Chapter 11

THE CLOUD LIFTS

"What's the matter with Blue Bonnet?" Annabel Jackson asked Sue Hemphill. "She looks sick--or worried to death. What's happened?"

"I don't know," Sue said, shrugging her shoulders. "I thought myself she looked awfully upset this morning, but when I asked her if anything was wrong, she said--I can't remember what she did say--but I took it that she wasn't going to tell, if there was."

"There's something the matter. That look she's got on her face doesn't spell happiness--not by a long ways."

"Why don't you use your Sherlock Holmes talent on her," Sue inquired flippantly.

"My what, Sue?"

"This intuition business you were telling us about yesterday. You said you could read people's thoughts."

"I didn't say I was a mind reader, did I?"

"Well--something like that."

"Oh, Sue, how perfectly ridiculous! Tell that to one or two more and I'll be a spiritualistic medium holding seances in my room."

Sue laughed, starting the dimples dancing in her cheeks. Those dimples saved Sue many a scolding. They defended her sharp tongue--exonerated malice. They pointed like a hand on a sign post to mirth and pure good nature. "You can't be angry with Sue when those dimples pop out," more than one girl had said.

The morning had been a trying one for Blue Bonnet. She had great difficulty in keeping her mind on her studies. Even Professor Howe had to ask for closer attention--an unheard of thing.

"Are you ill, Miss Ashe?" she had asked, calling Blue Bonnet to the desk after the class adjourned. "You don't look well. Better go up and show your tongue to Mrs. Goodwin or Miss Martin."

"It isn't my tongue--that is--I'm not at all ill, thank you, Professor Howe," Blue Bonnet replied absently.

She passed on to her Latin class, a little droop in her usually straight shoulders showing listlessness. She sat down by Wee Watts and opened her book, but her gaze wandered to the window.

"You may translate, Miss Ashe," Miss Attridge said for the second time and Blue Bonnet did not hear.

A titter went round the room. Blue Bonnet's gaze rested on the housetops. She was miles and miles away from the small recitation room.

"Come, Miss Ashe, the third oration, please; begin where Miss Watts left off--Cicero attacks Catiline, saying:"

Blue Bonnet came back with a start, and with Wee's assistance found the line.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Attridge. Where Deborah left off, you say?"

It was the same with French and with Algebra. Blue Bonnet's mind was busy with but one theme--one thought--that revolved round and round again, hemming her in with despair: Who had secreted the book in her drawer? To whom did it belong? How could she establish her innocence?

"Cheer up, cheer up," Sue Hemphill said, as she passed Blue Bonnet in the hall after lunch. Sue was executing a fancy step down the hall and her whole manner betokened the utmost excitement.

"You look cheerful enough for all of us, Sue," Blue Bonnet answered. "What's happened to you?"

"Billy's coming--going to be here for dinner; so is his room-mate, Hammie McVickar."

"Hammie! What a funny name!"

"Hamilton! Funny little chap, too. Wait till you see him."

Sue giggled as she pirouetted back and forth.

"Decided about the club yet, Blue Bonnet?"

"Not yet," Blue Bonnet said. She wondered if her face betrayed lack of interest. The thought of the club had entirely passed out of her mind.

"What do you call this club, Sue?"

Sue took a whirl and a glide and stopped at Blue Bonnet's side.

"The Ancient Order of Lambs," she said, and darted off again.

Blue Bonnet ran after her and brought her to a standstill.

"Sue! tell me. What is it?"

"That's it, of course. Why not?"

"The Ancient Order of Lambs! Really?"

"Really.

"We amble and we gamble, We frolic and we bleat; Something new in lambkins Rather hard to beat!"

"Dear me, is that from Angela's pen?"

"Angela! Mercy, I should hope not! Angela doesn't write doggerel--she writes verse."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," Blue Bonnet said meekly.

"Blue Bonnet, you'd make such a love of a lamb. Do join us."

"I reckon I would," she said, her natural humor coming to the surface. "I'm always being led to slaughter--if that helps any. I can't say I'm a willing sacrifice, however."

"You'll do," Sue said, taking up the step again. "I'll tell the girls you've about made up your mind--and--Blue Bonnet, come here, listen! Put on that white dress to-night; the one with the pink under it, will you? I want you to meet Billy and Hammie, if I can arrange it. Don't forget!"

The day wore on wearily. Blue Bonnet had seen nothing of Miss North; no word came from the office.

At five o'clock she started to dress for dinner. She got out the white dress half heartedly. Only because she wanted to please Sue did she consider it at all.

