22 daphne owns up

immediately after tea that day the second form were told by miss parker that they were to go to their common-room and wait there.

“why?” asked belinda, in surprise.

“you’ll see,” said miss parker. “go along now. someone is waiting there for you.”

they all went, and rushed pell-mell into the common-room, wondering what the mystery was. mary-lou was there, looking a little scared, wrapped in her dressing-gown. matron had carried her down.

and daphne was there, fully dressed! the girls rushed at her. “daphne! you’re a heroine! daphne! well done! you saved mary-lou’s life!”

daphne did not answer. she sat there and looked at them, rather white in the face, and did not even smile.

“what’s the matter?” asked gwendoline.

“sit down, all of you,” said daphne. “i’ve got something to say. then i shall go away and you won’t see me again.”

“good gracious! why all this melodrama?” asked jean, disquieted by daphne’s tragic voice.

“listen,” said daphne. “you’ve got to listen. i’m the thief. i took those things. i’ve been sent away from two schools already for much the same thing. miss grayling knew that, but she wanted to give me another chance. so i came here. i told you lies—especially gwen. we haven’t a yacht. we haven’t three or four cars. i told you i’d never been to school before because i didn’t want anyone to find out i’d been expelled. i hadn’t enough money to pay for some of the subs. jean wanted, and how could i say that, when you all thought my father was a millionaire? so i took money and purses. and i took jewellery too, because i like pretty things and haven’t nearly enough myself.”

she paused. the faces round her were shocked and horrified. gwendoline looked as if she was about to faint. her grand friend with her millionaire father! no wonder daphne had never asked her to stay for the holidays. it was all lies.

“you all look shocked. i knew you would be. miss grayling said i was to come and confess to you myself, and you would judge me. i can see you judging me now. i don’t blame you. i’ve judged myself, too, and i hate myself! i let you accuse ellen wrongly, i let you . . .”

“and i fell into the trap and accused ellen!” said alicia, in a shamed voice. “you are a beast, daphne. you could have stopped me. i shall never forgive myself for doing that to poor old ellen.”

there was a long pause. then sally spoke. “is that all, daphne?”

“isn’t it enough?” said daphne, bitterly. “perhaps you want to know why i got the wind up and sent away those things in a parcel, which poor mary-lou took for me. well, when the rumour went round that ellen was expelled for thieving, i was scared those purses and things might be discovered, with my finger-prints on. i know the police always look for prints. so i thought i’d better pack them up, put a false address on and send them away through the post. then nobody would trace them to me. and because of that idiotic idea, mary-lou nearly got killed.”

“yes—and because of that, you came out after me, and risked your own life for me!” said mary-lou’s soft voice. she got up and went to daphne. “i don’t care what the others say. i’ll stick by you, daphne. i don’t want you to go. you won’t ever take things again here now, i know. there’s more good in you than bad.”

“well, i’m sure i don’t want to have anything more to do with her,” said gwendoline, in a disgusted voice. “if my mother knew . . .”

“shut up, gwendoline,” said darrell. “i’m sticking by daphne too. i’ve done some pretty awful things this week myself, though i can’t tell you what. and i think this—whatever wrong daphne has done this term is cancelled out completely by her courage last night! we thought her deed was brave and noble then—and what she has just told us now doesn’t make it any less brave or noble.”

“i agree with you,” said sally. “she’s cancelled out her wrong with a right, as far as i’m concerned. and what’s more, it wanted courage to come and face us all like this. you’ve got plenty of that, daphne. if we stick by you and help you, will it make any difference to you? i mean—will you stop any underhand ways and mean tricks?”

“do you mean that?” said daphne, a sudden hope making her face shine. “what about the others?”

“i’m with sally and darrell,” said jean.

“so am i,” said belinda, and irene nodded too. emily thought for a moment and added her word as well.

“yes, i’ll agree,” she said. “i think you’ve behaved terribly badly, daphne—and terribly well too. at any rate you ought to have a chance to make good.”

“you alicia?” said sally. alicia had been very silent for the last few minutes. she was overcome with remorse about ellen. she raised her eyes.

“it seems to me that i need to have a chance given to me to make good, as much as daphne,” she said, shamefacedly. “i’ve been worse than any of you.”

“you have been very hard and merciless, alicia,” said sally. “you jeer at me for wanting to get proof before we accuse people, and for wanting to be fair and kind—but it’s better in the end.”

“i know,” said alicia. “i do know that. i’m sorry. i’ve disliked you because you were head-girl instead of me this term, sally. i’ve been a perfect idiot. i’m not the one to judge daphne. i’ll follow your lead, you may be sure.”

“well, it seems as if it’s only gwendoline who is standing out,” said sally, turning to the sulky-looking girl. “poor gwendoline! she’s lost her grand friend and can’t get over it. well, we’ll go and tell miss grayling that we are all agreed on the matter except gwendoline. we want to give daphne another chance, and we don’t want her to go.”

“no, don’t do that,” said gwendoline, alarmed at the thought of appearing small and mean to miss grayling. “i agree too.”

“and you agree, daphne?” said sally, looking at the quiet girl in the chair.

