniuses are different.”
“You are a genius, Susan. You ought to know!” said Dreda, whereat the poor little genius flushed miserably, and Nancy, rattling the tea-tray, rushed hastily into the breach.
“Accidents will happen! It’s no earthly use worrying your head about the how and the why. There it is, and you’ve got to make the best of it, and forget it as soon as possible.”
Dreda rolled tragic eyes to the ceiling.
“I shall never forget. You can’t reach the height of your ambition and then see your treasure crumble to pieces in your hands in less than ten minutes, and fall down into a very pit of humiliation without wearing a mark for life.”
“Don’t say humiliation, Dreda,” cried Susan tremulously. “Don’t, dear; I can’t bear it. It was dreadful for you; but there was no humiliation. There was nothing—nothing of which you could be ashamed. Your essay was very good, too; it has been mentioned as one of the best.”
But Dreda was not in the mood to accept comfort. She was miserable, and she intended to be miserable in a thorough, systematic fashion, so that for the moment alleviations seemed rather to irritate than to cheer—
“My essay was only one of the best four. That’s nothing. Except our three selves and Barbara Morton, there’s not another girl in the school who can write a decent essay to save her life. The others were all as dull and stupid as could be. You have seen them, and know that that’s true. If mine was only the fourth best, that’s no praise at all. Mr Rawdon made no special mention of any but yours, except when he—Oh–h!” Dreda’s voice shrilled with sudden panic; she dropped her cake on to her plate and clasped her hands together, staring before her with wide, startled eyes. “Oh–h! Do you remember? He said that he had been amused by one of the four essays. His lips twitched, and he tried not to laugh. Amused at the ‘high-flown eloquence.’ That was the expression—wasn’t it? High-flown eloquence! That means rubbish, of course—bombastic, stupid, exaggerated rubbish! Girls, that was mine! I feel it—I know it! Susan, you know it, too. You wouldn’t say that it was good, even when I asked you straight out. You were too honest to say ‘Yes.’ Oh! I am not angry. You needn’t look so miserable. It was true, and down at the very, very bottom of my heart I knew it myself. When I thought I had won the prize I was only really happy for a few minutes; after that I grew frightened, for I knew it was a mistake, and that I was not really a genius at all, only a rather sharp-witted girl, a ready girl,”—she gave a dreary little laugh—“who could pick up other people’s ideas, and string them together as if they were her own. The girls weren’t clever enough to know the real from the sham, but Mr Rawdon knew it at once. He saw how—how—” (she paused, groping in her extensive vocabulary for a word to express her meaning) “how meretricious it was! He was—amused!”
The last word came with an involuntary quiver of pain, and there was silence round the impromptu tea-table. Dreda saw without surprise that the tears were rolling down Susan’s cheeks—it seemed natural that Susan should cry. What did give her a real shock of surprise was to hear a sound of subdued snuffling on her right, and on turning her head to behold the imperturbable Nancy suspiciously red about the eyes and nose.
“Nancy!” she cried involuntarily. “You are crying! I never believed that it was possible that you could cry! Why are you crying, Nancy? Is it about—me?”
But Nancy only jerked the tea-tray, tossing her head the while in her most nonchalant fashion.
“Can’t I cry if I like? Can’t I cry for myself? If I don’t, no one else will. No one thinks about Me! I tried for the prize as well as you, and I’ve far more right to be disappointed. No one ever said I might be great!”
She tossed her head and frowned and pouted, but Dreda was not deceived by the pretence. At her heart lay a warm feeling of comfort and gratitude. In recalling the incidents of this tragic day, it would always bring a throb of consolation to remember that Nancy, the imperturbable, had shed tears on her behalf!