She tried to talk with Joy as she dressed, but Joy was unusually silent. Her monosyllables were low and indistinct. Twice Blue Bonnet turned to catch a word and Joy's face startled her: it was white and lifeless, almost expressionless save for the eyes--they were troubled.

"Are you ill, Joy?" Blue Bonnet asked kindly; but Joy turned her face away and answered "No," quickly.

Much to her surprise, Blue Bonnet found herself a guest at Miss North's table. She slipped into the place assigned her next to Annabel. In a moment Sue came in with her guests. They found their places just opposite.

As soon as she could gather courage after the introductions Blue Bonnet looked across the table at her neighbors. She remembered Sue's remark about Hammie McVickar, and laughed outright. Sue had said he was a "funny little chap." Perhaps he was, but he towered six feet two, if an inch; a magnificent, big, clean-limbed fellow with brown eyes and a nice face that attracted Blue Bonnet.

Billy was interesting, too. He was very much like Sue. His eyes twinkled mischievously, and dimples, less prominent than Sue's, showed when he laughed.

These young men showed none of Alec's embarrassment. They chatted and joked, making the best of their opportunity--they considered it such; indeed quite a lark to invade seminary walls.

Blue Bonnet learned before dinner was over that Billy was the illustrious half-back on the Harvard team; had contributed much to the game she had seen in the autumn; that Hammie McVickar also shared honors.

The meal passed all too quickly, and Annabel and Blue Bonnet left the dining-room reluctantly. They had barely reached the gymnasium for the half hour of dancing, when Sue caught up with them breathlessly.

"Come back," she called. "Miss North has given you permission to come to the reception-room and meet Billy and Hammie. Hurry, they can only stay a half hour."

It is needless to say the girls hurried, slowing down modestly before reaching the reception-room door.

It was a pleasant half hour. Blue Bonnet felt as if some one had lifted a curtain and given her a glimpse into another world. It was her first experience in entertaining college men. She enjoyed the good-natured banter--the give and take that passed between them; the college stories. She settled down in her chair and listened to the others talk; wide-eyed, keenly alert, but quiet as a mouse. Sue and Annabel kept up a chatter, and Billy and Hammie were entertaining in the extreme.

"Isn't Billy a dear?" Sue said, running into Blue Bonnet's room to say good night. "And isn't Hammie McVickar splendid? I think he's the best-looking man I know. Billy says he's a prince--the fellows at college all swear by him. So glad you could meet them. Good night. Sleep well."

Strange to say, Blue Bonnet did sleep well. She was worn out with the day's worry and anxiety; but she awoke the next morning with a depression that manifests itself even before the eyes open, sometimes.

"What is wrong with me?" she thought, and, in an instant, she knew. The book--the terrible book! Would she be able to straighten it all out to-day?

But another day was to pass, and yet another before the cloud lifted.

It was on the fourth day after the visit to Miss North's office that Blue Bonnet felt she could no longer endure the strain, and decided to take Annabel Jackson into her confidence. She had thought it all out carefully, and realized that she must unburden to some one. Carita was too young to be helpful--besides, she didn't wish to worry Carita.

"May I see you for a minute after school, Annabel?" she asked.

"Of course," Annabel answered. "I think it is about time you saw me--or somebody! You look as if you had the weight of the universe on your shoulders lately. Are you going to tell me what it is all about?"

"Yes."

"All right. Where shall I meet you?"

"In my room after the walk. Joy practises then. We can be alone."

Strictly on time, Annabel appeared at Blue Bonnet's door, was ushered in and the door locked.

Blue Bonnet laid the whole story before Annabel--all she knew of it.

Annabel listened attentively, her eyes narrowing occasionally, her breath coming quick and sharp. There was a dead silence when Blue Bonnet finished, and then Annabel jumped up from her seat and took a few turns about the room. She was thinking something over, Blue Bonnet knew.

"I think--I believe I have a clue. In fact I know I have. Leave this to me for a day or two. I wish you had come to me sooner. There was no need of your suffering like this. I think I know the young person--"

She stopped abruptly and stooping kissed Blue Bonnet lightly on the cheek. She came back after she had left the room and inquired quite casually where Joy Cross was practising at this hour.

"In number six, I think, Annabel. She used to, anyway."

"Thank you. I want to see her a minute."

In number six Joy Cross was pounding out an exercise. She looked up as Annabel opened the door and went on with her practising.

"May I speak with you a minute?" Annabel said.