“thank you, sally. with all my heart,” said daphne, and turned her head away. it was a great moment in her life—the forking of the ways. it was up to her to take the right way and she knew it. if only she was strong enough to!

a timid hand touched her arm. it was mary-lou. “come back to matron now,” she said. “she told us we were to, as soon as the meeting was over. i’ll help you up the stairs.”

daphne smiled for the first time, and this time it was a real smile, a sincere one, not turned on for the sake of being charming. “you’re the one that needs helping up!” she said. “come on, or matron will be hounding us out of here.”

jean went to see ellen—a very different ellen. things seemed to be clearing up magically. “i feel miles better now,” said ellen. “i’m not doing any more real lessons this term, jean, and no work at all in the hols. i shan’t snap and snarl any more either. i’ve lost that awful headache that made me jumpy. it suddenly went after i’d had a talk with miss grayling. it was most extraordinary.”

“you’re lucky to be in bed just now,” said jean. “the tests are simply awful. you should have seen the maths one, ellen. honestly i could only do half the sums. but the french one, set by mam’zelle dupont, was wizard.”

what with one thing and another, the week of tests passed very quickly and then it was the last week of all. mistresses began to look harassed as the task of adding up marks, correcting papers, making out reports, grew heavier and heavier. mam’zelle dupont worked herself up into a frenzy because she had lost her beautifully added-up marks list, and begged miss parker to do it for her again.

miss parker wouldn’t. “i’ve enough worries of my own,” she said. “you’re as bad as belinda, mam’zelle. she managed to answer a history test when all the rest of the class were doing a geography paper. don’t ask me how. that girl is the worst scatter-brain i ever saw in my life. how she got hold of a history paper when i had given out geography tests . . .”

“but why didn’t she point out the mistake to you?” asked mam’zelle, astonished.

“she said she didn’t even notice that the questions were history ones,” groaned miss parker. “these girls! they will be the death of me. thank goodness there are only two more days till the end of term!”

only two more days. but what hectic ones! packing things, looking for things, losing things, exchanging addresses, tidying cupboards, stacking books, cleaning paint-pots . . . all the thrilling little things that come at the end of term, and add to the excitement of going home.

“it’s been a queer sort of term,” said darrell to sally. “don’t you think so, sally? i’m not very pleased with some of the things i’ve done. you’ve been fine, though. you always are.”

“rubbish!” said sally. “you don’t know how many times i’ve hated alicia for defying me. you don’t know lots of things about me!”

“i’ve enjoyed this term though,” said darrell, remembering everything. “it’s been interesting. ellen and her snappiness—and the way we all thought wrong things about her—and now it’s all come right and she’s quite different and she and jean are as thick as thieves together!”

“and then daphne,” said sally, the word “thieves” bringing her to mind. “that was an extraordinary affair, wasn’t it, darrell? i’m glad we gave her a chance. isn’t it funny the way she’s dropped that silly gwendoline mary and taken mary-lou for her friend?”

“jolly good thing,” said darrell. “mary-lou may be a timid little thing—but she’s sound at heart. and it’s much better for her to have a friend of her own than go tagging after us all the time. but i shall always like little mary-lou.”

“gwendoline looks sour these days,” said sally, nudging her friend as gwendoline went by alone. “nobody’s darling now!”

“won’t do her any harm,” said darrell, hard heartedly. “she’ll soon be mother’s darling and miss winter’s darling, and have her bed made for her and everything done! dear darling gwendoline mary. she didn’t come very well out of the daphne affair, did she?”

“no, she didn’t. perhaps she’ll be better next term,” said sally, doubtfully. “oh, my goodness, what is belinda doing?”

belinda shot by with a work-basket in her arms, from which trailed yards and yards of wool and cotton. it wound itself round people’s ankles and legs and at last forced her to stop.

“get off my cottons!” she yelled indignantly. “you’re holding me up!”

“oh, belinda—you’ll always be an idiot!” cried darrell, unwinding some red wool from her right ankle. “go away! i’m getting a forest of cotton round me. belinda, don’t forget to bring back a whole lot of funny sketches after the hols.”

“i will!” said belinda, with a grin. “and what about alicia thinking up a new trick for next term. hie, alicia, we’ve thought of some holiday prep for you! make up some super tricks for next term, see?”

“right!” called alicia. “i will. you can bank on that! better than the ‘oy!’ on mam’zelle’s back, darrell!”

“oy! what is an oy?” demanded mam’zelle dupont, bustling up. “an ‘oy!’ on my back? what is this you have done to me now?”

she screwed herself round, trying to see what an oy was, and the girls screamed with laughter.

“it’s all right, mam’zelle. it’s not there now.”

“but what is an oy?” demanded mam’zelle. “i shall ask miss parker.”

but miss parker was not interested in mam’zelle’s “oys”. she was only interested in getting the girls safely away on holiday. then she could sit down and breathe in peace.

and at last they were really off. cars swung into the drive. the train-girls went off singing. belinda rushed frantically back for her suit-case, which she had as usual forgotten.

“good-bye, malory towers!” yelled the girls. “good-bye, potty! good-bye, nosey! good-bye, mam’zelle oy!”

“they’re gone,” said mam’zelle. “ah, the dear, dear girls, how i love to see them come—and how i love to see them go! miss parker, you must tell me, please. what is this ‘oy’? i have never heard of it.”

“look it up in the dictionary,” said miss parker, as if she was speaking to her class. “four weeks of peace, blessed peace. i can’t believe it!”

“they will soon be back, these bad girls,” said mam’zelle. and she was right. they will!