Joy wheeled on her stool.

"For a minute," she said. "I'm busy."

"It will only take a minute, I fancy. When do you intend to acknowledge the book you hid in Blue Bonnet Ashe's drawer while she was away?"

The shock was so sudden--so unexpected--that Joy Cross grew faint. Every vestige of color died out of her face.

"I don't know what you mean," she said slowly. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about, all right. Do you remember the day two weeks ago when we were out walking and stopped in that queer little book shop? One of the girls wanted to get her Quatre-vingt-treize. You went to another part of the shop--alone. I came up behind you--something had attracted my attention--you didn't see me. I heard you ask for the book--I will not mention the name. I saw the clerk hand it to you--give you your change. Saw the whole transaction with my own eyes! This is no hearsay."

Joy Cross turned round to the piano and hid her face in her hands.

"I haven't words to express my opinion of you, Joy Cross," Annabel went on. "A girl who would put another girl in the position you have put Blue Bonnet Ashe--as honest and innocent a girl as ever drew the breath of life. You're a coward--a miserable--"

Joy turned and threw out her hand beseechingly.

"Wait," she said, "please wait! I want to tell you. I'm all you say, perhaps--but--if you would only listen--"

Annabel had turned away impatiently.

"I didn't mean to hurt Blue Bonnet Ashe--please believe that, Annabel. It was all a mistake--an accident. I thought it would right itself, and I kept still. I did buy the book--I was reading it in my room; some one knocked at the door--I was sitting by Blue Bonnet's bureau--I reached over and laid it in her drawer--just until I opened the door. I meant to take it right out again--but--it was Miss Martin. She was inspecting drawers--she found the book--she--I--oh, can't you see how it was--how it all happened--so quickly? I couldn't think of anything but the disgrace. I wanted to save myself. I wouldn't have cared so much if I hadn't been a Senior. I thought it might keep me from graduating--from some of the honors that I have fought for. I never dreamed it would go so far. I thought--oh, I don't know what I thought--why I did it. I suppose I'm ruined utterly."

She burst into the wildest weeping. Tears sprang to Annabel's own eyes. She was a sympathetic girl. She wished she could bring herself to put her arm round Joy--to give her a word of encouragement--but she couldn't. There was something that repelled her in the convulsed form; the thin body with its narrow, heaving shoulders; the unattractive blond head.

"Well, there is only one thing to do now, of course you understand that, Joy. You must go to Miss North immediately."

Joy raised her head; her eyes wide with terror.

"Oh, no, not that! I can't do that. I can't! I can't!"

"You _will_," Annabel said sternly. "Stop that crying! Haven't you any nerve at all? You will go to Miss North at once! Immediately, do you understand? or I will. An innocent girl has suffered long enough."

Annabel had drawn herself up to her full height. Her cheeks blazed. She was a fair representative of her illustrious grandsire as she stood there, her fighting blood up.

"You understand? You go at once--this minute!"

Joy staggered to her feet. Annabel watched her as she started for the door; followed her as she crossed the building to her own room and paused.

Annabel paused too, but only for a second.

"Miss North is in her office at this hour," she said. "Go immediately"--and Joy went, her limbs almost refusing to bear her to the floor below.

What transpired in that office will never be known to any one save Miss North and Joy Cross. The gong had sounded for dinner before Joy emerged, white and silent, and neither she nor Miss North appeared at the evening meal.

Blue Bonnet felt better after she had confided in Annabel. She scarcely knew why, except that Annabel seemed to see a way out of the difficulty, and she had the reputation of being reliable and level headed.

With a lighter heart than she had known for several days, she dressed for dinner and entered the dining-room with a smile on her lips.

"Praise be!" Sue said, when Blue Bonnet laughed at one of her jokes. "I thought you had given up laughing, Blue Bonnet. You haven't even smiled since Tuesday. Coming down to the Gym to dance to-night?"

"I think I will. I've got to run up-stairs first and get a clean handkerchief."

She ran up-stairs lightly, and, entering her room, switched on the light. She started for the bureau, but the sight of her room-mate, stretched face downward on her bed, arrested and changed her course.

"Why, Joy," she said, "what on earth's the matter? Haven't you been to dinner?"

Joy Cross sat up. She was as pitiable a looking sight as one could imagine. Her face, always white and expressionless, was ashen, and she shook with nervousness.

Blue Bonnet was horrified at her appearance and started for the door to call Mrs. Goodwin or Miss Martin.

"Wait," Joy called, her eyes burning into Blue Bonnet's. "Wait!"

She pulled herself together, struggling for self control.

"I want to tell you--" the words came with painful effort--"I _must_ tell you. I've been a coward long enough. _I_ put that book in your drawer."

The utter hopelessness in the voice swept all thought of anger from Blue Bonnet's heart, and flooded it with pity. She could not find voice to speak for a moment.

"You, Joy? You! I can't believe it!"

A look of pride flashed over Joy's face. In that brief second she stood once more on her old ground--trusted, respected.

"I suppose not," she said dully, and the flush died from her face. "No one would have believed me so wicked! They don't know me as I am."

Tears welled in her eyes.

"Tell me about it, Joy, please. I know you didn't do it on purpose. You couldn't have. I never did anything to make you hate me like that."

She went over to the grate and stirring the embers into a ruddy glow drew up a chair and coaxed Joy into it.

"Now we can talk better," she said, sitting down on the hearth rug beside her. "Tell me how it happened. It's been such a mystery to me."

Joy glanced down into the face upturned in the firelight and almost gasped at its serenity. There was not a trace of anger in the eyes lifted to her own--nothing but kindness--and that look, somehow, made it harder to proceed than any torrent of words.

Between long pauses Joy told Blue Bonnet all that she had told Annabel Jackson and Miss North; and Blue Bonnet listened breathlessly, a little sigh escaping her lips as Joy finished the story.

There was tense silence for a minute, and then Blue Bonnet reached up shyly and took Joy's hand in her own.

"I suppose I ought to be awfully angry at you, Joy, for letting me suffer as I have the past few days--but--somehow--I'm not--at all. I feel so sorry for you that there isn't any room for anger. I think I can understand how it happened."

"You can! It doesn't seem possible that any one could see my side."

Blue Bonnet gazed into the fire and spoke slowly.

"Oh, yes, they could. All but the untruth, Joy--that was the worst, of course--but then--maybe you haven't been brought up on the truth as I have. The truth is a sort of religion in our family. That and 'do unto others.'"

Joy was quick to come to the defence of her family.

"No--I can't find excuse in that. My people are truthful. They're queer, maybe, but they are truthful and honest."

Perhaps it was the gentle pressure of Blue Bonnet's hand, the sympathy in her eyes, that gradually brought forth the story of Joy's life. Before she had finished, Blue Bonnet's tears mingled with Joy's, and the grasp tightened on the hand held in her own.

In that half hour Joy poured out her heart in a way she would have thought impossible an hour before. She told Blue Bonnet of her cold, indifferent father; of the patient, long-suffering mother who had planned and saved, and sacrificed to keep her in school, and of how she had longed to repay the devotion with the highest honors the school could give.

"It was the thought of my mother's awful disappointment that tempted me to lie to Miss Martin," she said. "It all happened so quickly I scarcely had time to think clearly. I was so afraid of being expelled--I will be now, of course. Miss North is going to bring the whole thing before the Faculty to-morrow."

"Oh, no--surely she won't do that!" Blue Bonnet cried. "Did you tell her what you've just told me, Joy?"

"No. I'm not playing for sympathy. I'll take what's coming, if--if only the girls didn't have to know."

"They don't," Blue Bonnet said determinedly. "Nobody knows it but Annabel Jackson and myself. Annabel won't tell, and nobody ever knows what goes on in Faculty. Now, what is that?"

A knock had startled both girls. Blue Bonnet went to the door.

"Oh, dear," she said, "I forgot all about going to study hour. I just know that's Fraulein."

Fraulein it was.

"You were not in the study hall, Miss Ashe," she said, craning her neck to see into the room.

Blue Bonnet stepped outside and closed the door.

"No, I wasn't. I was engaged."

"You were excused?"

"No--I was not."

"Then I shall haf to report to Miss North."

The color came into Blue Bonnet's cheeks and her eyes flashed.

"Do," she said. "I don't mind giving you that little treat."

"I perfectly abominate that woman," she said, going back to the hearth rug. "She can anger me quicker than any one I ever knew. I was terribly rude to her; but she is so aggravating. She adores getting something on me."

When the gong sounded for bed Blue Bonnet had drawn a tub of hot water for Joy's bath, and urged her into it.

"It will make her sleep better," she said to herself as the door closed between them. "Poor girl; my heart aches for her. If she stays here the girls have just got to be nicer to her--that's all! And she's going to stay--she _must_, even if I have to send for Uncle Cliff to help straighten things out."